Shopify agency, build to management
We design the store, write the theme, set up every product and setting, launch it, then manage it every month after. Bespoke themes, bespoke products, Shopify Plus, migrations and the boring configuration, all handled by Ikaroa.
Ikaroa is a Shopify agency that builds stores from a blank theme, migrates stores from other platforms, configures every setting a store needs to trade, and manages the store month to month once it is live. One team covers design, Liquid and Hydrogen development, Shopify Plus, apps and integrations, product data, SEO and email.
Some agencies only design. Some only code. Some only run ads. The trouble starts in the gaps between them, when the person changing the product page has never seen the campaign it is meant to support. We keep the whole store with one team, so nothing falls between desks.
Everything Shopify
Ten services, one team. Pick one, or hand us the whole store.
From an empty Shopify account to a store taking orders. Brand, design, theme, products, payments, shipping, tax, domains, email, analytics. You get keys to a store that is ready to trade, not a theme file and a good luck note.
Hand-written Liquid on Online Store 2.0, built around your products rather than bent from a template. Every section is editable in the theme editor, so your team changes the homepage on a Tuesday without calling us.
Made-to-order, engraved, bundled, built from parts. We model the product properly with variants, metafields and metaobjects, then build the configurator the customer actually uses to choose it.
The settings nobody enjoys and everybody needs. Payments, taxes, duties, shipping profiles, Markets, staff permissions, notifications, policies, domains. Set once, set correctly, documented so the next person knows why.
A Shopify team on a monthly retainer. Product uploads, promotions, seasonal campaigns, theme changes, app reviews, speed work and bug fixes, handled by people who already know your store.
Expansion stores, B2B price lists, checkout UI extensions, Shopify Functions, Flow automations and launch scheduling. We build for Plus when the volume justifies it, and tell you plainly when it does not.
Shopify as the commerce engine, a React storefront on Hydrogen or Next.js in front. Right for content-heavy brands, unusual UX and stores where speed is the product. Wrong for most stores, and we will say so.
WooCommerce, Magento, BigCommerce, Wix, Squarespace, PrestaShop or a custom build. Products, customers, orders, gift cards, reviews and every old URL redirected, so the move keeps the rankings you already earned.
When no app on the App Store does the job, we write one. ERP and stock sync, 3PL and warehouse feeds, CRM, loyalty, marketplaces, POS. Custom apps, theme app extensions and Shopify Functions, all on the current APIs.
Structured data on every product, clean collection architecture, fast templates. Then the work that pays back: product page testing, Klaviyo flows, reviews, subscriptions and post-purchase offers.
Bespoke Shopify themes
A template is someone else's idea of your store. We write themes from a clean Online Store 2.0 base, with sections and blocks shaped around what you sell: size guides pulled from metafields, made-to-order badges, lookbooks, ingredient tables, whatever your products need.
Everything stays editable in the Shopify theme editor. The code lives in GitHub, ships through the Shopify CLI, and gets a Lighthouse check before every release.
Below: a real section, as it renders. Tap a size.
1{%- comment -%} sections/product-hero.liquid {%- endcomment -%}2<div class="product-hero">3 {{ product.featured_media | image_url: width: 1200 | image_tag }}4 <h1>{{ product.title }}</h1>5 <p class="price">{{ product.price | money }}</p>6 {%- for value in product.options_with_values[0].values -%}7 <label class="swatch">{{ value }}</label>8 {%- endfor -%}9 {%- if product.metafields.custom.made_to_order -%}10 <span class="badge">Made to order, 3 weeks</span>11 {%- endif -%}12 {% form "product", product %}<button>Add to bag</button>{% endform %}13</div>
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Configurators, engraving, bundles and made-to-measure options modelled with variants, metafields and line item properties, so every order reaches the warehouse complete.
Ingredients, designers, stockists, care guides. Structured once, reused on every product and page, and edited without touching code.
No page builders, no jQuery, responsive images through Shopify’s CDN, and apps loaded only on the templates that use them.
Start your Shopify project
New build, rebuild, migration or a team to run it. A Shopify lead reads every brief and replies within one working day with a recommended approach and a price bracket. No sales script.
Shopify configuration
Wrong tax settings cost money quietly for months. A shipping profile set up badly charges Dubai customers London rates. We configure every part of the admin, write down why, and test it with real orders.
Already trading? We audit an existing store against the same list and fix what is wrong, usually within a fortnight.
Shopify store management
Launch day is the start. After it come new products, sales, broken apps, platform changes and the steady work of making the store better. A management plan puts all of it with a named Shopify lead who already knows your store.
