Do you build on a Shopify theme or from scratch?

Almost always we build on Online Store 2.0 primitives — sections, blocks, metaobjects — rather than a from-scratch framework. It is faster to ship, easier for your team to maintain, and keeps you inside Shopify's upgrade path instead of outside it.

Can you work with our existing theme rather than rebuilding it?

Often, yes. If the underlying architecture is sound we will extend and refactor rather than rebuild. We only recommend a rebuild when the audit shows the existing structure is the actual source of the problem.

How do you keep merchandisers from breaking the design?

Section settings are scoped to combinations that stay on-brand — constrained typography, spacing and layout options rather than open text fields. Editors get flexibility inside guardrails we define during the build.

What does a Shopify development agency actually deliver versus a freelancer?

Process and continuity: version control, code review, a documented architecture, and a team that can support the store after launch rather than disappearing. That is the difference we are pricing for.

Will this improve page speed?

It should, because a render budget is part of the architecture document from day one — but we report actual field data (Core Web Vitals from real visitors) rather than a single lab score, since that is what Google and your customers actually experience.

Service · Build

Shopify Development

Storefronts built on a sane template architecture, with render budgets, version control and documentation from the first commit — not a pile of section duplicates held together by app scripts.

Shopify Plus
Liquid
Online Store 2.0
Metaobjects

Group: Build
Starts with: Technical audit
Delivery: Git + staging theme
Handover: Written documentation

01Overview

Search for a shopify development agency and you'll find a lot of portfolios and very few engineering processes. What actually determines whether a storefront stays fast and maintainable a year after launch is the architecture underneath it — section structure, data model, render budget — decided before a single template is coded.

We treat a build the way we'd treat any production software project: audit first, architecture document second, then small reviewable changes in version control. That discipline is what keeps a theme editable by your merchandising team without a developer standing over every campaign page.

The result is a store your team can actually own after we leave — documented, git-tracked, and built against a performance budget rather than a demo that degrades once real content and real apps land on it.

02The problem

Most Shopify stores slow down because of how they were built, not because of what they sell. Sections get duplicated for every campaign, app scripts stack up untracked, page weight grows unchecked, and every new landing page adds a maintenance liability nobody actually owns or reviews.

03You will recognise this if

Your theme has grown past the point anyone can safely edit it
Every campaign page is a one-off duplicate
Launches require a developer for content changes
Nobody can explain why the homepage is slow
App embeds were added faster than anyone tracked them

04How we work on it

01
Read before writing
Theme, app stack, data model and analytics reviewed end to end before we propose anything. Scope is based on what the code and the data actually show, not on a generic best-practices checklist.
02
Architecture first
Section and block structure, metafield and metaobject model, and a render budget per template agreed in writing before development starts. This is the document we build against and the one we hand over.
03
Small, reviewable changes
Git-based development against a staging theme, shipped in reviewable pull requests. Live theme code is never edited directly, and every change has a diff someone can read.
04
Performance budget enforced in CI
Lighthouse and field-data checks run against the render budget on every pull request, so a heavy app embed or an unoptimised image gets caught before it reaches production.
05
Documented handover
What we built, what we rejected, and why — written down so your team keeps the reasoning, not just the files. This is what stops the next developer from relearning the same lessons.

04What you get

Deliverables, not decks.

Theme architecture document
Section and block library
Metafield / metaobject data model
Git repository with staging theme and CI checks
Render-budget report per template
QA and launch runbook
Editor documentation for merchandisers
30-day post-launch support window

sections/main-collection.liquid

1# sections/main-collection.liquid2{% liquid
  paginate collection.products by 243  render 'card-product', lazy: forloop.index > 64{% endliquid %}5 6// above-the-fold budget: 12ms server, 0 CLS

Delivery pipeline

Audit
Scope
Build
QA
Measure

05What changes

Editable without a developer: Merchandisers can build new campaign pages from the section library without breaking layout or design consistency.
Render budget enforced in CI: Performance regressions are caught in pull requests, not discovered after a launch.
Documented architecture: Decisions and rejected approaches are written down, so future changes don't repeat past mistakes.

06How an engagement runs

01
Audit
We review theme code, app stack, data model and analytics before proposing scope. You get a written assessment, not a sales estimate.
02
Scope
Architecture document — section structure, data model, render budget — agreed and signed off before development starts.
03
Delivery
Reviewable git-based development against staging, with a documented, supported handover at launch.

07Stack

Shopify Plus
Liquid
Online Store 2.0
Metaobjects
TypeScript
GitHub Actions

08Related work

09Questions

Send us the store and the symptom.

A senior engineer reads it, tells you what is actually going on, and scopes only what the evidence supports.

Book Consultation Request Shopify Audit

Shopify Development

Read before writing

Architecture first

Small, reviewable changes

Performance budget enforced in CI

Documented handover