The short answer Ask what they will do to your theme, who owns the code, and how they handled the checkout extensibility migration. Shopify enforced the checkout.liquid deadline on 28 August 2025 and began auto-upgrading stores in January 2026. An agency that cannot discuss that fluently has not shipped recently. What actually drives the number Shopify quotes vary.
The short answer
Ask what they will do to your theme, who owns the code, and how they handled the checkout extensibility migration. Shopify enforced the checkout.liquid deadline on 28 August 2025 and began auto-upgrading stores in January 2026. An agency that cannot discuss that fluently has not shipped recently.
What actually drives the number
Shopify quotes vary more than almost any other category, because “build a store” can mean four different jobs.
- Theme configuration versus custom front end. The Shopify Theme Store carries 800+ free and paid themes, with paid themes generally $280 to $400 one time. A well-configured theme is a five-figure job at most. A headless custom front end is a six-figure job with a permanent developer dependency.
- Migration complexity. Moving from WooCommerce or Magento means product data, URL redirects, customer accounts and order history. Redirects are where rankings are won or lost.
- App architecture. An Eightx analysis of Storeleads data across 3.59 million stores puts app spend at $50 to $300 a month under $1M in revenue and $1,000 to $3,500 between $1M and $5M. Every app an agency installs is a monthly cost and a potential speed penalty you inherit.
- Plan and processing. Shopify’s pricing runs $39 on Basic to $399 on Advanced, with Plus from $2,300 a month. An agency that recommends Plus before you are near the processing crossover is selling their own tier, not yours.
The questions to ask on the first call, and the bad answers
| Ask this | A good answer sounds like | A bad answer sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| How did you handle the checkout extensibility migration? | Named stores, what broke, how they replaced legacy scripts with checkout extensions | “Shopify handles checkout, we don’t touch it” |
| Will you build on a Theme Store theme or custom? | A recommendation tied to your revenue and team, with the tradeoff stated | “Custom, always. Themes are limiting” |
| Who owns the theme code and the repository? | “You do. Your GitHub, your store, credentials at launch” | “We maintain the code in our environment” |
| Which apps will you install, and what do they cost monthly? | A named list with monthly costs and what each replaces | A stack of a dozen apps with no cost total |
| What is your redirect plan for the migration? | A URL map, 301s, Search Console monitoring after cutover | “Shopify handles redirects automatically” |
| What conversion rate do you expect, and from what baseline? | A reference to real benchmarks and your current analytics | A percentage promise made before seeing your data |
On that last one, hold them to published numbers. A 2026 analysis of 21 Shopify stores covering $417M in revenue and 179M sessions found a median conversion rate of 2.07%, mobile at 2.29% against desktop at 3.74%, and checkout abandonment at 51.6%. Anyone promising 6% before looking at your average order value has not read the data. That same study found stores with average order values above $200 convert at a median of 0.79%.
How to tell which applies to you
Use this rule: if the agency proposes a custom front end before asking what your average order value and mobile conversion rate are, they are scoping for their invoice, not your revenue.
Below roughly $5M in revenue, most stores gain more from mobile speed, product content and checkout flow than from a bespoke front end. Those are theme-level fixes. Above that, custom work starts to pay, because a point of conversion is worth more than the development cost.
Second rule: check partner status, then check what it means. Shopify’s partner program spans a community of over 100,000 partners who collectively earned $1.3 billion in 2025, and merchants find them through the public partner directory. Directory presence proves participation, not competence. Ask for two stores they launched in the last twelve months and open them on your phone.
What we’d do
TACK™ is a Shopify Partner, founded 2009, based in Sherman Oaks with studios in Northridge, and has worked across 300+ brands and 15+ industries. Engagements start at $5,000 a month. Our position on the common decisions:
- Theme first, custom only when the math says so. A $300 theme configured properly beats a custom front end nobody on your team can edit.
- Ownership on day one. Your store, your repository, your analytics, your apps under your billing. Not ours.
- App audit before app installs. We usually remove more than we add. Duplicate apps and abandoned scripts cost money twice: in subscriptions and in storefront speed.
- Checkout and mobile before anything cosmetic. With abandonment above 50% and mobile converting well under desktop, that is where the revenue sits.
- Product pages built to be quoted. Structured data, specifications and real answers so Google Shopping and AI assistants can surface your products. That is part of how we get you found, and it feeds directly into paid media and CRO. See our capabilities.
Common mistakes
Hiring an agency that missed the checkout deadline. Shopify’s own documentation set 28 August 2025 as the cutoff for upgrading Thank You and Order Status pages away from checkout.liquid, warned that personally identifiable data would stop flowing to legacy scripts, and began automatic upgrades in January 2026 in which “all page customizations on your legacy pages will be lost.” Agencies that slept through that broke post-purchase tracking for their clients.
Letting the agency own the app billing. If apps are billed to their account and rebilled to you, leaving means reinstalling and reconfiguring every one, and you lose the historical data inside them. At $1,000 to $3,500 a month for a store past $1M, this is not a small hostage.
Buying a redesign when you needed a speed fix. A $40,000 redesign that keeps a slow, app-heavy storefront moves conversion very little. Measure mobile speed and checkout completion first. Very often the profitable project is $8,000, not $40,000.
The bottom line
The right Shopify partner recommends the cheapest architecture that hits your numbers, gives you the store, the code and the app billing, and can speak fluently about checkout extensibility. The wrong one sells custom development and a dozen apps you will be paying for in three years.
If you want a straight audit of your store and app stack before you commit to a rebuild, book twenty minutes: talk to an expert, or call 310-620-1141.
Sources
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