How a custom Shopify website comes together.
A custom store is a series of decisions made in the right order. Design is agreed before the build starts, the build is tested with your real products, and nothing goes live until you have seen it on your own phone.
Six steps from first call to launch
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Discovery
We look at your current site or store, your brand material, your catalog and your competitors, and talk through what is and isn't working. The output is a short brief that lists the pages, features and apps the store needs.
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Structure
Before anything is styled, we plan the menu, the collections and the order of content on the key templates. This is where most conversion decisions get made.
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Design
Page designs for desktop and phone, starting with the product page and home page. You review each template and we revise before moving on.
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Theme build
The approved designs are built as a Shopify theme on a development store or as an unpublished theme on your existing store, made of sections you can edit later.
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Content and testing
Products, collections, pages and apps are set up. We test on real phones and browsers, place test orders and check speed, forms and email notifications.
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Launch and handover
Domain, redirects and final settings go live together. Then we walk you through running the store day to day.
What we need from you
Most delays in store projects come from waiting on content, so we ask for it early and keep the list short.
- Brand material. Logo files, fonts and colors, or brand guidelines if you have them.
- Product data. Titles, descriptions, prices, variants and photos, or access to the platform they live on now.
- Photography. Product shots and a few lifestyle images. If you don't have them yet, we will tell you exactly which shots the design needs.
- Policies. Shipping, returns and privacy text, which Shopify displays at checkout.
- One decision maker. Feedback from one person, or one person who gathers it, keeps reviews moving.
Who you work with
Abra is a small studio. Ronen Hirsch is both a designer and a developer and works on both sides of your store, so the design is planned around what Shopify can do and the build keeps the design intact. He has over 20 years of experience, and you can read more about him at ronenhirsch.com. The studio also builds WordPress sites and custom web apps, which helps when a store needs to connect to something outside Shopify.
After launch
Because the theme is built in sections, day-to-day changes are yours to make. When you need something new, like a seasonal landing page, a new product template or a feature an app can't handle, we can pick it up. For larger requests, the Abra quote form is the quickest route.
How long it takes
Timing depends on the number of templates, the size of the catalog and whether a migration is involved. We give you a schedule with the quote, with dates for each review.
Moving platforms too?
Migrations run alongside the design work. See how a move to Shopify works.
Ready to start with discovery?
Send a few details about your brand and your current store. We'll reply with questions and next steps.