#1 Shopify Development Agency in Manchester
Manchester Shopify development for independent retailers and growing brands across the north. Budgets here have to work hard, so we prioritise the handful of changes that move revenue and leave the cosmetic work for later.
Real Mojo Dojo clients, on the record.
Shopify builds that spend every pound where it moves revenue.
Greater Manchester was the fastest-growing sub-regional economy in the UK between 2015 and 2023, growing 3.1% a year against 1.5% nationally, and the number of firms rose 22% over the same period. Registered companies reached a record 251,769 at the end of 2024, with 40,892 new ones formed that year alone. Many of those are young, owner-run brands selling online from day one.
Growth has not made budgets any looser. Average household income available for spending or saving here is £3,700 below the UK average, so shoppers are careful and owners watch every line of the project plan. A redesign that looks lovely but does not lift conversion is money the business will not get back.
Online selling keeps getting more important. Internet sales made up 27.5% of all UK retail sales in 2025, up from 26.7% two years earlier. For independent retailers on Market Street, in the Northern Quarter or in the borough town centres, the store now carries a growing share of the takings.
We start every Shopify and Shopify Plus project by ranking the changes most likely to move revenue: checkout, speed, navigation, product pages and eCommerce search foundations. Cosmetic work comes after the store is earning.
Looking beyond Manchester? Our Shopify Development UK page covers the whole country. We also provide Shopify development in London. Related Manchester services include Shopify SEO, Ecommerce SEO and Web Design. See all of our Manchester services.
Shopify development in Manchester: a fast-growing, value-conscious market.
Four sourced figures on the city region and on UK online retail.
Industries we help in Manchester.
Five sectors in the city region where Shopify pulls its weight, and what we build for each.
Ecommerce and digital brands
GMCA lists e-commerce among the strengths of a £5 billion tech ecosystem. For young online brands we build lean Shopify stores that scale into Shopify Plus without a replatform.
Creative and media businesses
Studios, publishers and makers around MediaCityUK and the Northern Quarter selling prints, merchandise and limited editions, with pre-orders and international shipping.
Manufacturers and makers
The wider manufacturing sector employs about 110,000 people. We build trade and retail catalogues side by side, with trade logins, volume pricing and quote requests.
Events, hospitality and visitor retail
Gift cards, merchandise and seasonal products for venues and brands that trade hardest around the Christmas Markets, Parklife and the summer season.
Health and life sciences products
Wellness, medtech and health product stores with careful product claims, clear usage information and account ordering for clinics and practitioners.
Want more revenue from your Manchester store without a bloated budget?
Talk to our Shopify developers about a phased rebuild, an app and speed clean-up, a Shopify Plus upgrade or a migration from Magento or WooCommerce.
What conversion-focused eCommerce work delivers.
Results from Mojo Dojo eCommerce clients in our wider portfolio, not North West figures. Selected case studies follow below.
Why northern brands choose Mojo Dojo for Shopify and Shopify Plus.
Budgets in the north have to work hard. In 15 years of launching and replatforming brands on Shopify and Shopify Plus, we have learned to rank every piece of work by its likely effect on revenue, deliver the high-value changes first and leave nice-to-haves for later phases.
We are a web design and development agency with marketing expertise in the same team, so you get one partner for the build, the launch and the growth that follows.
Shopify is a hosted platform for selling, shipping and managing stock that works for a start-up and a national brand alike. Getting good value from it depends on an experienced Shopify developer and designer who know which settings, apps and templates are worth paying for.
Our project managers, designers, developers and SEO specialists keep the build simple for your team and give you clear information to decide on now and later. That thinking has converted millions in sales for clients.
Our Shopify services
- Shopify development
- Shopify planning & discovery
- Shopify headless
- Shopify Plus development agency
- Shopify website design
- Shopify theme development
- Shopify SEO and our Shopify SEO agency
- Magento to Shopify migration
- Shopify alternatives
Why Shopify gives better value than a custom-coded store.
Shopify covers hosting, security and updates for a monthly fee. We make sure the rest of the budget goes on the changes that pay back.
Paying developers for every update
Custom platforms need developers to patch and update the code on a regular basis.
Free updates and platform uptime
You receive free updates to the code, uptime from the Shopify platform and access to a range of functions for a set monthly subscription.
