Is Shopify the right platform for you?
Platform choice is a business decision, so it is worth making deliberately. We cover the detail in our comparison of Shopify, WooCommerce and Magento, but the short version is this.
Shopify is usually the right choice when
you want a fast launch, predictable hosting and security, a polished checkout, strong built-in payments in many countries and a large app ecosystem, and when your team would rather run the business than manage servers.
WooCommerce may be better when
you already run WordPress, need deep control over content and data, want to avoid transaction fees from a platform or need custom behaviour that Shopify’s checkout restricts. See WooCommerce development.
A custom or headless build may be better when
your catalogue, pricing or buying journey is unusual or when you need a front end that no theme can deliver. See Next.js development for headless storefronts.
We will give you an honest recommendation, including when that recommendation is not Shopify.
What we do on Shopify
Store setup and launch
Configuration of products, collections, shipping, taxes, payments, markets and policies, with a theme matched to your brand.
Custom theme development
Themes built in Liquid on Online Store 2.0, with flexible sections and blocks so your team can change layouts without developers. Built for speed from the start.
Theme customisation
Tailoring existing themes: new sections, product page features, mega menus, size guides, bundles, wishlists and landing pages.
Shopify Plus
Checkout customisation, Shopify Functions, B2B features, multi-store setups, automation with Flow, scripts migration and enterprise integrations.
Custom app development
Public and private apps for features that the app store does not cover: custom pricing, subscription logic, product configurators, loyalty, order routing and admin tools.
Integrations
ERP, inventory, 3PL and shipping carriers, accounting, CRM, email and marketing platforms, reviews, returns and customer service tools.
Migrations
From WooCommerce, Magento, BigCommerce, Wix, Squarespace or custom platforms, with products, customers, orders, content and URLs carried over.
Performance optimisation
App audits, image handling, script reduction, theme code clean-up and Core Web Vitals improvement.
Conversion rate optimisation
Better product pages, navigation, search, checkout flow and mobile experience, informed by analytics.
Ongoing support
Retainers for updates, bug fixes, campaigns and new features.
AI-powered features
Product recommendations, search, content generation, customer support assistants and catalogue enrichment. See our article on Shopify and AI SEO for how AI is changing discovery.
What we build into Shopify stores that matters for growth
Fast, light themes
Every app and script adds weight. We write lean Liquid, defer non-critical JavaScript, optimise images and fonts and audit installed apps, because slow stores lose sales and rankings.
Product pages that answer questions
Clear imagery, variant selection that behaves, size and fit help, shipping estimates, reviews, comparison tables and FAQs, structured so they are readable by shoppers and by search engines.
Navigation and search that fit your catalogue
Faceted filters, predictive search, collections that reflect how people shop and internal linking that supports SEO.
Smooth checkout
Shopify’s checkout is already strong. On Plus, we extend it where it helps, for example with custom delivery options, validations and upsells.
Technical SEO
Clean URLs and collections, canonical handling, structured data for products and organisation, sitemaps, redirects on migration and optimised metadata.
Analytics that you can trust
Google Analytics 4, Meta and TikTok pixels or conversions APIs, server-side tagging where useful and clear event tracking.
Accessibility
Keyboard navigation, contrast, alt text and form labelling, reducing risk and widening your market.
Custom apps and Shopify Functions
When an app on the Shopify App Store almost fits, it is often cheaper to adopt it than to build. When it does not fit, custom development pays off. Typical examples include wholesale price lists with approval, a product builder for made-to-order goods, subscription rules unique to your business, gift-with-purchase logic, order routing between warehouses, an internal tool that gives your support team a single view of orders and returns, and back-office syncs with an ERP.
We build with Shopify’s current tooling: Admin and Storefront APIs, webhooks, app extensions, Shopify Functions for discounts, shipping and payment customisations, and the Polaris design system for embedded admin interfaces. Apps are built with Remix or Node.js, hosted reliably and designed to handle rate limits and webhook retries gracefully.
Migrating to Shopify without losing your search traffic
A migration is a business risk. Done well, it improves speed and conversion. Done badly, it destroys rankings. Our process:
1. Audit
We crawl the existing store and record every URL, product, collection, page and blog post, together with traffic and ranking data.
