Our developers work exclusively with Shopify. We have been a certified Shopify Partner and Expert since 2018, and every member of our development team works with Shopify's codebase every day. This focus means we understand the platform's architecture, its capabilities, and its constraints at a depth that generalist web developers cannot match.
We build custom themes using Shopify's Liquid templating language and Online Store 2.0 sections architecture, integrate third-party tools and APIs, customise checkouts on Shopify Plus, and migrate stores from other platforms. Our developers are proficient in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Liquid, and Ruby, and work closely with our design and SEO teams to ensure every build is fast, accessible, and optimised for search.
We offer both ad-hoc development work and ongoing retainer contracts. We are not a cheap outsourcing agency. Our pricing is transparent, our team is in-house, and our focus is on long-term client relationships built on consistent, high-quality delivery. See our Shopify packages for pricing details.
Every store we build follows Shopify's best-practice coding standards for SEO, accessibility, responsiveness, and speed. We use Online Store 2.0 architecture so your store's sections, blocks, and metafields are manageable through the theme editor without needing a developer for every content change.
That matters more than it sounds: of 265 Shopify stores we have audited, 196 were still on legacy themes that predate Online Store 2.0, and moving stores onto Online Store 2.0 themes has produced an average gain of 23 points in mobile PageSpeed.
Our development process integrates design and SEO from the start rather than treating them as separate phases. This means your store launches with clean code, fast load times, proper structured data, and a design that converts, rather than requiring post-launch fixes for problems that could have been avoided during the build.
Custom Shopify Theme Development: We build themes from scratch using Liquid, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript on the Online Store 2.0 architecture. Every theme is responsive, fast-loading, and designed to give your team full control through the Shopify theme editor.
Platform Migrations: We migrate stores from WooCommerce, Magento, Squarespace, and BigCommerce to Shopify, preserving products, customers, order history, and SEO rankings through comprehensive redirect mapping. For platform-specific migration detail, see our comparison guides: WooCommerce vs Shopify, Magento vs Shopify, Squarespace vs Shopify, BigCommerce vs Shopify. Planning a move? Our Shopify migration checklist and our guide to Shopify migration costs cover the process and the budget.
Custom User Journey Development: We build personalised user journeys aligned with your business goals, using analytics data to reduce clicks to checkout and maximise conversion rate.
Every build goes through comprehensive testing across devices, browsers, and screen sizes before launch. We test functionality, usability, page speed, and Core Web Vitals to ensure your store performs consistently for every visitor.
Our developers build with performance in mind from the first line of code: compressed images, deferred scripts, minimal render-blocking resources, and efficient Liquid code that does not slow down page loads. For more on how page speed affects Shopify stores, see our article on why Shopify's page speed test is misleading.
Launching your store is the first step. As your business grows, you need ongoing development support for new features, app integrations, theme updates, and performance improvements. Our monthly retainers give you continuous access to our development team for both reactive support (bug fixes, urgent changes) and proactive development (new functionality, conversion improvements, seasonal updates).
See our Shopify retainer packages for details on ongoing support options.
You need a Shopify developer when your store requires custom functionality beyond what the theme editor provides, when you are migrating from another platform and need data transfer, redirect mapping, and a new theme build, when app integrations are creating conflicts or performance issues, when your checkout needs customisation to support your business model, or when your store needs ongoing feature development and technical maintenance.
For merchants evaluating whether Shopify or Shopify Plus is the right plan for their business, see our Why Shopify Plus page.
To hire a Shopify web developer from our team, tell us what you need and we will reply within 24 hours. Shopify's own advice on hiring Partners is to define your budget, timeline and expected outcomes in detail first, so the quote is accurate.
We then work in your store through a collaborator account, the access route Shopify describes for Partners. You can remove it whenever you like, and it expires on its own if unused for 90 days. One off tasks are charged at our ad hoc rate, and regular work sits on a retainer from £650 a month plus VAT, billed one month in arrears.
Most store problems need a developer rather than Shopify: of the last 10 support requests from our client stores, 7 were theme, app or integration problems that Shopify Support does not handle.
As Shopify app developers, we build custom apps when no App Store app does the job, or when one would cost more each month than building your own. Typical jobs include connecting an ERP or warehouse system and automating trade orders.
Shopify's app distribution rules shape the build. A Shopify custom app installs on a single store, or on stores in the same Plus organisation, and needs no App Store review, while a public app needs Shopify's approval and can be installed by many stores. New apps can no longer be created in the Shopify admin, though existing ones keep working.
The payoff can be large: a trade portal we built for a fizzy drinks client cut the time spent keying trade orders from five hours a week to 30 minutes a month. What an app developer costs depends on scope, so we quote each app once we have seen your requirements.
Pick a time that suits you and the call is booked. No forms to chase, no obligation.




Prefer email? info@whymatters.co.uk, or call 01273 569264. We only use your details to arrange the call. See our privacy policy.
Loading the calendar…