Features that need a rebuild
Adding capability to a custom-coded store usually means another development project.
Extensions that extend the store
Modifications can easily be applied by adding extensions which further the capabilities of your Shopify site.
Privacy and card processing risk
Handling payments and customer data yourself carries compliance and security risk.
A compliant, secure environment
Shopify provides an environment which is compliant with privacy laws and credit card processing laws, and payments are processed via the Shopify platform so your data and your customers' data is not stolen.
Spending on looks before revenue
Redesigns often start with the homepage and run out of budget before anyone fixes the checkout or the product pages that actually close sales.
A prioritised, phased build
We score each change by expected revenue impact and effort, deliver the top of the list first and plan the rest as later phases you can fund from results.
App fees that quietly add up
Stores collect paid apps over time, many doing the same job, and monthly costs creep up while pages get slower.
A lean, audited app stack
We list every app, its cost and its purpose, replace what Shopify now does natively and consolidate the rest, so running costs drop and speed improves.
All our Shopify websites are.
Whatever the budget, every Manchester build meets these four standards.
SEO friendly. An SEO friendly Shopify store: our team of experts takes time to understand your business to ensure relevant keywords are built in to rank well.
On brand. Brand relevancy by creating a Shopify design aligned with your brand that meets customer needs.
Designed to convert. Developed around the ultimate user pathways, ensuring customers are converting and generating revenue.
Easily modifiable. Your Shopify store can be managed and modified by you at the end of the day, without relying on external parties.
Shopify development with a difference.
Shopify lets small teams run the store themselves instead of paying for every change. You have the ability to:
Manage inventory
Keep track of your stock levels both in your bricks and mortar store and on your website. Make modifications to your products, offer variations in size, colour, in bundles or singular items, and find the most efficient ways to categorise them.
Modify and customise your own site
Have you always relied on your agency or developers to modify your site? Shopify developments allow you to make changes to your site without relying on external parties.
Website maintenance
We highly recommend regular website maintenance to improve the security of your website. Regular updates bring new features and functionality and reduce the risk of being hacked.
Flexible shipping options
Choose fixed shipping rates, tiered rates, free shipping over a certain spend or as a standard inclusion, weight-based shipping or location-based shipping all over the world.
Secure payment facilities
Secure payment gateways and integrations with multiple applications ensure your payments are delivered to you safely and your customers' payment details are not compromised.
Manage customer information
Store customer information through customer profiles, categorise customers, export for marketing purposes and learn more about your customer groups through their buyer behaviour.
Headless Shopify
Shopify headless uses a Jamstack approach and focuses on speed and scalability. A headless build with Hydrogen or your custom stack gives you the flexibility you need from your eCommerce platform.
Get your free Shopify store audit.
Send us your store URL and we'll return a Shopify audit within 48 hours, ranking the fixes most likely to lift revenue. No calls, no obligations.
Trading peaks across the city region.
The Christmas Markets run from early November to late December across ten city-centre locations, overlapping Black Friday and the biggest online weeks of the year. For gifting, food and fashion brands, that makes the final quarter decisive, and we plan every build and migration to be live and stable well before November.
The rest of the calendar has its own spikes. Parklife in June brings a young festival crowd, and September sees students return to universities that educate over 100,000 people a year, lifting demand for fashion, homeware and tech. Many small businesses also reset budgets in April with the new tax year. We set up scheduled sales, bundles and stock alerts so your team can run each of these moments without developer help.
The detail behind our Shopify development services.
Where northern retailers get the best return
For most independent retailers and young brands we speak to, the best early returns come from the checkout, product page content, site speed and a leaner app stack. Custom features and headless builds come later, if at all. Here is what each of our services covers.
Shopify Store Development
Shopify is the world's leading ecommerce platform for good reason. It handles hosting, security, and payment infrastructure at a level that most businesses could not replicate themselves. What it does not do is tell you how to build a store that converts.
Over the last 15 years, Mojo Dojo has built hundreds of Shopify stores across retail, fashion, health, beauty, homewares, food, and industrial supply. Every store we build starts with your customers. How do they navigate? What do they need to see before they buy? Where do they drop off?
Our store builds cover everything from initial Shopify account setup and theme selection through to custom Liquid development, app configuration, and full launch support. We do not hand you a store and disappear.