2. Redirect map
Every valuable URL gets a one-to-one 301 redirect to its new equivalent. Shopify’s URL structure (for example the /products/ and /collections/ prefixes) differs from other platforms, so mapping must be careful.
3. Data migration
Products, variants, images, customers, orders, discount codes and reviews, with test imports and reconciliation of counts and totals.
4. Content and metadata
Titles, descriptions, headings, alt text and structured data carried over or improved.
5. Pre-launch testing
Checkout, payments, taxes, emails, redirects and mobile behaviour.
6. Launch and monitoring
DNS cutover at a quiet time, Search Console monitoring, 404 tracking and rapid fixes during the first weeks.
Speeding up a slow Shopify store
Slow stores are rarely slow because of Shopify. They are slow because of what has been added to it. A typical audit of an underperforming store finds the same issues.
Too many apps
Each app can inject scripts and styles into every page, including pages where it does nothing. We list every installed app, remove those that are unused or duplicated and replace heavy ones with lightweight theme code where possible. Leftover code from apps that were uninstalled long ago is another common culprit.
Unoptimised media
Oversized hero images, autoplaying video and missing width and height attributes hurt loading and cause layout shift. We serve correctly sized, modern-format images, lazy-load below the fold and reserve space so the page does not jump.
Render-blocking code
Scripts for chat, reviews and tracking that load before the page can display. We defer or delay them until interaction, and we move tags into a managed container.
Heavy theme code
Themes bought for their features can carry large libraries. We trim unused sections, replace sliders with lighter patterns and reduce JavaScript.
Fonts
Several custom font families with many weights. We limit them, preload what is needed and use sensible fallbacks.
We measure before and after with Lighthouse and, more importantly, with real-user data from the Chrome UX Report where available, because what shoppers experience matters more than lab scores. Faster stores tend to convert better, and they give search engines fewer reasons to rank you lower.
Shopify Plus: when it makes sense, and what we build on it
Shopify Plus is the enterprise tier. It adds checkout extensibility, higher API limits, more automation, B2B capabilities, multiple expansion stores and a dedicated support path. It also carries a higher monthly fee, so it should earn its place.
The signals that Plus is worth a look: you operate in several countries or currencies and need separate storefronts, you sell to businesses with negotiated price lists and purchase terms, you need custom checkout logic such as delivery rules, validation or payment customisation, your order volume strains standard limits, or you need tighter workflow automation with Shopify Flow. On Plus projects, we typically build checkout customisations with Shopify Functions and checkout extensions, set up B2B catalogues and company accounts, connect the ERP and warehouse systems, migrate legacy scripts to the current extensibility model and design the multi-store architecture. We will also tell you plainly when a standard plan plus a couple of well-chosen apps would do the job.
Headless Shopify: powerful, but not for everyone
A headless storefront separates the front end from Shopify’s back end. The shop is built in a framework such as Next.js or Hydrogen and fetches products and carts through the Storefront API. The benefits are complete design freedom, very fast page loads and the ability to combine commerce with rich editorial content. The costs are higher build and maintenance effort, the loss of some theme-based apps and the need to rebuild features that themes provide automatically.
We recommend headless when brand experience or performance is central to your strategy, when you serve content and commerce together on one site or when you need one front end across several channels. For most small and mid-sized stores, a well-built theme is faster to launch and easier to run.
Our development process
- 01
1. Discovery
Business goals, customers, catalogue, systems and constraints. We review competitors and your current store.
- 02
2. Design
UX flows and visual design, with attention to mobile first, since most store traffic is on phones.
- 03
3. Development
Theme and app work in sprints, with a staging store you can review at any time.
- 04
4. Integrations and data
Connecting back-office systems and loading your catalogue.
- 05
5. Testing
Functional, performance, accessibility and cross-device testing, plus real test orders.
- 06
6. Launch
Cutover plan, analytics verification and redirect checks.
- 07
7. Growth support
Optimisation, new features and campaign support after launch.
