Shipshape

How we work

How this goes.

You would be handing the thing that pays your wages to people you have not met. Written out properly, that decision gets a lot smaller.

Week one

The first week costs you nothing.

Day 1–2

We go through the store

Theme code, the app list, page weight, checkout, analytics and consent. Read by a person, not a scanner.

Day 3

You get it in writing

What is slow, what is duplicated, what you pay for twice, and what we would deal with first.

Day 4–5

A scope and a number

One number against one written scope, and a date. Take it elsewhere if you want; the write-up is yours.

What you own

You own all of it.

Theme repository, every app account in your name, the domain, the analytics, and a written record of why each app is there. Replace us next month and nothing stops working, and nobody has to reverse-engineer what we did.

What it costs

How we quote.

We will talk about budget on the first call, because pretending otherwise wastes both our time. What we will not do is put a number on the internet that has nothing to do with your store.

01

One number

A single figure against a written scope, not a day rate with a range attached and a shrug.

02

After we have looked

We quote once we have been through the store, not off a brief. Guesses made from a brief are how projects end up in dispute.

03

No hourly billing

Billing by the hour means you pay for our learning curve and we get paid more for taking longer.

04

Month to month after

Ongoing work is flat monthly and ends whenever you want it to. No twelve-month minimum.

What we will not do

Six things, in writing.

  • Install an app to do a job your theme should be doing. It is a monthly fee for weight you did not need.
  • Put a chatbot on a store that has nobody to answer it.
  • Bill you for an app you do not need so the stack looks thorough.
  • Quote a migration without reading the current store first.
  • Hold your theme repo, domain or app accounts. They are in your name from day one.
  • Promise a conversion-rate number. Anyone who does is guessing with your money.

Questions

Questions we get asked.

Starting with the one about having no case studies, since you were going to ask anyway.

You have no case studies. Why would we hire you?

Because we would rather you judged the reasoning than a logo wall. Shipshape is new, and that is just true. What we can show you is how we think: the stack page lists every app we build with, what it costs, and which ones we will not touch. Read it and you will know more about how we would treat your store than most case studies would tell you. It is also why the first projects are priced lower than they will be. You are taking a risk, and we would rather price that honestly than pretend it is not there.

How long does a build take?

Six to eight weeks for a straightforward store. Ten to fourteen if there is order history, subscriptions or several markets to move. You get the date with the quote, and if it starts slipping you hear about it that week, not on the deadline.

What does it cost?

It depends on the store, which is a boring answer, so here is the useful part: you get one fixed number against a written scope, and you get it after we have spent a week actually in your store rather than guessing from a brief. No hourly billing. If something is genuinely hard to price we will say so instead of padding the number and hoping.

Can you work with our developer or in-house team?

Usually the better setup, yes. Plenty of brands have someone who knows the store inside out and needs help with one specific piece. We scope around that person rather than around replacing them.

Who owns the work?

You do, from the first day. The theme repository, every app account in your name, the domain, the analytics. Swap us out next month and nothing stops working.

Do you do ads, SEO and social?

No. We build stores and keep them running. We work alongside whoever handles your marketing, and we will tell you when something you have been treating as a traffic problem is really a store problem.

Do we need Shopify Plus?

Probably not as soon as you have been told. Plus starts paying for itself at real volume, or when you need checkout customisation, B2B, or several storefronts. We will flag it when you are getting close.

What if we want to leave?

You take everything with you. No notice period beyond the month you are in, no code we keep hold of, no accounts in our name. Lock-in is a way of keeping clients who would otherwise go.