01Shopify & Ecommerce
Shopify builds for brands
that can't afford to lose a mobile visitor.
The average Shopify store leaks revenue on mobile. It's not the platform — Shopify is a capable system. It's the implementation: templates chosen for how they look in a demo, loaded with apps added one at a time as the business grew, and never properly audited for what they're actually doing to load time.
If your products are worth buying, your store needs to earn that judgment before the product page even loads. A site that takes four seconds to appear on a phone is a site that a significant percentage of your potential customers have already left.
02What we build
Performance and brand. Both, not one at the expense of the other.
A fast store that looks like a template isn't the answer. Neither is a beautiful store that loads slowly. The custom Shopify builds we deliver are engineered for sub-1.5s mobile load times without sacrificing the visual quality that premium products require. That takes real work — not theme selection and a few tweaks.
- Custom Shopify theme development — built from scratch to match your brand, not adapted from a template
- Performance engineering that targets sub-1.5s mobile load times, reducing bounce before the first scroll
- Product presentation design that gives premium products the visual treatment they require
- Checkout optimisation to reduce abandonment at the point where most stores lose revenue
- Klaviyo integration for email and SMS flows that extend the site's conversion work post-visit
03In practice
What a considered Shopify build looks like.
Fetch & Form sells premium handcrafted dog sculptures — pieces that sit at an intersection of fine art and considered gifting. The previous site didn't match what the product deserved. It was slow, the product pages didn't give buyers the confidence to commit, and the commission enquiry flow was losing people who had already decided they wanted something made.
We rebuilt the Shopify store from scratch — custom theme, no template, performance-engineered from day one. The product presentation was redesigned to let the photography do the work it was capable of doing. The commission enquiry flow was rebuilt to feel like the start of a conversation rather than a form submission. The result: a 96 Lighthouse mobile score, 1.4s median load time, and a 52 per cent increase in commission enquiries following launch.
Ecommerce stores have a post-launch life that brochure sites don't. New products, seasonal campaigns, collection updates, email flow optimisation — the build is the beginning, not the whole project. We think about that from the start: how the CMS is structured for the founder to manage, which app integrations are genuinely necessary, and what the ongoing relationship looks like if you want us to stay close.
04Common questions
What clients usually ask us.
Custom theme vs a premium template — what's the difference?
A premium Shopify template is someone else's design, adapted. It comes with constraints baked in — layout assumptions, feature toggles, a visual language that was built for a general market rather than your brand. Custom themes are built from your brief. They're faster because there's no dead code, more distinctive because nothing is borrowed, and easier to maintain because you're not working around another studio's decisions.
Should we use Shopify or a custom build?
For most ecommerce brands with a product catalogue up to a few hundred SKUs, Shopify is the right platform. It handles payments, fulfilment integrations, inventory, and a growing ecosystem of apps without requiring you to maintain infrastructure. A fully custom build makes sense when you have requirements Shopify can't meet — genuinely unusual checkout logic, very large catalogues, or specific integration needs. We'll give you an honest recommendation, including if Shopify isn't the answer.
How long does a Shopify build take?
A custom Shopify build — theme design, development, product setup, and integration — typically takes ten to fourteen weeks. If you're migrating from another platform and have a large catalogue, or if there are complex app integrations, add time. We scope this properly in discovery so you're not surprised mid-project.
Why is mobile performance such a big deal?
The average Shopify store built on a popular theme carries enough JavaScript and image weight to load in three to five seconds on a real mobile connection. Studies consistently show abandonment increases sharply after two seconds. A store that loads in 1.4 seconds on mobile — which is what we achieved for Fetch & Form — converts meaningfully better than one that takes three. This isn't theoretical. It shows up in the revenue.
What about apps — don't we need a lot of them?
App bloat is one of the most common performance problems we inherit when working on existing stores. Every app that loads JavaScript on the storefront adds weight, and most stores accumulate apps over time without ever auditing what they're actually using. We take a minimal-app approach: if something can be built into the theme, we build it in. Apps are appropriate for genuinely complex functionality — loyalty programmes, advanced filtering, subscription billing — not for things the theme should handle natively.
Do you offer ongoing support after launch?
Yes. Ecommerce stores need ongoing attention in a way that brochure sites don't — seasonal content changes, new product additions, campaign landing pages, performance monitoring. We offer retainer options calibrated to the level of support you actually need. If you just want someone available for ad hoc work, that's fine too.
Do you use AI in your work?
Yes, thoughtfully. We use AI to accelerate research, scaffold code, and generate first-draft content that our team then rewrites and approves. We do not use AI for strategy, final copy, client communication, or anything else where human judgement is what you are paying for. Our full AI policy sets out exactly where the lines are drawn.
Ready when you are
Your products deserve a store that sells them properly.
Custom build. Fixed price. Performance you can measure before and after.