Monthly report: sales, speed, search terms
Fix the Klarna badge on mobile
New collection page for the gift edit
Add a gift message field at checkout
Size guide metafield on every jacket
Upload 40 new SKUs for the autumn drop
Black Friday banner and automatic discount
Replace the slow reviews app
New products, price changes, collection sorting, imagery swaps and stock housekeeping.
Discounts, banners, landing pages and email for every sale on your calendar.
New sections, layout tweaks and fixes in Liquid, tested on a duplicate theme before they go live.
A quarterly audit of every installed app. What it costs, what it adds to page weight, whether you still need it.
Core Web Vitals, broken links, 404s, image weight and script bloat, watched every month.
Shopify ships changes every quarter. We read the changelog so you do not have to, and act on what matters.
Migrations to Shopify
Most failed migrations fail on redirects. We map every old URL before launch, rehearse the data move on a copy of the store, then switch on a weekday morning with Search Console open.
Theme, bespoke or headless
We build all three, so we have no reason to push one. This is the table we walk clients through on the first call.
| Â | Premium theme, customised | Bespoke Liquid theme | Headless with Hydrogen |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | New stores, small catalogues, tight launch dates | Established brands, unusual products, stores where design sells | Content-led brands, custom experiences, in-house React teams |
| Typical launch | Four to six weeks | Eight to ten weeks | Twelve weeks and up |
| Team edits pages | Yes, theme editor | Yes, theme editor with your own sections | Through a headless CMS |
| Works with Shopify apps | Almost all | Almost all | Only those with an API, many need rebuilding |
| Running cost | Lowest | Low, no extra hosting | Highest, separate hosting and more maintenance |
| Our usual advice | Start here if you are launching | Where most growing brands end up | Only with a clear reason |
How a Shopify build runs
A typical bespoke build. Smaller stores move faster, Plus builds with integrations take longer. You get dated milestones after the first week.
We read your analytics, your catalogue and your competitors. Then we write down what the store has to do, in order of how much money each thing is worth.
Product types, variants, metafields, collections and navigation, planned before a pixel is drawn. Bad product data is the reason most themes end up hacked.
Mobile layouts first for home, collection, product, cart and checkout, using your real products and prices. Two rounds of feedback, then a clickable prototype.
Liquid sections, blocks and templates on a development theme, with a preview link from the first week of build. Version-controlled in GitHub, deployed through the Shopify CLI.
Payments, shipping, tax, Markets, apps and integrations switched on. Products imported or migrated, redirects mapped, notification emails rewritten.
Real test orders on every payment method, on real phones. Speed and accessibility checks. We launch on a weekday morning, never a Friday, and stay on watch for the first week.
The store moves onto a monthly management plan with the same team. Changes, campaigns, reports and the next round of improvements.
Shopify FAQ
Straight answers on builds, themes, management, configuration, migrations, Plus and cost.
Yes. We take a store from an empty Shopify account to taking orders: brand and design, a bespoke theme, product setup, payments, shipping, tax, domains, apps, analytics and launch. Nothing is left for you to configure afterwards unless you want to.
A focused store on a bespoke theme usually takes eight to ten weeks from first call to launch. A smaller catalogue on a lightly customised theme can launch in four to six. Shopify Plus builds with integrations, B2B or several markets run longer, typically twelve to sixteen weeks. You get a dated plan after the first week.
Access to your current store or analytics if you have them, your product list in any format, brand assets, and one person who can make decisions. We handle the rest, including writing the product data structure and chasing the details you did not know you needed.
We can. Ikaroa has copywriters and an in-house production team for product photography and video. Many clients supply their own and ask us to edit, resize and optimise it for the store, which we also do.
You do. The Shopify account is in your name, billed to you, and the theme code is yours. We work as a collaborator on your store, and the code lives in a GitHub repository you can take with you.
A theme written for your store rather than bought from the Theme Store and adjusted. We build it in Liquid on Online Store 2.0, with sections and blocks designed around your products, so the layout fits your catalogue and your team can still edit every page in the theme editor.
If you are launching with a small catalogue and a tight budget, a good premium theme with careful customisation is the right call, and we will tell you so. Bespoke pays off when your products need layouts no theme offers, when speed matters to conversion, or when your brand would look like every other store on a template.
Yes. We often start with an audit of the current theme, fix what is slow or broken, and add new sections. If the theme has been hacked by several developers over the years, a rebuild is sometimes cheaper than more patches, and we will show you the reasoning.
