9 guides
Shopify handles the parts of commerce that are genuinely hard to build: checkout, payments, fraud, tax, compliance. The guides here are about the layer above that, which is where most store performance problems actually live.
Two costs dominate this cluster. The first is the app stack, where a store accumulates a dozen subscriptions that each inject scripts into every page, and the monthly total is rarely written down anywhere. The second is the theme, where a design built for a demo catalogue meets a real one and starts losing to its own image handling. Both are measurable before anything is rebuilt, and several of these posts are about how to measure them properly rather than by feel.
Headless comes up constantly and deserves a straight answer: it is a real option, it is not a default, and it moves work rather than removing it. A decoupled storefront gives you control over rendering and payload, and in exchange you own more of the frontend than a theme ever asked you to. That trade is worth making for some catalogues and not for others.
For a store where the diagnosis is already done and the question is what a rebuild involves, our commerce engineering service covers the scope and the handover terms.
Published Apr 25Updated 2026-08-0810 min read
Shopify says Stocky cannot manage inventory after August 31, 2026. What to export, why suppliers require manual recreation, which APIs stop, and how to compare replacement workflows.
Published Mar 30Updated 2026-08-0811 min read
Compare a Shopify theme, headless Shopify and a fully custom commerce system across requirements, cost, performance, ownership, SEO and operational responsibility.
Published Feb 6Updated 2026-08-0810 min read
Measure Shopify Plus by route, device, release, apps, media, third parties and theme code before choosing optimization, re-theme work or headless.
Published Feb 10Updated 2026-08-0811 min read
Join route-level field performance to your funnel, build bounded opportunity scenarios, test the least disruptive remedy and separate measured outcomes from assumptions.
Published Feb 15Updated 2026-08-0714 min read
Compare Shopify themes, Hydrogen and custom Storefront API builds across requirements, integrations, SEO, analytics, ownership, testing and total cost.
Published Feb 11Updated 2026-08-0716 min read
Segment the Shopify funnel by route, device, traffic source, and field performance before attributing conversion changes to speed or choosing a rebuild.
Published Mar 19Updated 2026-08-0614 min read
Reconcile Shopify-billed charges, external subscriptions, usage, workflows, data and performance before you keep, replace or remove an app.
Published Mar 7Updated 2026-08-0217 min read
Use Shopify field reports and controlled previews to isolate media, apps, third parties, customization and theme code before choosing a rebuild.
Published May 12Updated 2026-08-0120 min read
A field-first Shopify speed optimization guide covering Core Web Vitals, PageSpeed lab diagnostics, themes, apps, images, scripts, and the decision between theme work and headless commerce.
These guides describe the decision. If you have made it and want the work scoped against your own site, the commercial terms, acceptance criteria, and exclusions are on one page.
See the commerce engineering service