Technology stack
| Area | What we typically use |
|---|---|
| Platform | Shopify, Shopify Plus |
| Themes | Liquid, Online Store 2.0, JSON templates, sections and blocks, JavaScript, Tailwind CSS where appropriate |
| Apps and APIs | Admin API (GraphQL), Storefront API, webhooks, Shopify Functions, app extensions, Remix, Node.js, Polaris |
| Headless | Next.js or Hydrogen with the Storefront API |
| Integrations | ERP, 3PL, shipping carriers, accounting, CRM, email, reviews and returns tools |
| Analytics | GA4, Google Tag Manager, Meta and TikTok conversions, Search Console |
| Payments | Shopify Payments, Stripe, PayPal, regional gateways such as Razorpay where supported |
Industries we serve
We build Shopify stores for fashion and apparel, health and wellness, food and beverage, beauty, home and lifestyle, electronics and accessories, B2B and wholesale and subscription brands. Each category has its own expectations: fashion needs size guidance and returns clarity, consumables need subscriptions and bundling, B2B needs account-based pricing.
Working with your in-house team or agency
Many Shopify merchants already have a marketing agency, a designer or a part-time developer. We are comfortable working alongside them. We can take a defined slice, such as a custom app, an integration or a speed audit, and hand back clean, documented code. We follow your branching and review process where you have one, use development stores and version control for themes and keep every change reversible. If you have no technical team, we can act as that team on a retainer.
Benefits
Fast time to market
A well-scoped store can launch in weeks.
Reliable infrastructure
Hosting, security updates and checkout reliability are handled for you.
Conversion-focused
Mature checkout and a huge range of proven features.
Scalable
From first sale to millions in revenue, including on Plus.
Extensible
Apps, Functions and APIs when the standard features run out.
Lower operational burden
Your team focuses on products and customers.
Pricing and timelines
Published guides give these broad ranges. They are third-party benchmarks and not a quote from TechColline. Note that platform fees (Shopify plans and app subscriptions) are separate from development cost.
| Scope | Indicative market range (USD) | Typical timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Store using a ready theme, configured and launched | about $2,000 to $6,000 | 2 to 4 weeks |
| Custom theme development | about $3,000 to $15,000 | 4 to 10 weeks |
| Custom app | about $5,000 to $35,000 or more | 1 to 4 months |
| Integration (for example shipping, CRM, reviews) | about $1,000 to $5,000 each | 1 to 3 weeks |
| ERP integration | about $5,000 to $25,000 | 3 to 10 weeks |
| Shopify Plus build and customisation | about $40,000 to $120,000 or more, plus platform fees | 3 to 6 months |
Costs rise with the number of products and variants, custom design, apps, integrations, markets and languages, migration complexity and the level of performance and SEO work. Our advice is to launch with a strong core and add features that data shows will pay for themselves.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Shopify development cost?
A store using a ready theme often costs a few thousand dollars to set up. Custom themes commonly fall between roughly $3,000 and $15,000, custom apps from about $5,000 upward and Shopify Plus builds from about $40,000, plus platform fees. Integrations, migrations and design depth change the figure. We provide a quote after a short discovery.
How long does it take to build a Shopify store?
A themed store can launch in two to four weeks. A custom theme with integrations usually takes one to three months. Plus and headless projects take longer.
Do I need Shopify Plus?
Not at first. Plus becomes worthwhile when you need checkout customisation, B2B features, multiple storefronts, higher automation or very high volume. Many stores grow successfully on standard plans for years. We can model the cost against your needs.
Can you migrate my store from WooCommerce, Magento or another platform?
Yes. We migrate products, customers, orders, content and URLs, and set up 301 redirects to protect search rankings. We test the data thoroughly before launch.
Can you build a custom Shopify app?
Yes. We build private and public apps with the Admin API, webhooks, Shopify Functions and app extensions for features the app store does not offer.
Will my Shopify store be fast?
We build lean themes, audit apps, optimise images and keep JavaScript under control. Speed depends partly on the apps you choose, so we review them with you.
Can you integrate Shopify with my ERP or inventory system?
Yes. We integrate with ERP, warehouse, shipping, accounting and CRM systems so that stock, orders and customers stay in sync. See our ERP development page for the other side of that connection.
Is Shopify good for SEO?
Shopify provides a solid technical base, and we improve it with clean structure, metadata, structured data and speed work. Rankings still depend on content, authority and competition.
Do you offer ongoing Shopify support?
Yes. Retainers cover fixes, updates, new features, campaigns and performance monitoring.