Shopify Agency UK: Expert Shopify Developers and a Development Partner

A Shopify agency designs, builds, launches and looks after Shopify stores for other businesses. In practice that is four jobs: designing the storefront, writing the theme code, wiring up payments, shipping and apps, then supporting the store once real orders arrive. FactoryJet does all four for UK brands, and hands you the code on launch day so you are never tied to us.

Yes, plenty. UK Shopify agencies range from small studios and freelance Shopify developers to large Shopify Plus partners with offices in London, Manchester and abroad. FactoryJet is one of them. The list further up this page names several others, with a note on what each says it is good at, so you can shortlist two or three and compare them on the same questions.

A Shopify Partner is a business registered in Shopify’s partner programme that builds stores, themes or apps for merchants. A Shopify development partner is the team that does that build work for you: design, theme code, apps, migrations and support. Shopify’s Partner Directory groups partners into Select, Plus, Premier and Platinum tiers based on their track record, and says partners work independently of Shopify.

FactoryJet is a registered Shopify Partner. We do not claim a Shopify Plus or Platinum tier, because we would rather you trust what you can check. The more useful test for any agency is simple: ask for live stores they built that you can open today, a speed report for each, and the name of the developer who will write your code.

There is no single best one, only the best fit for your store. A large Shopify Plus partner suits a brand running several countries and a big team. A freelance Shopify developer suits a small, well-defined job. A focused agency like FactoryJet suits a UK brand that wants senior people, a fixed scope and code ownership. Judge each on live work and how clearly they answer your questions.

Judge on evidence, not portfolio screenshots. Ask for live store URLs, a PageSpeed Insights report for each, the name of the person who writes the code, whether the theme repository is yours on launch day, and what happens in the first month after go live. An agency that cannot answer those five on one call will not answer them once your deposit has cleared.

It depends on five things: how many page templates need custom design, catalogue size and variants, the apps and systems to connect, whether you need Shopify Plus features such as B2B, and whether data is being migrated. A small theme fix is a short fixed job. A full build or migration is a larger fixed-scope project. We quote in writing after a free call, before any work starts.

There are four routes: a freelancer from a marketplace or the Shopify Partner Directory, an in-house hire, an agency, or a staff augmentation firm. A freelancer is quickest to start and hardest to replace if they go quiet. An in-house hire makes sense once you have a year of steady work. An agency gives you senior people for a project without payroll. FactoryJet gives you a named developer, not a rotating pool.

Hire a freelance Shopify developer for a small, clear job such as one new section or a bug fix. Hire an agency when the work needs design, development, testing and launch together, or when you cannot afford the project stalling if one person is ill or busy. Many UK brands use both: an agency for the build and a freelancer for small changes afterwards.

A Shopify developer builds and changes the code behind a Shopify store. That means writing Liquid, which is Shopify’s theme language, building sections your team can edit, connecting apps through Shopify’s APIs (the links that let software talk to each other), setting up checkout changes, and fixing speed problems. A good one can explain how they would make your product page load faster.

Yes. That is the most common reason UK brands contact us. We set up the Shopify account, design and build the theme, import products, set up payments, UK shipping zones and VAT, write the policy pages GOV.UK expects, connect your apps and launch. You get a walkthrough so your team can run the store day to day without calling a developer.

We scope first and quote after. The discovery call covers catalogue size, the templates you need, your apps, your shipping and tax setup, and anything custom. Then you get one written quote for the whole build, split into milestones: a deposit before design, a payment at development kick-off, and the balance at launch. No hourly billing and no surprise invoices in week four.

A custom theme on an existing store takes two to three weeks from design sign-off. A full store built from scratch, meaning theme, catalogue, payments, shipping, apps and launch, takes three to five weeks. Shopify Plus and headless Hydrogen builds run six to ten weeks depending on B2B complexity and how many storefronts you need. You get a firm date after discovery.

Figma designs for homepage, product, collection and cart on desktop and mobile, a custom Liquid theme with editable sections, catalogue and collection setup, payment providers, UK shipping zones and VAT settings, app setup styled to your theme, technical SEO, a speed audit before sign-off, and the full theme repository on launch day. Two rounds of design changes happen before any code is written.

7-day delivery covers websites and stores of up to five pages: a custom theme applied to an existing store, or a new store with core pages, payment setup and launch. It does not cover complex migrations, multi-storefront Plus builds, or catalogues running to thousands of variants, because those genuinely take longer. We confirm on the discovery call whether your project qualifies before anyone commits to a date.