Shopify Plus Development
Shopify Plus is the enterprise tier of the platform, built for high-volume merchants. It unlocks capabilities that standard Shopify does not offer, including checkout extensibility, advanced automation through Shopify Flow, dedicated support, and lower transaction fees at scale.
Our Shopify Plus work includes:
- Custom checkout UI extensions and checkout.liquid builds
- Shopify Flow automation design and implementation
- Wholesale / B2B store configuration
- Multi-store / expansion store architecture
- Launchpad campaign scheduling and flash sale configuration
- Enterprise ERP and OMS integrations (NetSuite, SAP, MYOB)
Headless Shopify / Jamstack
For merchants who need extreme frontend performance, a headless Shopify architecture decouples the storefront from the Shopify backend. Your frontend is built with a modern JavaScript framework (Next.js, Remix, Nuxt) and served via a CDN edge network, while Shopify handles the commerce logic through the Storefront API.
The result is a store that loads in under a second, scores 95+ on Google Lighthouse, and can support complex content experiences that are impossible in a standard Liquid theme.
We use Shopify Hydrogen for purpose-built headless storefronts and can integrate with Contentful, Sanity, or your existing CMS for content management. Headless is not right for every store, and we will tell you honestly if the complexity is warranted by your revenue and performance requirements.
Shopify SEO Optimisation
Shopify has well-known SEO constraints out of the box. Duplicate content from collections and products, the /collections/*/products/* URL structure, and limited control over canonical tags are common pain points that affect organic performance.
Our Shopify SEO work addresses the platform's limitations directly:
- Product and collection page schema markup (Product, BreadcrumbList, FAQPage)
- Canonical URL management and duplicate content elimination
- Faceted navigation and filter page management
- Image optimisation and alt text at scale
- Collection page content architecture for long-tail keyword targeting
- Core Web Vitals and Lighthouse score improvements
Magento to Shopify Migration
Migrating from Magento to Shopify is one of the highest-value platform decisions an ecommerce business can make. Magento carries significant technical debt, requires expensive dedicated hosting, and demands developer involvement for tasks that Shopify handles natively.
A migration done poorly destroys organic rankings built over years. Our migration process preserves your SEO equity through meticulous 301 redirect mapping, URL structure planning, and content validation before cutover. We have migrated stores ranging from 500 to 50,000 SKUs.
Our migration process covers:
- Product, customer, and order data migration
- 301 redirect mapping for all existing URLs
- SEO audit pre- and post-migration
- App stack rationalisation and configuration
- Theme development on the new platform
- Parallel testing before cutover
- Post-launch monitoring and issue resolution
How we build your Shopify store.
Six stages, run remotely with video calls in UK hours, a shared staging store and a phased plan that matches your budget.
Planning and discovery
We map your customers, catalogue, integrations and goals in a Shopify planning and discovery phase, then recommend Shopify, Shopify Plus or headless based on what your store actually needs.
UX and design
We design user pathways and a Shopify design aligned with your brand, focused on purchases via a refined UI/UX and conversion best practice.
Development
From Shopify account setup and theme selection through to custom Liquid development, app configuration and integrations.
SEO and data migration
Schema markup, canonical URLs and Core Web Vitals are built in. For replatforms we migrate product, customer and order data and map 301 redirects for every existing URL.
Testing
Parallel testing before cutover, plus a pre-launch crawl to verify nothing has been missed.
Launch and ongoing support
Full launch support, post-launch monitoring and issue resolution, with an ongoing maintenance and optimisation retainer available.
Areas we serve in Manchester.
We work with retailers and brands across all ten boroughs, remotely, using video calls, shared staging stores and regular reports. In the centre that includes Ancoats and the city core, and nearby Salford, Eccles and Trafford, including Stretford, Sale and Altrincham.
To the south we build for businesses in Didsbury, Chorlton, Wythenshawe, Stockport and Cheadle. In the north and east that covers Bolton, Bury, Prestwich, Oldham, Rochdale, Wigan, Tameside and Ashton-under-Lyne.
Selected results.
Featured projects from across the Mojo Dojo portfolio. They show our approach, not results for businesses in the North West.
“Their team understood our business before we even had to explain it. Enquiries are up 250% and the quality is better than ever.”
The framework behind the stores we build.
