Shopify, built or untangled.
A new store set up right from the start, or work on the one you've got when it nearly does what you want but not quite.
I'm in Bridgend, working with independent shops across South Wales and remotely UK-wide.
Where people usually get stuck
Shopify makes the first ninety percent easy and the last ten percent a pain. You can get a store looking respectable in an afternoon, then spend three weeks on the shipping rates being wrong for one postcode, or the theme not showing the thing you need it to show.
That last ten percent is where I'm useful. It's also the part that sits unfinished for months, it's nobody's job and it isn't broken enough to force the issue.
What I can take on
Most jobs are one of these three, plenty are a bit of all of them.
A new store
Setup from scratch: theme, products, payments, shipping, checkout. The settings that catch people out get done before you launch rather than after your first order goes wrong.
The store you already have
Somebody set it up, it mostly works, and three things about it annoy you. That's the usual starting point and it's normally a smaller job than people expect.
The fiddly bits
Theme edits Shopify won't let you make from the admin, apps that need wiring together, and the parts of checkout you're allowed to change and the parts you aren't.
You run the shop afterwards
The point of Shopify is that the day to day is yours. Products, prices, stock and orders all happen in the admin without me. I'll show you where things live and where the settings you'll want to change are hiding.
Order confirmations and shipping notifications are email, so they land in spam like anything else. Customers saying they never got a confirmation is usually a deliverability problem rather than a Shopify one.
Questions people ask first
Do I need Shopify, or would a normal website do?
Selling more than a handful of things, or wanting stock and orders handled for you, Shopify earns its keep. Sell one or two things occasionally and it's more than you need, a plain site will do.
Will I be able to add products myself?
Yes. That's the main difference from the static sites I usually build. Shopify has an admin you log into, and adding products, changing prices and dealing with orders is your job rather than mine.
Can you work on a store somebody else built?
Usually. Tell me which theme it uses and what's bothering you. If the theme has been hacked about a lot I'll tell you whether it's better to keep patching it or start from a clean one.
What about all the apps?
Most stores end up paying monthly for apps they don't use. I'll go through what's installed and what each one does, then you decide what to keep.
Tell me what your shop needs.
Send me the store address and what's annoying you about it. If it's a ten minute fix I'll say so rather than dress it up into a project. I aim to reply within a working day.