Getting a Shopify store built
Getting a Shopify store built: a theme or a custom design, Liquid or headless, and who to build it with.
Getting a Shopify store built comes down to three choices: how far the design moves from a standard theme, what technology it is built on, and who builds and maintains it. Each one decides cost, speed and how easily you can change the store later.
Theme, customised theme or custom design
A good premium theme gets a straightforward catalog online quickly. A customised theme keeps that foundation and adds your own sections and details. A fully custom design makes sense when the brand, the catalog or the buying journey needs more than a theme can carry without workarounds.
Liquid or headless
Most stores are built in Liquid, Shopify's own theme language, with Online Store 2.0 sections your team can edit in the theme editor. Headless separates the front end from Shopify and gives full freedom, at the cost of more development and more to maintain. We wrote out that decision in Should I build a headless Shopify or Liquid?
Who builds it
A freelancer can be the right fit for a contained project. A developer or agency brings more capacity and continuity, which matters once the store is your main sales channel. Ask who will still work on the store after launch, and whether the same team can also improve it. That is how we work: see our Build page.
Articles
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Questions
What people ask about this topic.
It depends on scope. A store on a premium theme can go live in a few weeks; a custom design or a store with integrations and migrated data usually takes a few months.
Not always. Start from what your customers need to see and do. If a theme covers that with sensible changes, it is the faster and cheaper route; a custom theme pays off when it does not.
On a well-built Liquid store, yes: content, sections and most layout changes happen in the theme editor without a developer. Headless stores usually need a developer or a separate CMS for that.