Shopify stores engineered, not assembled
Custom themes, headless storefronts with Hydrogen or Next.js, and the ERP and CRM integrations that make a store feel like one system — commerce engineering from the team that built digital commerce for a major European bank, on the platform that processes 10% of US e-commerce.
How we build on Shopify
The checkout is sacred. We measure before we touch it.
No checkout change ships on taste — baseline analytics first, then work built on Checkout Extensibility so it survives platform upgrades. Hardening high-volume checkout flows is exactly what we did for Gadsby.
Fewer apps, more code you own.
Every installed app is a subscription plus a script your customers download on every visit. When a feature is core to your business, we build it into the theme — no monthly fee, no vendor pivot risk, no mystery JavaScript.
Your store is not an island.
Orders flow to the ERP, customers to the CRM, stock back to the storefront — the same sync architecture we engineered for CSI’s commerce-to-ERP integration. Different platform, same discipline.
Shopify when it wins — and we say when it doesn’t.
We also build Craft Commerce and custom platforms, so Shopify is a recommendation, not the only hammer we own. If your project is content-heavy publishing with a small catalog, we might talk you out of it — before a migration, not after.
Liquid theme or headless — honestly
The first Shopify decision that actually matters. Agencies that only build one of these will recommend the one they build. We build both, so here is the table we wish clients saw before signing anywhere.
Liquid theme (Online Store 2.0)
Headless (Hydrogen / Next.js)
Time to launch
Weeks — the theme architecture is mature and battle-tested
Months — you are building a storefront application
App ecosystem
Thousands of apps drop in via theme extensions
Every app integration becomes custom work
Design freedom
High, within the theme architecture
Total — the storefront is your codebase
Performance ceiling
Excellent when built lean — Shopify budgets 16 KB for theme JavaScript
Higher — but only realized with a disciplined JavaScript team
Who can maintain it
Any competent Shopify developer
A React team, permanently
Our honest default
Most stores. Yes, really.
Multi-storefront, content-heavy or app-like experiences
Shopify in 2026 — what a buyer should know
Sourced from Shopify’s own documentation and independent research — including the caveats vendors usually skip.
The scale argument is real
Shopify processes about 10% of US e-commerce and powers millions of businesses in more than 175 countries, past $1 trillion in cumulative sales. Platform risk is the one thing you can cross off the list — what remains is how well your store is built.
The checkout claim, with its asterisk
Shopify’s checkout converts on average 15% better than competitors — up to 36% against Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Honest asterisk: that study was commissioned by Shopify. What nobody disputes: Shop Pay and a checkout you never have to babysit are genuine conversion assets.
checkout.liquid is dead — deadlines included
Shopify sunset checkout.liquid: Plus stores lost their legacy checkout customizations in August 2025, non-Plus stores follow on August 26, 2026. Anything custom in your checkout must be rebuilt on Checkout Extensibility — that deadline is on your calendar whether you know it or not.
Apps are a performance tax
Shopify’s own App Store rule allows a listed app to cost up to 10 Lighthouse performance points; its theme budget is 16 KB of JavaScript. Speed is not lost in one big decision — it leaks one install at a time. The stakes are measured: Google and Deloitte found a 0.1-second mobile improvement lifts retail conversions by 8.4%.
Agentic commerce arrived — read the fine print
Shopify wired merchants into ChatGPT through the Agentic Commerce Protocol with OpenAI and Stripe in 2025 — and by March 2026 the model settled on agentic storefronts: shoppers discover products in the chat and complete the purchase on your store. Being machine-readable is now merchandising, which is exactly where this service overlaps our SEO & AEO work.
B2B is Shopify’s fastest lane
Shopify’s B2B gross merchandise volume grew 96% in 2025 — its fastest-growing segment. If you still sell wholesale through spreadsheets and phone calls, customer-specific catalogs and pricing are now mainstream tooling, not enterprise exotica.
Sources: Shopify checkout study · checkout.liquid sunset (Shopify docs) · Shopify theme performance budgets · Google/Deloitte: Milliseconds Make Millions · Shopify × OpenAI announcement
Commerce work we can show
A gamified digital commerce platform built from the ground up for a major European bank
View case study →Seamless enterprise e-commerce & data infrastructure integration
View case study →Hardening checkout flows and scaling UX for a leading UK wholesaler
View case study →Elevating the e-commerce experience for a B2B technology provider
View case study →Honest answers
Shopify is supposed to be easy — why hire an agency?
Opening a store is easy. Running one that stays fast with a growing catalog, twenty tempting apps and an ERP behind it is engineering. You hire us for the second part — including the moments we say “don’t install that” with a reason attached.
Theme or headless — what do we actually need?
Our honest default is a lean Liquid theme: faster to launch, cheaper to run, maintainable by any Shopify developer. Headless with Hydrogen or Next.js earns its cost when you need multiple storefronts, heavy content alongside commerce, or app-like interactivity — and it means keeping a JavaScript team, permanently. We build both, so the recommendation is not self-serving.
Can you migrate us from WooCommerce or Magento?
Yes — catalog, customers, order history, and the 301-redirect map that protects your rankings. Replatforming without losing traffic is the discipline we practice on every WordPress-to-Craft-CMS migration: nothing lost, rankings preserved, content freeze measured in hours.
Our store got slow. Is it the apps?
Often, yes: Shopify permits each listed app to cost up to 10 Lighthouse points, and installs accumulate quietly. Our audit separates the apps that earn their keep from the ones we replace with fifty lines of theme code you own outright.
Do you build Shopify apps too?
Private apps and integrations for your own store — ERP sync, CRM wiring, custom fulfillment logic — yes; that is backend home turf here. Public App Store products are a different business, and we will not pretend to be in it.
Can our products be sold through ChatGPT?
Discovery through the Agentic Commerce Protocol is rolling out to Shopify merchants: shoppers find products in the assistant and complete checkout on your storefront. What you control is machine-readability — clean product data and structured markup, which is exactly the overlap with our SEO & AEO service.
Launching, migrating or fixing a store?
Tell us where the revenue leaks — we will tell you honestly whether it is the theme, the apps or the platform.
Get in touchOr explore all services.