Hiring a Shopify development agency is a project with a beginning, a build, and a point where your own team is running the store again. This is what working with a Shopify development agency looks like at E-Commerce Studio: what we ask for, how the work is organised, and what you should be holding at handover.
We are a Shopify Plus Partner in London with 10+ years focused on Shopify. Finished projects are collected under work. Eat Unique is one of them: a custom Shopify store built around a meal-plan subscription after a move from Wix. The case study is the record of that build. This article is the process around work of that kind.
What the first conversation is for
A useful first call is specific about the store. We want to know what you sell, where you sell it, and what is in the way. Catalogue size, markets, subscriptions, wholesale, and the systems around Shopify change the shape of a build more than a mood board does. An ERP, a warehouse, reviews, search, and email all count.
Bring what you already have. A theme you are unhappy with, a list of apps, a replatforming date, a checkout you cannot edit, a campaign that will not move. A few months of analytics is enough to see where people drop, if you can share access. If you cannot, say so. A thin picture is a sound place to start. A guessed one wastes the call.
You can arrive without a finished specification. A specification written before anyone has looked at the theme, the apps, and the operational constraints usually has to be rewritten. The first conversation is how we find out whether a build is the right job, or whether the next step is a migration, a support retainer, or a smaller fix.
Discovery, and the brief that comes out of it
Discovery is the period in which the project becomes a brief you can approve. On a Shopify build that means reading the current theme, the app stack, and the checkout, then sitting with the people who run the store: merchandising, operations, customer service, and whoever owns the numbers.
The output is a written scope. It names the surfaces we will change, the ones we will leave, and the decisions still open. Theme, checkout extensions, integrations, and the content model are the usual surfaces. It also names what we need from you: product data, photography, copy, legal pages, app licences, staff access, and a person who can approve work without collecting a committee for every section.
Access is part of discovery. A collaborator account with the right permissions lets us see the theme code, the checkout configuration, and the markets setup your team uses. We work in that account. Store-owner access is unnecessary when the collaborator account shows the same admin.
How the build is organised
Most Shopify development work falls into a few kinds of task. A project is a mix, and the mix is what the scope should make obvious.
Theme engineering
Online Store 2.0 themes, written in Liquid, with sections your team can edit. The aim is a theme that stays fast and that a merchant can merchandise without calling a developer for every banner. Custom sections are for the parts of the brand a Theme Store starting point cannot carry. The rest should be predictable: documented, and easy to change six months later by someone who was not in the project channel.
Checkout and Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus is where checkout extensibility, Markets, and the more demanding operational setups live. If the brief is a modest catalogue on standard Shopify, Plus can be more platform than the business needs. If you are already on Plus, or the case for it is clear, the build should use those features on purpose, one at a time, tied to a job your team actually does. Checkout customisation, B2B, and extra markets are the usual reasons. The commercial overview of that work sits on the Shopify Plus agency page. The Plus contract still needs a brief of its own.
Apps and integrations
Search, reviews, subscriptions, ERP, and email all want a place in the theme. Each app is a dependency: a script, a styling conflict, a failure mode when the vendor has a bad day. A short list of apps that earn their place, connected cleanly, beats a long list that recreates the problem the theme was meant to solve. Name the system, name the data that has to move, and agree who owns it when something fails on a Saturday. That is the practical version of the apps and integrations work described on the Shopify development agency page.
A move from another platform is a different scope. It is set out on the Shopify migration agency page. Theme rebuilds, checkout work, and performance work stay with the development engagement described here.
Your side of the project
An agency can write the theme. It cannot invent the range, the photography, or the trading calendar. Projects stall when those stay undecided and the code is already waiting.
The working rhythm is straightforward. A staging theme, reviewed in the browser, with comments against specific pages. A named owner on your side who can answer merchandising questions in days, and in hours when a launch date is close. A short list of pages that represent the catalogue:
- A simple product and a product with awkward variants
- A collection that needs filters
- A content page your team will actually edit
- The cart, and the account area if customers use it
- One landing page tied to a real campaign, if you have one coming
If those pages are right, the rest of the catalogue usually follows. We will ask you to check copy, prices, and legal text yourselves. Those are your statements. We check that the theme renders them, that links resolve, and that the template holds together at the widths your customers use.
Decisions that look small and sit on the critical path: which markets and currencies are in the first release, whether subscriptions ship with the theme or after it, how wholesale or draft orders are handled, which apps stay, and who is allowed to publish a theme change. URL structure belongs on that list too, when it is changing, because the redirects are part of the launch.
Testing, then launch
We test the templates that carry the business. Collection filtering, variant selection, cart notes, discount codes, account login, and the path a new customer takes from a landing page to an order. On Plus, we test checkout extensions against the shipping and payment setup your finance team will recognise. We look at the weight of the theme as well: apps that inject large scripts, images without sizes, and sections that shift the layout as the page loads.
Speed work is part of the build when the theme is the cause. It is a separate pass when the cause is an app you intend to keep. We will say which one it is, with the template in front of us, so the scope stays honest.
Launch is a checklist, done in a quiet hour if you can choose one. DNS if it is changing. Redirects if URLs are changing. Payment methods in test, then a real transaction. Transactional emails sent to a real inbox. A pass over the highest-traffic templates. The first days after that are for watching errors, checkout, and the questions your customer service team starts to receive.
Handover
Handover is a set of things you can use, passed across while the people who built them are still on the project. You should leave with:
- The theme in your admin, published or ready to publish
- Staff permissions set for the people who will edit it
- A short guide to the sections we built: what each one is for, and what will break if it is used for a different job
- App ownership on your store, on your accounts, with billing visible to you
- A note of the redirects, the checkout changes, and anything still open
Our access can stay as a collaborator if you want the studio for the next phase, or it can be removed. That choice is yours, and it should be explicit.
Some teams stop there. Others keep a studio on for the releases, the campaigns, and the fixes a trading calendar produces. That continued work is a separate agreement from the build. The place to commission the build, and to see how we describe the development work, remains the Shopify development agency page. Read the work index, and the Eat Unique case study, if you want an example of a finished Shopify project before you brief us.
Practicalities
We work from London and take projects with teams elsewhere. The first step is a message through the contact form, or an email to hello@e-commerce.studio. Tell us the platform you are on, whether you are on Shopify Plus, and what you want changed. A URL is enough to start.
If the question is only "what does the engagement feel like", you are already in the right place. If the question is "should we hire this studio", the Shopify development agency page is the one to judge us on.
Common questions
How long does a Shopify development project take?
It depends on the theme, the integrations, and how quickly decisions and content come back. A focused theme rebuild is a different length of job from a Plus build with checkout customisation and an ERP connection. We put a programme in the scope once discovery has shown which of those you actually need. A date given before that is a guess.
Do we have to be on Shopify Plus?
Plus is the right platform when you need what it is for: checkout customisation beyond the standard editor, Markets at a serious scale, B2B, or the operational room that comes with a larger store. A smaller catalogue on standard Shopify can be the better fit. We will say which we think applies after we have seen the store. Plus is a decision, and we will treat it as one.
Can our team edit the theme after handover?
Yes. Sections are built so merchandisers can change content in the theme editor. Code-level changes, new integrations, and checkout work stay with a developer. The handover note says which is which, so your team is not guessing in the editor on a Monday morning.
What should we prepare before we speak?
The store URL, a list of the apps you rely on, the systems Shopify has to talk to, and the date that matters: a campaign, a trading peak, or a contract ending on the old platform. Product photography and final copy can follow. The decisions about range, markets, and who approves the work are worth having early.