For most UK product brands, yes. Shopify handles hosting, security, checkout and updates, so your money goes on selling rather than keeping servers alive. It is weaker when you need very unusual pricing logic, deep ERP control or complex B2B quoting, where Magento or a custom build can fit better. We will tell you honestly if another platform suits you, including WooCommerce.

Standard Shopify handles most UK direct-to-consumer brands well. Move to Plus when you need something only Plus gives you: custom checkout screens through Checkout Extensibility, native B2B with company accounts and payment terms, several storefronts under one admin, or heavy Shopify Flow automation. We make that call with you during discovery and put the reasoning in writing.

Headless means the storefront is rebuilt as a separate React application using Hydrogen, while Shopify keeps running stock, orders and checkout behind it. You gain faster pages and total design freedom, and you take on a second codebase to maintain. Most smaller UK brands do not need it. It earns its keep when a small gain in conversion is worth more than the extra engineering.

Yes. On Shopify Plus we set up native B2B: company accounts, named contacts per company, price lists per customer, net-30 and net-60 payment terms, VAT handling for trade accounts, and a gated trade catalogue. On standard Shopify we build a similar shape with apps for catalogue gating and customer pricing. We have built this kind of wholesale ordering for brands such as Bombay Petals.

Yes to both. Shopify offers GraphQL APIs for the admin and the storefront, so stores can connect to warehouses, ERPs, CRMs and marketplaces. When no App Store app fits your workflow, we build a private app on the Admin API using Shopify’s Polaris design system, so it looks like part of Shopify. Typical jobs: a stock sync, an order feed, or a custom pricing rule.

Yes. WooCommerce and Magento are our most common UK migrations, and we also move stores from BigCommerce, PrestaShop, Wix and Squarespace. We export products with variants, images and custom fields, then customers and order history. Every old URL gets mapped and redirected, and the full checkout is tested on a staging store before the domain moves, so there is no downtime on launch day.

They survive when the redirect work happens first. We audit your current URLs, find the product and collection pages that earn UK traffic, and build the redirect map before touching the store. Every changed URL gets a permanent 301 redirect. The new sitemap goes to Google Search Console on launch day and we watch organic traffic for thirty days to catch anything that slipped.

Shopify gives you the basics: editable titles and descriptions, a sitemap and clean hosting. It does not write your collection pages, fix duplicate variant URLs, add rich product markup properly or plan content. Every FactoryJet build includes technical SEO. Ongoing content and link work is a separate service, which our Shopify SEO team handles if you want it.

We build to Google’s published Core Web Vitals thresholds: Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint under 200 milliseconds, and Cumulative Layout Shift under 0.1. In practice that means preloading the main image, setting sizes on everything so nothing jumps, delaying scripts that are not needed yet, and removing theme code you never use. The audit runs before handover.

GOV.UK sets out what any UK online shop must show. Before an order is placed you need your business name, contact details and address, a clear description, the price including all taxes, and delivery costs and timings. You must tell customers they can cancel up to 14 days after delivery, and deliver within 30 days unless you agree otherwise. We build that into the theme and policy pages.

Not the job that matters. AI tools now write routine Liquid and draft product copy quickly, and we use them for that. What AI does not do well is decide what your product page should argue, catch the edge cases in a migration, or take responsibility when checkout breaks on a bank holiday. Expect faster, better-value builds from developers who use AI, not builds with no developer.

Yes, all of it. The complete theme repository lands in your GitHub account on launch day: every Liquid template, every section, every line of custom app code. There is no proprietary framework and no FactoryJet subscription keeping your store alive. Any Shopify developer anywhere can pick it up and carry on, which is exactly the position you want to be in.

Yes. Every project includes thirty days of post-launch support for bugs, small changes and the questions that only surface once real orders arrive. After that you can keep monthly support covering theme work, app updates, Klaviyo changes, seasonal landing pages for peak trading and regular speed checks. It is optional, you can stop any time, and you keep your code either way.

Yes. A good share of our UK work is extra capacity for teams that already have a marketer or a developer. We branch from your repository, raise pull requests your team reviews, and follow the naming and deployment habits you already use. If you run the Shopify GitHub integration with a development theme per branch, we use that rather than making you adopt our setup.

Book a free thirty minute store audit. We look at your current store or platform, tell you which pages are losing you the most sales and why, and set out what a build would involve. You leave with notes you can act on whether or not you hire us. If it is a fit, the written scope and quote follow within two working days.