Having an online shop built: Shopify in the background, your own frontend up front

We build online shops on Shopify with a custom, freely coded frontend. Shopify takes care of what it is good at – products, inventory, orders, payments and checkout. Everything your customers see we develop as a separate application that gets its data through Shopify's Storefront API. That way you do not pay for another app every month for filters, bundles or a second language, and your shop does not look like many others with the same theme.

Shopify agency from Unnau: what you get from us

DigifyNow is an official Shopify Partner. We set up your shop through our partner account, configure payment methods, shipping rules and tax rates and hand it over to you completely; from the handover, the contract and the invoices at Shopify are in your name. Through the same access we also build custom Shopify apps when the standard is not enough. We take over existing shops as well: clean them up, review the app list, keep looking after them. Which other systems we use and where we are partners is stated openly on the page system recommendations.

What specialists call “headless Shopify” is exactly this setup: Shopify without a visible theme, with a separate storefront in front of it. It pays off when the product range, product logic or several languages go beyond what a theme with a few apps can handle cleanly. For everything else we recommend the theme, see below.

What the agency takes on and what stays with Shopify

As a rule, we split the work like this:

• Storefront: We code the home page, category and product pages, search and filters ourselves; no subscription fee is due for them afterwards.
• Product logic: Bundles, configurators, tiered prices and accessories are built in your own code instead of through individual apps.
• Multiple languages: Each language gets its own addresses and translations instead of running through an additional app.
• Checkout and payment: They stay with Shopify. We do not build a separate checkout, because fraud checks and optimisation are already included there.
• Accounting, taxes and shipping: These also stay with Shopify and the established integrations for shipping providers.
• Subscription feature: Recurring orders are possible. Because they are tied up with payment and cancellation, we check the implementation for each shop individually.

What the price depends on

Three things determine the price of a shop: the number of page types (such as home page, category, product and guides), the product logic and how much your marketing team should be able to maintain without a developer. To compare costs for an existing shop, add up the monthly app subscriptions and subtract what remains even with your own frontend; the rest is the ongoing saving. The usual range for a custom frontend and when the switch pays off is set out in our article Shopify with your own frontend: a shop without plugin subscription costs. What Shopify itself charges, i.e. the plan fee, the fee per payment and extra costs for theme, apps and domain, is broken down in Shopify pricing: plans, fees and extra costs.

The process when you have an online shop built professionally

1. Assessment: free of charge and without obligation. For an existing shop, we go through your app list in a 30-minute call and tell you what can be replaced and what should stay.
2. Scope and quote: Page types, product logic and editorial building blocks are defined; then you receive a quote for exactly this scope.
3. Build: The frontend is built as a separate application; payment still happens in the Shopify checkout.
4. Migration: If the new shop replaces an old one, every previous address gets a permanent redirect so that customers and search engines find the pages again.
5. Operation: On request, we take care of maintenance and further development through our ongoing digital support.

When a custom frontend is not worth it

In the first meeting we advise against it if one of these points applies:

• Product range: A few similar products work well with a standard theme.
• Sales channel: If you sell most of your goods through Amazon or other marketplaces, you do not need a storefront of your own.
• Responsibility: Without a person in-house who is responsible for the shop, a custom frontend quickly becomes outdated.

In these cases, a good Shopify theme with a few selected apps is the more economical choice. Keep in mind, too: with your own frontend the theme editor goes away, and some marketing apps require a standard theme.

If it is not yet clear whether Shopify is the right system at all, a comparison with the best-known alternative helps: what WooCommerce and Shopify each cost, who each system suits and what goes wrong when switching between the two is described in our article WooCommerce vs Shopify: criteria for small businesses.