Stores built to
convert at scale,
not just look good.

For most brands doing under £5M GMV, a well-built Liquid theme on Shopify 2.0 is the right call. The performance ceiling is higher than most people assume, the operational overhead is lower, and the build cost is significantly less than a Hydrogen or Next.js storefront. Go headless when you have complex content requirements that Liquid cannot handle cleanly, when you need performance that Liquid genuinely cannot achieve at your product catalogue size, or when you are running multiple storefronts from a single Shopify instance. We will give you an honest read on which applies to your situation - we build both, so we have no financial interest in recommending one over the other.

The standard answer is $1M+ in annual revenue, but that misses the point. The real trigger is when you need something Shopify cannot do on standard plans: checkout customisation beyond the basics, B2B with tiered pricing, multi-store management at scale, Flow automation for complex operations, or Launchpad for high-traffic sale events. At £50K+ monthly GMV, the cost of Plus is usually recovered quickly from the operational efficiencies and conversion improvements the additional features unlock. We configure Shopify Plus for brands across that range - and we can tell you precisely which Plus features would move your specific numbers.

A straightforward migration - products, customers, orders, basic content - runs four to six weeks. The variables that extend timelines are: catalogue complexity (configurable products, custom attributes, large variant sets), the number of third-party integrations that need re-mapping, the size of the SEO redirect work required, and whether you need a new theme built simultaneously or are launching with an existing one. We scope every migration precisely before starting and have completed over forty migrations without a single significant SEO ranking loss - because we treat the redirect map as a first-class deliverable, not an afterthought.

Custom theme builds typically run between £18,000 and £55,000 depending on design complexity, number of unique templates, third-party integrations, and whether checkout extensions are in scope. Headless builds start around £45,000. CRO and optimisation engagements on existing themes start at £6,000. We scope every project before you commit - the scoping call is free, and the output is a fixed-price quote with a clear deliverable list, so you know exactly what you are paying for before we start.

Both. About a third of our Shopify engagements are custom builds from scratch. The rest are performance improvements, feature additions, and CRO work on existing themes - including Dawn, Prestige, Impulse, and various bespoke themes built by other agencies. We will be direct about whether your current theme is worth improving or whether the architecture has constraints that make a rebuild the more cost-effective path at your growth stage.

SEO is treated as a hard requirement, not a checklist item at the end. Before any migration or rebuild, we crawl and catalogue every URL on the existing site, map the full redirect structure, audit existing structured data and meta tags, and establish baseline rankings for target keywords. After launch, we validate every redirect, confirm structured data is passing, check Core Web Vitals scores, and monitor ranking movement for 30 days. We have never completed a migration where the client experienced significant ranking losses - because we build the SEO work into the project plan from day one, not bolt it on at the end.