Most stores are optimised for traffic. This one is about revenue, the ten changes to a store that move the number at the bottom of the report, in the order to make them.
Send me the Ecommerce Playbook →
Free. 14 pages. In your inbox. Magic-link delivery, it arrives in about two minutes, and there's no sales call attached to reading it.
Do you work with Manchester businesses?
Yes, remotely. Workshops, design reviews and training happen over video calls in UK business hours, you review every change on a shared staging store and we send regular reporting. There is no office to travel to, which keeps the project time focused on your store.
Can we build our store in phases to spread the cost?
Yes, and it is often the smartest route. We rank changes by expected revenue impact, launch a solid first phase with the essentials done well, then add features in later phases once the store is earning. Each phase has its own scope and quote.
What does a Shopify store cost to run each month?
Your Shopify plan, payment processing fees and any paid apps are the main running costs, plus optional ongoing support. We document each cost during discovery and design the build to rely on native features where possible, so the monthly total stays predictable.
How long does a Shopify build take?
A standard Shopify store with an existing theme and up to 500 products typically takes 4 to 6 weeks from design approval to launch. Custom theme builds or Shopify Plus projects with complex integrations typically take 8 to 12 weeks. Migration projects depend on the size of your product catalogue and the state of your existing data. We provide a detailed project timeline as part of your quote.
Will my store rank on Google after you build it?
We build every Shopify store with Shopify SEO optimisation as a baseline requirement, not an optional add-on. This includes schema markup, canonical URL management, clean URL structures, image optimisation, and Core Web Vitals performance. For ongoing organic growth, our Shopify Ecommerce SEO retainer builds on that foundation with content strategy, link acquisition, and monthly reporting.
Do I need Shopify Plus or will standard Shopify work for me?
Shopify Plus becomes commercially justified when you need custom checkout extensibility, advanced automation via Shopify Flow, B2B wholesale channels, multi-store expansion store architecture, or when your transaction volume makes the lower transaction fees economically worthwhile. We will give you an honest assessment based on your current and projected revenue.
Can you migrate my store from Magento or WooCommerce without losing my SEO rankings?
Yes, and this is one of the most important parts of a platform migration. We conduct a full pre-migration SEO audit, document every indexed URL on your existing store, map 301 redirects to their new Shopify equivalents, and run a post-migration crawl before going live to verify nothing has been missed. We have successfully migrated dozens of stores from Magento, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and custom platforms without ranking loss.
What does a Shopify development agency do?
A Shopify development agency plans, designs, builds and launches your Shopify store. That covers account setup, theme selection or a custom theme, custom Liquid development, app configuration, integrations, data migration and SEO foundations, followed by launch support and ongoing maintenance.
Why choose Shopify over a custom-coded eCommerce site?
Shopify is a hosted solution, so the infrastructure, code updates and uptime are handled for you. It provides an environment that is compliant with privacy and credit card processing laws, processes payments securely, and lets you extend the store with apps rather than paying developers for every change.
Can I manage and update my Shopify store myself after launch?
Yes. Every store we build is designed to be easily managed and modified by you and your staff. You can update products, variations, collections, shipping rules and customer information without relying on your agency or developers.
Is headless Shopify right for my store?
Headless Shopify decouples your storefront from the Shopify backend for extreme frontend performance and complex content experiences, typically built with Shopify Hydrogen. It suits stores whose revenue and performance requirements justify the added complexity, and we will tell you honestly if a standard Liquid theme is the better choice.
Can you take over a Shopify store another developer built?
Yes. If your current developer cannot handle your Shopify customisation or produces sub-par results, we audit the existing theme, apps and custom code, fix what is holding the store back and take over development and support from there.
Do you offer ongoing Shopify maintenance and support?
Yes. We do not hand you a store and disappear. We offer post-launch monitoring and issue resolution plus an ongoing retainer for maintenance, new features, conversion rate optimisation and security updates.
Which systems can you integrate with Shopify?
We integrate Shopify and Shopify Plus with enterprise ERP and OMS platforms such as NetSuite, SAP and MYOB, content management systems such as Contentful and Sanity, and the Shopify app ecosystem for reviews, subscriptions, shipping and marketing.
Get your free Shopify store audit.
Send us your store URL and we'll return a Shopify audit within 48 hours, ranking the fixes most likely to lift revenue. No calls, no obligations.