Hiring a Shopify Developer in the UK: What to Look For
"We build websites" and "we build Shopify stores" sound like the same sentence. They are not. A generalist web agency can absolutely stand up a Shopify theme — but the difference between a store that merely launches and one that scales shows up six months later, in the checkout, the subscription logic, and the page speed. If you are hiring a Shopify developer in the UK, the job is to tell those two apart before you sign, not after.
This is the guide I give people who ask me what to look for. I have built and rescued enough Shopify stores to know which questions actually predict a good outcome — and which impressive-sounding answers don't.
Shopify-specific experience, not just "ecommerce"
Shopify is its own ecosystem — Liquid templating, the theme architecture, the app model, the Admin and Storefront APIs, and a set of constraints you only learn by hitting them. A developer who has shipped ten Shopify stores will save you from decisions that look fine on day one and become expensive on day ninety: an app stack that fights itself, a theme that can't be updated without breaking, metafields modelled in a way that boxes you in later.
Ask for specifics. Not "we've done loads of Shopify" but "show me a store you built, and tell me one thing you'd do differently now." The answer tells you whether they reflect on their work or just ship and move on.
Plus, checkout, and the things that quietly break
If you are on (or heading toward) Shopify Plus, the checkout is where the real engineering lives. Shopify has retired the old checkout.liquid and Script Editor approach in favour of Checkout Extensibility — UI extensions and Functions — and a lot of stores are still carrying customisations that need migrating before the deadlines bite. A developer worth hiring can talk fluently about this; if the term "checkout extensibility" gets a blank look, keep interviewing. (We wrote a full practitioner's guide to it: Shopify Checkout Extensions.)
The same goes for performance. Anyone can install a theme; far fewer can keep it fast once the marketing team has added six tracking scripts and a pop-up. Ask how they measure and protect store speed, and whether they treat Core Web Vitals as a launch checkbox or an ongoing discipline.
Subscriptions and recurring revenue
If recurring revenue is part of your model — or might be — find out whether the developer has actually built it, not just installed an app. Subscriptions on Shopify run through platforms like Recharge or Skio, and the difference between a clean implementation and a fragile one is enormous: how cancellations and swaps are handled, how the customer portal behaves, how charges reconcile. (Our take on the two main options: ReCharge vs Skio, and our subscription work.)
Questions that surface the truth
A few questions cut through the polish quickly. "What happens after launch?" — a good developer has an answer about support, monitoring and iteration, not just handover. "How do you handle theme updates?" — if they've hard-forked the theme with no upgrade path, that's a future bill. "Can I see the code?" — clean, commented, version-controlled work is a tell; a mystery box is a red flag.
And the simplest one: "What would you not build?" Developers who only ever say yes will happily charge you to build something Shopify already does natively, or an app you don't need. The ones worth keeping will talk you out of work.
Agency, freelancer, or in-house?
UK day rates vary enormously, and higher doesn't guarantee better. A solo freelancer can be perfect for a focused build but a single point of failure for an always-on store. A large agency brings process but often juniors doing the actual work behind a senior pitch. A small, senior team tends to be the sweet spot for growing brands — enough depth to cover holidays and emergencies, senior enough that the person who scoped the work is the person who writes it. Whatever the shape, insist on knowing who will actually touch your store.
Where we fit
Zerglo is a small, senior Shopify team. We do builds, migrations, checkout extensibility and subscriptions — the work above — for brands across the UK, from Hertfordshire and Surrey to Bristol and beyond. The person who scopes your project is the person who builds it.
If you're weighing up a build, a migration, or just want a second opinion on a quote you've been given, get in touch — or read more about our Shopify development work. We'll give you a straight answer, even if it's "you don't need us for this."