Shopify stores, apps and conversion
A Shopify store rarely breaks. It gathers weight instead: a reviews app, a popup app, a subscriptions app and a theme that four different people have edited, each leaving a little more script on every page.
Changing platform is a good moment to clear the shelves and a poor moment to copy the old shop across line by line. The work is deciding what comes with you, what stays behind, and how the search history and the customer list survive the move.
Three minutes, twelve questions, no email needed to see or copy your result.
What we run on Shopify
Judged against your own order records, not against the app dashboard.
Where we come in
Shopify stores seldom fail loudly. They get heavier and less clear over the years. Usually it is one of these.
A migration goes wrong in a small number of well-known places. Usually it is one of these.
Every app was installed for a good reason, usually by somebody who has since moved on. A year later the monthly total is a line nobody questions, and half the list overlaps with something the theme already does.
A snippet pasted in for one campaign, a tracking tag added twice, the leftovers of an app removed in 2023. None of it is documented and all of it loads. Speed tests blame the theme. The theme is only where the history ended up.
Products disapproved in Google Merchant Centre that nobody opened, ad platforms claiming more sales than the store took, and an accountant whose figure matches neither. Until the store's own orders are the number everybody argues from, spend cannot be judged honestly.
Every product and category page that ranks today has a URL, and Shopify decides its own address patterns. A redirect map built before launch protects the search history. One built after it is an apology.
Eleven plugins become eleven apps because that is what the old site had. A move is the one moment when it is cheap to ask which of them anybody still uses, and which of them the new platform already does.
Accounts, subscription schedules and the payment methods behind them each need a plan before anything is switched over. Getting it wrong means customers who are charged twice, or not at all, in the first week.
The app stack lab
Pick the jobs you pay an app for today and describe the theme. The bar shows how much each one adds to a page, and the bill shows what it costs. The prices are illustrative bands and the weights are relative, so this is a way to argue about a stack and not a measurement of yours.
Three decisions. Each one can be changed without a rebuild.
Jobs you pay an app forTap all that apply
The theme
When you remove an app
Nothing here is stored, sent to TWV Media or used to look up your store. It runs entirely in your browser.
Price bands are illustrative and every app prices differently. Check your own invoices.
The Shopify scorecard
It scores the store as a machine: whether the numbers can be trusted, how heavy the theme and apps have become, whether the product pages and checkout do their job, and whether anybody comes back. Your answers stay in this browser.
What we actually do
You can bring us in for the whole store or the one section currently costing you money. Either way, one senior person stays responsible for it rather than a rota.
Orders, tracking, consent, tax and the reports that never agree. Until the store's own orders are the figure everybody argues from, no decision about spend can be made honestly.
Every app listed, costed and set against what it does. Keep the ones that earn their weight, replace the ones the theme or Shopify already covers, and remove the rest properly.
Clean theme code, sections the team can edit without breaking anything, and product pages that answer delivery, returns and the specifics before somebody has to ask.
Express payment above the form, only the fields fulfilment needs, and the payment methods your customers actually use. The checkout is the part of the store you rent, so the work is in what surrounds it.
Products, customers, orders and redirects moved on a written plan, with the old addresses mapped before launch and checked after it. Done properly it is the most boring week in the project.
A product feed that Google accepts, abandoned checkouts and post-purchase messages written by a person and sent by a machine, and a monthly look at what each customer is worth over a year.
Where the next pound comes from
Shopify stores are usually built to acquire. The arithmetic of keeping a customer is simpler and kinder, and it is settled with five numbers you already have. It will sometimes tell you that your first orders lose money, which is worth knowing before the next ad budget is agreed.
Five more points is counted as one extra order per returning customer, which is deliberately cautious. In gross profit those orders are worth £0 a year and cost no acquisition spend. The right-hand figure is what it would cost to buy the same number of customers at your own acquisition cost.
An acquired customer is rented until they buy twice. After that, the store owns them a little more each month.
How it runs
Every stage produces something you own and could hand to somebody else. Nothing is held hostage and there is no long contract behind it.
Orders, tracking, consent and the product feed reconciled against your own records, so the next three stages can be judged and not simply believed.
Every app and every edit to the theme listed, costed and judged. This is usually the cheapest speed gain on the store and needs no new design.
Product pages, collections and checkout, in that order, because the decision is made on the page before the payment.
Recovery for the ones who nearly bought, lifecycle for the ones who did, and a monthly review that starts at gross profit.
For a store that is getting traffic and not enough orders, or has become slow and nobody knows why.
We fix what is worth fixing and rebuild only the parts that cannot be saved, or move the shop across on a written plan.
For stores that want the thing run with them, without hiring an ecommerce team.
Before you ask
It depends on how much of your business is unusual. Shopify suits a store that would rather rent the maintenance: hosting, security and the checkout are somebody else's problem. WooCommerce suits a store that needs control, with odd products, complex shipping or a lot of content around the shop. We have a separate page on WooCommerce and will tell you honestly which way yours points, including when the answer is to stay where you are.
Sometimes, and often it is not. A move earns its cost when the current platform is costing you time every week, when maintenance is falling on one person, or when the shop has outgrown what it was built to do. It does not earn it because the new platform looks tidier. We will price the move and the staying put side by side before anybody commits.
By treating the redirects as the main deliverable. Every address that ranks or earns links is mapped to its new home before launch, titles and descriptions are carried across, and the live store is crawled after launch to catch whatever the plan missed. Shopify sets its own patterns for product and collection addresses, so some will change, which is the reason the map has to be right.
Many of them add scripts and styles to every page whether or not that page needs them, and the cost accumulates. Some are light and some are heavy, and the only honest answer comes from measuring your own store with and without each one. Removing an app also does not always remove its code, which is why the lab above has a question about it.
The one whose flows the team will actually maintain. Shopify's own email tool, Klaviyo, Brevo and others can all send the messages that matter, and the difference is mostly in segmentation, price at your list size and who has to learn it. We run our own list on Brevo, and the email and lifecycle page covers what to build whichever you choose.
Most stores do not. Plus tends to matter when you need more control over the checkout than the standard plans allow, several storefronts, or automation at a scale that justifies the price. We will say so plainly if you do, and say so just as plainly if you do not. Plans and prices change, so check the current ones before deciding.
Yes, and the work usually starts in the product data and not in the feed settings. Titles, identifiers, categories and images are what Google reads, and a store with clean data and a clear feed gives paid search something to work with. We look at disapprovals first because they are lost sales nobody has noticed.
Whichever costs you less over the next two years. A maintained theme with a few sound edits is worth keeping. A theme that has been patched by several people is usually cheaper to replace than to understand, and we will show you what we found before suggesting it.
No. The app stack lab, scorecard and repeat purchase sums run in your browser. Nothing is sent to us, nothing looks up your store, and everything disappears when the tab closes. If you copy your score, that copy goes to your own clipboard. Our privacy notice covers the rest of the site.
Platform, app and plan specifics on this page were last reviewed in October 2026. Shopify and its app ecosystem change often, so if something here no longer matches what you are seeing, tell us and we will correct it.
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Send us your store address before the call and we will have put something in a basket, walked the checkout on a phone and looked at what the pages load. You get the first thing we would change and why, whether or not you ever hire us.
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