Yes. Engraving, monograms, made-to-measure sizing, build-your-own bundles, and products assembled from parts with a live preview. We model the options with variants, metafields and line item properties so orders arrive with every detail the warehouse needs.
That is the point of how we build. Every section is editable in the Shopify theme editor, product content comes from metafields your team fills in, and we hand over a short guide and a recorded walkthrough of your own store.
A monthly retainer with a named Shopify lead. It covers product uploads and merchandising, promotions and seasonal campaigns, theme changes, app audits, speed monitoring, bug fixes, Shopify platform updates and a monthly report. The scope is set with you before the plan starts.
Yes. We start with an audit of the theme, apps, settings and data so we know what we are taking on, fix anything urgent, and then move into the monthly rhythm. About the first two weeks are spent learning the store.
Through one shared board and a direct line to your Shopify lead. Every request gets a ticket, an estimate if it needs one, and a link to preview the change before it goes live. Theme changes are tested on a duplicate theme first.
Yes. Ikaroa runs Klaviyo flows and campaigns, SEO, paid social and search for ecommerce brands. Keeping the store and the marketing with one team means the person changing the product page knows what the ads are promising.
Management plans run month to month after an initial term agreed at the start. Your store, theme code and data stay yours whatever happens, and we hand over cleanly if you move on.
Payments and wallets, taxes and duties, shipping profiles and rates, local delivery and pickup, Shopify Markets for currencies and languages, staff permissions, notification emails, policies, domains, customer accounts, analytics through Customer Events, and Shopify Flow automations.
Shopify Payments where it is available, plus Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay and buy now pay later options. In regions where Shopify Payments is not offered, we connect a third-party gateway such as Stripe, Checkout.com, Tabby or Tamara depending on your market.
Yes. We connect Shopify to ERPs, 3PLs, PIMs, CRMs, marketplaces and POS systems, using an existing connector where a good one exists and a custom app where it does not. Stock, orders, customers and prices stay in sync without spreadsheets in between.
Yes. Custom apps for a single store, theme app extensions, checkout UI extensions and Shopify Functions for discount, delivery and payment logic. We build on current Shopify APIs, so nothing depends on features Shopify is retiring.
This is one of the most common jobs we take on. We list every app, what it costs each month and what scripts it loads, then remove, replace or rebuild the ones that are not earning their place. The theme often gets noticeably faster from that alone.
Yes. We map every product, collection, page and blog URL from the old platform to the new one and set 301 redirects before launch. Page titles, meta descriptions and structured data move across, and we watch Search Console daily for the first weeks after the switch.
WooCommerce, Magento and Adobe Commerce, BigCommerce, Wix, Squarespace, PrestaShop, OpenCart and custom builds. We move products, variants, customers, order history, gift cards, reviews and content, and run a rehearsal migration before the real one.
Not always. Plus makes sense when you need checkout customisation through extensions, B2B wholesale, separate expansion stores per market, higher API limits or advanced automation. Many stores trade well on Advanced. We look at your volume and needs and give you a straight answer.
Yes, within what Shopify allows. Checkout branding is available on every plan. Shopify Plus stores can add checkout UI extensions for custom fields, upsells, delivery instructions and trust content, and use Shopify Functions for payment and delivery rules. The old checkout.liquid file is retired, so all of this is built on Checkout Extensibility.
Only if there is a clear reason: a content-led brand that needs a full CMS, an experience a theme cannot deliver, or a team that wants React. Headless adds hosting, maintenance and cost. For most stores a well-built Liquid theme is faster to launch and cheaper to run.
Yes. We configure Shopify Markets with local currencies, languages, domains or subfolders, price rules and duties at checkout, then add hreflang so search engines show the right version in each country. Plus stores can run separate expansion stores where a market needs its own catalogue.
It depends on the catalogue, the design, the integrations and how many markets you sell in, so we quote after a short scoping call rather than from a price list. Send the brief on this page with a rough budget and we reply with a scoped recommendation and a price.
Ikaroa has offices in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, London, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Jakarta and builds Shopify stores for brands in the United Kingdom, the UAE and the wider GCC, Europe, the United States and Asia Pacific. Calls are booked in your time zone.
A Shopify lead reads the brief and replies within one working day. You get questions that matter, a recommended approach, and a proposed next step, usually a 30-minute call to walk through your store.
A new store, a better theme, a cleaner admin or a team to run it. Send the brief and a Shopify lead replies within one working day.
Start your Shopify brief