Theme audit
What your current theme can and cannot do, which apps are duplicating theme features, and what breaks on the next update.
Most customisation work hard-codes your store into a corner. Every future change needs a developer, and the theme can never be updated again. We build so your team can edit content without touching code, and so the theme survives its next version.
Theme customisation is changing an existing Shopify theme rather than building one from scratch. Dawn, Prestige, Impulse, whatever you are running now, extended to do what your store actually needs.
The difference between customisation and full Shopify theme development is cost, risk, and time. A rebuild is 8 to 10 weeks, and everything is your responsibility afterwards. Customisation is 2 to 4 weeks, and you keep the theme's own update path, provided the work is done properly. That last part is where most agencies fail. Hard-code a section, and you have saved a week now and lost the ability to update the theme forever. The job is to add what you need without welding the doors shut.
What your current theme can and cannot do, which apps are duplicating theme features, and what breaks on the next update.
New sections built as proper Online Store 2.0 blocks with schema settings, not hard-coded markup.
Features currently handled by apps rebuilt in theme code where it makes sense.
Changes kept in snippets and sections rather than scattered through core files, documented so the next person can read it.
Every build is handed over with documentation and a Loom walkthrough for your team.
An app takes ten minutes to install and solves the problem today. It also adds JavaScript on every page load, a monthly fee forever, and a conflict risk with the next app you install.
Do that five times, and your store is slow, expensive, and fragile, and nobody can point to which app caused it. What most stores do instead of fixing this: install an app for each missing feature, accept the page weight as unavoidable, hard-code the fix into the template, and stop updating the theme because it might break. What we do instead: build it into the theme if it takes under 8 hours, audit the stack and remove what the theme can do natively, build it as an editable section so your team owns it, and keep changes in snippets so updates stay possible.
FavoriteBikes replaced app functionality with theme code, and conversions rose 18%. Fewer scripts, faster pages, and the store stopped paying for features the theme could handle on its own.
Webrex operates nine apps on the Shopify App Store with over 300,000 merchants between them. That gives us an unusual position on this page: we sell apps, and we will still tell you to remove one.
The rule we use: if a feature can be built in Liquid in under eight hours, it should not be an app. Above that threshold, an app is usually the right answer, and sometimes it is one of ours.
View our appsWhat the theme does now, what your apps are duplicating, what is hard-coded, and what breaks on update. You get a written report either way.
Customise or rebuild, decided on evidence rather than instinct. If a rebuild is genuinely cheaper over two years, we will say so, even though it is a bigger invoice for us.
Work on a duplicate theme, never the live one. Sections built as editable blocks. You review on a preview link before anything is published.
Published, documented, with a Loom walkthrough so your team can run it. Changes kept in snippets so future updates remain possible.
Standard customisation runs 2 to 4 weeks. A full rebuild with custom architecture runs 5 to 6 weeks.
If you are in the second list, say so on the call. We will point you to the right page.