Ecommerce & retail engineering
WooCommerce and Shopify builds where speed, search and technical SEO are engineering work, not a plugin.
What Ecommerce & Retail actually demands.
Commerce is an unforgiving place to run a website. The traffic is paid for, the intent is fragile, the catalog changes under you every week, and every problem shows up as a number someone in the business is already watching. A theme that looks fine in a design review can still lose people between collection and cart — because of a render-blocking app script, a search box that can't find a product by its own SKU, or a checkout step nobody could edit.
Most of what we're asked to fix is inherited: a Shopify theme forked and re-forked by successive agencies, a WooCommerce install carrying a stack of plugins for a handful of features, a redesign that shipped without a redirect map. We work on both platforms — Liquid theme engineering, sections and metafields, SearchSpring, Checkout Extensibility on Shopify; custom themes, plugins and product data work on WooCommerce — and we start with an audit rather than a rebuild pitch, because the honest answer is often smaller than a replatform.
Performance is the feature. 90+ PageSpeed, Core Web Vitals and query-level optimization are part of delivery here, not an afterthought or a line item — as is schema, technical SEO and a migration plan that treats your rankings as an asset. Where AI earns its place, it goes in too: product content scoring, search relevance, support agents, behind a secure proxy layer with the token cost bounded.
What we build here.
WooCommerce & Shopify performance and search.
Shopify theme & checkout engineering
Liquid theme work done properly — sections, blocks and settings a merchandiser can actually use, without a new agency ticket for every campaign. Metafields model the product data your catalog really has, and Checkout Extensibility replaces the workarounds you inherited. We take over existing themes as readily as we build new ones.
- Custom and forked Liquid themes, sections and app blocks
- Metafields and metaobjects for specs, bundles and content
- Checkout Extensibility — UI extensions and Functions
- App audit: what earns its script tag, what doesn't
WooCommerce & WordPress builds
A decade of WordPress engineering applied to stores: custom themes, custom plugins, and the product, pricing and shipping logic that WooCommerce leaves to you. Page-builder sites included — we make them fast rather than telling you to throw them away.
- Custom WooCommerce themes and child themes
- Custom plugins instead of five off-the-shelf ones
- Product, variation and pricing logic that fits the business
- Query-level optimization on large catalogs
Search, filtering & merchandising
Catalog search is where most stores quietly leak intent. We wire SearchSpring or structured metafield-driven filtering so people can find products by the attributes they think in — size, spec, compatibility, use case — and so merchandisers can control results without a deploy. Where a guided finder beats a filter bar, we build the finder.
- SearchSpring implementation, tuning and merchandising rules
- Faceted navigation with clean, crawl-safe URLs
- Guided product finders for technical or fitment-driven catalogs
- AI where it earns its place — relevance, product content scoring
Performance & Core Web Vitals
We audit first: what's actually blocking render, which apps are paying rent, where LCP and INP are lost on the templates that matter. Then we do the unglamorous work — script deferral, image and font strategy, critical CSS, caching, database queries — and put the vitals on a dashboard so the number doesn't quietly rot after launch.
- 90+ PageSpeed on key templates as a delivery target
- LCP, CLS and INP on collection, product and cart
- Third-party and app script budget, enforced
- Vitals dashboard and a monitoring handoff
Technical SEO, schema & migrations
Product, breadcrumb, review and FAQ schema written to match what's on the page. Crawl paths, canonicals and pagination decided rather than defaulted. When you replatform or redesign, we build the redirect map and the URL plan before anything ships, then watch the crawl and index data afterwards — migrations are where rankings are lost, and it is almost always avoidable.
- Structured data and schema across product and collection
- Crawl budget, canonicals, faceted URL and pagination strategy
- Redirect maps and staged cutover for replatforms
- Post-launch index and vitals monitoring
Work we've shipped in this space.
Real engagements, picked because they were hard.
How we'd engage.
Web & CMS
A decade of WordPress, Shopify and HubSpot engineering. Performance is the feature.
AI Development & Integration
Practical, production-grade AI built into real products — not thin wrappers.
Ecommerce & Retail, answered.
On the templates that sell, usually — it's a standing delivery target here, not a separate project. We audit first and say what's achievable given your apps and theme. Some of the score is bought back by removing an app, not by writing code.
Most of our commerce work starts that way. The audit covers Liquid or theme structure, app script budget, CSS, accessibility and query load, and comes back as a prioritized plan rather than a rebuild pitch. The honest answer is often smaller than a replatform.
Not if it's engineered. Redirect map, URL and canonical plan, schema parity and a staged cutover are written before anything ships, then we watch crawl and index data afterwards. Rankings are lost in migrations that treat SEO as a launch-week task.
Usually yes. SearchSpring or metafield-driven faceted filtering sits on top of the store you already run, tuned so buyers search by the attributes they think in — size, spec, compatibility. Where a guided finder beats a filter bar, we build the finder instead.
Fixed-scope project, dedicated engineers monthly, or a retainer for continuous speed and SEO work. We scope after the audit and recommend the smallest version that solves it. Senior engineers do the build, and the code and IP are yours with no lock-in.
Related.
Building in Ecommerce & Retail?
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