Shopify Specialist
Shopify Speed, SEO & Conversion Engineering
Shopify engineering for stores that take revenue seriously. Theme-level speed surgery, technical SEO that survives Shopify's quirks, app stack rationalisation, and conversion engineering rooted in real user behaviour.
What's Included
Comprehensive solutions tailored to your specific needs
Theme-level speed surgery
Liquid refactor, JavaScript deferral, image rendering, font loading, and section-level conditional loading.
App stack audit & rationalisation
Every app reviewed for value, performance cost, and theme-code replacement. Most stores leave with fewer apps and a faster site.
Technical SEO inside Shopify
Canonicals, hreflang via Markets, schema in theme code, metafields for structured content, and clean URL strategy.
Core Web Vitals
LCP, INP, and CLS engineered into the green on mobile field data — not just lab.
Conversion engineering
PDP hierarchy, checkout friction reduction, mobile filter UX, predictive search, and analytics integrity.
International Markets setup
Shopify Markets configured correctly: hreflang, currency, pricing, and locale-specific SEO.
Problems I Solve
Symptoms this engagement is built to fix
A premium theme that scores 22 on PageSpeed mobile because it ships every section script on every page.
Twelve installed apps each injecting their own JavaScript on the critical path of the homepage.
Collection pages that Google has indexed but refuses to rank because of duplicate facet URLs.
Product schema marked invalid in GSC, costing rich-result eligibility on your highest-margin SKUs.
A checkout that converts at 1.7 percent because of friction the team has stopped noticing.
Shopify Markets set up in a way that scatters hreflang and confuses Google about which storefront to rank.
Why Shopify performance work is different from WordPress
Shopify is fundamentally a hosted, opinionated platform — you do not control the server, the database, or the caching layer. Every speed gain has to come from theme code, app stack discipline, and image strategy. There is no equivalent of WP Rocket or Redis object caching to hide behind. This makes Shopify both easier (the platform itself is fast) and harder (you cannot patch over a bad theme or a bloated app stack). My engagements work the levers that actually exist: surgical Liquid edits, JavaScript deferral inside theme.liquid, app loading strategy, image rendering via Shopify's CDN with the right transforms, and font loading without the FOIT/FOUT chaos. The result is stores that hold sub-two-second LCP on mobile while keeping the app stack their marketing team actually needs.
Apps: the silent performance and revenue tax
Most underperforming Shopify stores have between eight and twenty installed apps, and the merchant has no idea what most of them do. Each one typically injects script in theme.liquid (often via App Embed or Script Tag), bloats the DOM with hidden markup, and contributes to a main-thread cost that is invisible until you open Lighthouse. The audit phase of every engagement is brutal: list every app, identify what it actually does, what it costs per month, what it costs in performance, and whether it could be replaced by theme code or a leaner alternative. Many stores leave the engagement with three to five fewer apps, a faster site, and a lower monthly bill — a rare combination.
Technical SEO inside Shopify's constraints
Shopify gives you canonical control, structured data, robots.txt, sitemap.xml, redirects, and metafields. It also gives you forced URL patterns (/collections/x/products/y), no easy way to alter the URL structure, automatic facet URL generation that creates near-duplicates, and a robots.txt that historically blocked useful pages until liquid robots became editable. My engagements ship product, breadcrumb, and organisation schema directly from theme code (not via apps that may break), enforce a clean canonical strategy across collection/product/variant URLs, configure Shopify Markets correctly so hreflang reciprocates between storefronts, and use metafields for the structured content that Shopify natively struggles with — comparison tables, technical specs, FAQs scoped per product. This is the work that moves rankings on stores that have already done the obvious on-page work.
Conversion engineering that survives a Lighthouse audit
Most CRO advice destroys performance. Heatmaps, session replay, A/B testing apps, personalisation widgets — each one solves a real problem and ships a meaningful amount of JavaScript. My approach is to define the conversion friction in research first (real user session reviews, checkout funnel analysis, mobile usability testing), then ship the smallest possible change that removes the friction. That is sometimes a heavier tool, but more often it is a free Liquid edit: smarter PDP hierarchy, reducing form fields, predictive search done in-theme instead of via an app, a sticky add-to-cart that does not push CLS, a better mobile filter UI. Performance and conversion are not in conflict when the work is done in the right order.
International Shopify and Markets done right
Shopify Markets is the correct way to handle multi-region selling, but the default setup is rarely the right setup. Common mistakes: subdomains where subdirectories would aggregate authority better, missing or incorrect hreflang between markets, automatic IP-based redirects that block Google from crawling alternate locales, and pricing that applies inconsistently to currency-only versus full-locale markets. A correctly configured Markets setup gives you proper country and language targeting in GSC, no duplicate-content penalties between locales, and a path to localising content per market via metafields and translation apps that do not destroy SEO equity. This is increasingly the difference between competing internationally and disappearing on Google.de or Google.ae.
What You Receive
Deliverables & expected outcomes
- Theme-level performance refactor with sub-2s mobile LCP target
- App stack audit and rationalisation
- Technical SEO refit (canonicals, hreflang, schema, metafields)
- Conversion engineering plan rooted in real session research
- International Markets configuration where applicable
- Pre-launch QA on staging theme with a documented rollback plan
Illustrative Engagement
A representative scenario
The problem
A DTC homewares brand on Shopify Plus was running a premium theme with 14 apps, mobile LCP at 4.6s, CWV failing, and mobile conversion at 1.4 percent — half its desktop rate. App spend was over €600 a month.
The approach
App audit removed four apps and replaced two with native theme code. Section-level JavaScript was made conditional on page type, the hero image strategy was rebuilt around Shopify's image transforms, and the PDP was restructured to put price, reviews, and add-to-cart above the fold on mobile.
The outcome
Mobile LCP fell to 1.7s, CWV moved fully into the green, mobile conversion rose to 2.4 percent over six weeks, and monthly app spend dropped by €280.
Composite scenario based on typical engagements. Replace with a real, attributed case study once published.
My Process
A proven methodology for delivering exceptional results
Audit
Theme review, app stack analysis, CWV baseline, technical SEO audit, and a session-research-led conversion brief.
Plan & approve
Prioritised plan with expected impact per work item, agreed app removals, and a written staging-to-production cutover plan.
Implementation
All work on a duplicated theme, peer-reviewed Liquid edits, staged Markets changes, and pre-launch QA across browsers and devices.
Launch & monitor
Production deploy in a maintenance window, 30 days of CWV and conversion monitoring, with optional ongoing retainer.
Why Choose Me?
With 7+ years of experience and a track record of delivering results, I bring expertise, reliability, and a results-driven approach to every project.
- Mobile LCP under two seconds on real users, not just synthetic scores
- App spend often reduced while performance improves
- Technical SEO that respects Shopify's actual constraints
- Conversion work rooted in research, not borrowed playbook tactics
- International Markets configured for real organic growth
- Senior Shopify engineering directly — no junior handoff
Starting at
€397
Theme surgery, app stack rationalisation, technical SEO, conversion engineering, and international Markets configuration — scoped to your store size.
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