Which platform should we be on?

It depends on your catalog size, your pricing model and how much of the checkout you need to control. BigCommerce handles large catalogs and B2B well on a hosted plan. Shopify has the strongest app ecosystem and the smoothest operations, particularly for DTC. Headless is right when the platform itself has become the constraint. We work on all three, which means the recommendation isn't shaped by what we happen to sell. Most first calls end with a platform recommendation and a rough number.

Do you work with our existing store, or only new builds?

Both, and most of our work is existing stores. That includes inheriting builds from other agencies, which usually starts with an audit so we can tell you what you actually have before anyone proposes changes.

What size merchant do you usually work with?

Established stores with real revenue and a real catalog — typically somewhere between a few hundred SKUs and tens of thousands. Below that, the work we do is usually more than the situation calls for, and we will say so.

Can you handle marketing as well as the build?

Yes. SEO, email, paid and conversion work, either alongside a build or on its own. It is frequently the higher-leverage half: a faster site does not fix a demand problem, and we would rather tell you that before the rebuild than after it.

How do engagements usually start?

With a call and, where it helps, an audit. We would rather spend the first week establishing what is actually wrong than writing a proposal against the symptom you arrived with. Sometimes the answer is much smaller than the project you came to discuss.

Ecommerce Design & Development

Build & Grow
Your Ecommerce Store

Design, development, migrations, apps and marketing —
across BigCommerce, Shopify and headless.

Schedule Your Call

We have been building ecommerce stores since 2010, which is long enough to have seen most problems twice. We work across three platforms, we build our own apps and our own commerce backend, and we do the marketing too — which means when you describe a problem, the answer isn’t shaped by the one thing we happen to sell.

Most engagements start with establishing what is actually wrong. That sounds obvious. It is also the step most often skipped, and it is why stores get rebuilt when they had a merchandising problem, or migrated when they had a performance problem that a migration carried straight across.

Three platforms, one recommendation

We are platform-agnostic in the only way that counts: we make a living on all three, so we have no reason to push you toward any of them.

BigCommerce

We have been building on BigCommerce since 2010 and we’re one of the longest-running agencies on the platform. It handles large catalogs and B2B well, the API is genuinely good, and the hosted economics are favorable. We build storefronts, custom Page Builder widgets, and published marketplace apps.

More on BigCommerce development, apps and widgets, and BigCommerce SEO.

Shopify

The strongest app ecosystem and the smoothest day-to-day operations, especially for DTC brands selling across multiple channels. We build custom themes, work in Liquid and Hydrogen, and untangle the app sprawl that accumulates on stores that have been running a few years.

Headless

When the platform itself is the constraint — catalog scale, B2B pricing rules, a checkout that needs to do something hosted checkouts won’t — we build headless storefronts on Next.js, backed by Throttle, the commerce platform we build and run ourselves. Four in production.

More on headless commerce and the platform behind it.

What we do

Design and development

Custom storefronts built to convert, not just to look current. Modula Racks grew revenue 720%. BuyPlastic grew sales 800%. Baby Cubby lifted conversion 110% after we rebuilt the homepage and overhauled the product pages. RV Gear Pro hit its sales goal in two months from a standing start.

See the full portfolio for the rest.

Migrations

Platform moves where the point is arriving with your rankings intact. The redirect map gets built from live crawl data before storefront work begins, because old sitemaps are incomplete and the URLs missing from them are usually the ones with links pointing at them.

Ecommerce migration guide → · BigCommerce to Shopify → · Shopify to BigCommerce → · WooCommerce to Shopify →

Apps and extensions

We publish our own apps rather than only consuming other people’s — Epic Page Builder Widgets, Epic Modal Login, Epic Fraud Prevention with MaxMind, MiniPIM, and Parts & Accessories. We have also built Throttle extensions for Klaviyo and ShipStation, including the durable event pipeline behind them.

That matters for one reason: when your requirement needs an integration that doesn’t exist, building it is ordinary work rather than a special project.

Marketing

SEO, email, paid and conversion optimization. Often the higher-leverage half of the engagement, and occasionally the argument against the rebuild you came to discuss.

Marketing services → · SEO services →

Ongoing support

Retained development for stores that need continuous work rather than a project with an end date — new features, seasonal campaigns, performance monitoring, dependency upgrades before they become forced migrations.

How we work

Senior people, start to finish. The person who scopes your project is the person who builds it. Nothing is handed to a junior after the proposal is signed.

We’ll tell you when you don’t need us. We turn down rebuilds regularly, usually because the store converts fine and the real problem is demand, or because a theme refresh gets there for a fraction of the money. A project we talk you out of costs us once; one we shouldn’t have taken costs us a reference.

You own everything. Repositories in your GitHub organization, infrastructure in your accounts, documentation written for a developer who has never seen the project. No proprietary wrapper, no exit fee.

We run our own stores. We have used these platforms as merchants, not just as contractors, which is a different kind of knowledge than reading the docs.

Start with a conversation

Tell us what’s actually going on. If there’s a cheaper answer than the one you came for, we’ll say so.