HIRE A SHOPIFY EXPERT — UK
Hire a Shopify expert who
runs their own stores.
Most Shopify developers have never had to live with what they build. We do. Custom OS 2.0 themes, Shopify Plus, migrations, checkout work and custom apps for UK ecommerce businesses - from a team that trades on Shopify every day.
Shopify done properly.
Most Shopify stores are stitched together from templates and third-party apps that fight each other for load time. The result: a 6-second page load, a bloated checkout, and a conversion rate that flatlines.
We do it differently. Every theme we build is custom OS 2.0, engineered from scratch with performance budgets baked in. No unnecessary JavaScript. No app bloat. Native conversion tools that work with Shopify instead of against it.
We've built and scaled our own Shopify brands to 30,000+ customers and over a million products shipped. That means every architectural decision, every checkout optimisation, and every performance target comes from real operator experience — not guesswork.
WHAT WE DELIVER
OUR PROCESS
How we deliver.
Audit & Discovery
Tear down your current store, benchmark Core Web Vitals, map conversion leaks, and identify every opportunity to improve revenue per session.
Architecture & Design
Information architecture, wireframes, visual design. Mobile-first, performance-budgeted from the start — not retrofitted after launch.
Build & Engineer
Custom OS 2.0 theme with native CRO tools built in. No app bloat. Every section, snippet, and component tested across devices.
Launch & Iterate
Go live with confidence, then weekly iteration. A/B testing, CRO experiments, and performance monitoring to keep improving post-launch.
PROVEN RESULTS
Proven on our own brands.
Bailey & Coco, built and operated by us. Premium dog accessories, scaled on Shopify with custom theme development and native conversion tools. Read the Bailey & Coco case study.
Performance budgets enforced from day one. Every theme ships with sub-2.5s Largest Contentful Paint because speed is revenue.
Proworks — scaled on Shopify and Amazon. We've lived the operational reality of high-volume fulfilment and know what breaks at scale.
BEFORE YOU HIRE
Developer, expert, agency or Plus partner?
These titles get used interchangeably and they are not the same thing. Knowing which one you actually need is the difference between a build that earns and a build that merely launches.
Shopify developer
Executes a defined brief - a theme change, an integration, a bug. Right when you already know what needs building and who owns the commercial outcome.
Shopify expert
Advises on the decision as well as the build: theme architecture, app choices, what not to build at all. Worth paying for when the scope is genuinely unsettled.
Shopify agency
Adds design, project management and often marketing. More capacity, more overhead, and a higher chance the person pitching is not the person building.
Shopify Plus partner
Relevant if you are on, or moving to, Plus - Functions, checkout extensibility, B2B, multi-store. Partner status is a commercial designation, not proof of engineering quality. Ask to see the work.
What to check before you sign.
1. Who owns the code?
Your theme, custom apps and repository should be yours. Check nothing critical lives in an agency-owned Partner account you cannot reach if the relationship ends.
2. How many apps will this add?
Every app is third-party JavaScript on your storefront. Ask what gets installed, what it replaces, and what it costs monthly. App bloat is the most common cause of a slow Shopify store.
3. What is the performance budget?
Ask for a target, not a promise. If nobody will commit to a Largest Contentful Paint figure before the build starts, performance is not being engineered - it is being hoped for.
4. What happens to your URLs?
On a rebuild or migration, redirect mapping is where organic revenue is quietly lost. It belongs in the plan before design starts, not discovered at launch.
5. Is checkout in scope?
On Shopify Plus, checkout is where much of the conversion upside sits. On standard Shopify it is largely fixed. Be clear which platform the quote assumes.
6. What does support look like after launch?
A store is not finished at launch. Agree who fixes what, how quickly, and whether ongoing work is retained or ad hoc.
WHAT WE BUILD
Scope we take on.
Custom OS 2.0 themes
Built from a clean base rather than a bloated marketplace theme, with sections and metafields your team can use without calling a developer.
Replatforming work
From Magento, WooCommerce, BigCommerce and legacy bespoke platforms. Data, URLs, redirects and organic visibility planned as one piece of work.
Complex and high-volume builds
Checkout extensibility, Functions, B2B and multi-store setups, where the platform allows genuine differentiation.
Custom apps
When no existing app does the job properly. We have built and shipped our own - Refine Filters and Smart Cart OS both exist because nothing available was good enough for our own stores.
Performance work
Theme and app audits on existing stores where speed is costing conversion, with the tradeoffs made explicit before anything is removed.
Ongoing development
Retained development for brands that ship continuously rather than rebuilding every three years.
FIT
Who this is for.
A good fit
Established UK ecommerce businesses already trading on Shopify, or moving to it, where the store is the main revenue channel. Typically a rebuild, a significant custom build, or continuous development alongside an in-house team. The common thread is that a change to the store moves real money.
Probably not a fit
Pre-launch stores with no trading data, single small theme tweaks, or projects where the brief is to make it look different rather than perform better. We will say so early rather than take the work - and we will usually point you somewhere more sensible.
How an engagement works.
What we need from you
Access to the current store and its analytics, a clear view of what is underperforming commercially, and whoever owns the revenue number in the room for the first conversation. Not a finished spec - working out the right scope is part of the job.
How long things take
A focused piece of custom development is usually weeks. A full custom theme build or a migration is typically months, driven by catalogue complexity, integrations and how much content needs restructuring. We give a range once we have seen the store, and we would rather revise a date than quietly miss one.
After launch
Retained development for brands shipping continuously, or a defined support arrangement. Either way you own the code and the Shopify account, and nothing depends on keeping us.
See if this is a fit for your project.
Get a free project review
Let's talk about your
Shopify project.
No 47-slide proposal. Just a straight conversation about what your store needs.
Start a conversationBased in the UK · 20 years in ecommerce · £80M+ revenue