Jonathan Bird Web Design & Development
Shopify Plus Developer Australia
  1. Website Platforms
  3. Shopify & Shopify Plus Development

Shopify & Shopify Plus Developer

Managed commerce without treating the storefront or integrations as an afterthought.

Our Shopify experience includes Jonathan’s senior development role during the Culture Kings migration from Magento to Shopify Plus, followed by complex storefront and integration work for brands including Beginning Boutique. We help established retailers assess Shopify or Shopify Plus, plan migrations, build custom storefronts, and connect the platform to the systems around it. Shopify is a strong fit for many brands, but we will say when its constraints make another option more sensible.

Discuss your requirements See relevant work
Platform fit

Is this the right platform?

The platform should follow the requirements. These are the conditions we test before recommending Shopify.

A good fit when

Shopify is a strong fit for retailers that benefit from managed commerce operations, a mature ecosystem and predictable responsibility for core platform infrastructure.

Consider another option when

It may not suit highly bespoke B2B workflows, unusual checkout requirements or business rules that fight the platform on every release.
Capabilities

What we build with Shopify

A snapshot of the Shopify work our senior team takes on, from the first technical decision through ongoing ownership.

Shopify Plus Migrations

Moving from Magento, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, or a legacy custom build onto Shopify Plus. We ran the Magento to Shopify Plus migration at Culture Kings, so we have already made most of the decisions your migration will need: what to rebuild versus rehome, how to preserve URLs and SEO equity, how to move customers and order history without breaking reporting, and how to cut over without a dark weekend.

Checkout Extensibility & Shopify Functions

Shopify has retired checkout.liquid, and scripts have to be rebuilt as Shopify Functions and checkout UI extensions. This is where a lot of Plus stores are currently stuck. We build custom discounts, payment and delivery customisations, validation rules, and checkout UI extensions properly, so your checkout logic survives the platform moving underneath it.

B2B & Wholesale on Shopify

Trade portals, company accounts, customer-specific catalogues, contract and tiered pricing, quote workflows, and net payment terms. B2B on Shopify has come a long way, but it still needs real engineering to match how a wholesaler actually trades. See our B2B eCommerce development work.

ERP, Accounting & Marketing Integrations

Your store is only as good as the systems behind it. We connect Shopify to Xero, NetSuite, MYOB, Klaviyo, and the rest of your stack, with retries, idempotency, and monitoring designed in rather than bolted on. Browse all integrations.

Headless Shopify

Build your own storefront on the GraphQL Storefront API or Hydrogen, and let Shopify handle checkout, payments, and compliance. Headless is the right call less often than agencies pretend, so we will tell you honestly whether your store actually needs it before quoting the work.

Scale & Peak Traffic

Shopify Plus is built for high-volume trading, but a store still fails under load if the theme, apps, and integrations are careless. Culture Kings ran drops that would flatten most stores. We build for the sale day, not the quiet Tuesday.

Custom Themes & Storefronts

Custom Liquid themes built for your brand and your merchandising, not a marketplace template with the colours swapped. Fast, accessible, and easy for your team to run day to day without calling a developer for every change.

Advanced Shopify Plus Features

Suited for medium to large businesses, Shopify Plus allows for advanced eCommerce functionality such as Third-party calculated shipping rates, Expansion stores for multiple languages or currencies, Advanced eCommerce Reporting, Advanced Promotions, Customised Checkouts, Tax automation, Bot protection and more.

Dedicated Support

With any medium to large eCommerce business comes the need to be able to rely on your eCommerce provider, Shopify Plus users benefit from priority customer support. This means faster response times and dedicated assistance from the Shopify support team, ensuring that any issues or concerns are addressed promptly.

Security and Compliance

Shopify takes care of security and compliance, including PCI DSS compliance for handling credit card transactions. This allows you to focus on growing your business without worrying about the technical aspects of security.

Shopify Omnichannel eCommerce

Shopify allows for seamless integration with various sales channels, including social media platforms and marketplaces. This enables your eCommerce brand to reach a broader audience and maximise sales opportunities.

Ongoing Support & Maintenance

Our senior team keeps the storefront context after launch. App updates are reviewed against your theme and tested rather than bulk-applied, while Shopify platform changes are handled before they become production issues. Most client relationships run for five to seven years. Optional website maintenance plans are available.

Case Studies

Featured projects built with Shopify

Selected projects that show Shopify solving real organisational requirements in production.
View all case studies
Integrations

Systems we connect to Shopify

The business systems our team most often connects to a Shopify build. Browse every integration.

Integrating something else?

Tell us which systems need to exchange data and where the current process is failing. We will assess the APIs, constraints, and safest path forward.

Discuss an integration
Straight advice

Requirements choose the platform.

We recommend Shopify when its strengths match the job, and a simpler or different option when they do not.

Start with constraints

Content, workflows, integrations, governance and ownership matter more than a feature checklist.

Avoid custom work without a reason

Configuration is preferable when it genuinely meets the requirement and remains maintainable.

Plan for operational ownership

The choice must still make sense for the team maintaining it after launch.

Our senior-team model

Senior people stay responsible for the platform decisions.

Architecture and implementation stay close together, with the same team retaining context for ongoing improvement.
  • Direct access to senior people
  • Design and development working closely together
  • Technical advice without a communications relay
  • No junior production line or offshore hand-off
  • Project knowledge that stays with the team after launch
“Digital Bird has had a huge influence on our business providing many solutions besides just a fantastic reliable website. Jonathan is great to work with and has a solution to every challenge. Jonathan also has the ability to “dumb it down” and provide timely advice and assistance if something goes astray. With Jonathan we have in excess of 99% uptime on all three websites.”
Jeff Ross Director, Impact Office Supplies Impact Office Supplies Logo
Process

From the first decision to ongoing improvement

We keep strategy, design, development, and technical ownership close together. Your team is involved at the decision points, with clear recommendations and visible progress throughout.

  1. Step 1: Understand

    Clarify the audience, business problem, constraints, content, and measures of success.

  2. Step 2: Recommend

    Explain the viable options and trade-offs, then recommend the simplest sound approach.

  3. Step 3: Plan

    Agree priorities, responsibilities, scope, timing, and the decisions your stakeholders need to make.

  4. Step 4: Design and build

    Work in visible increments while strategy, user experience, content, and engineering remain connected.

  5. Step 5: Validate and launch

    Test the important journeys, performance, accessibility, content, integrations, and operational readiness.

  6. Step 6: Improve

    Monitor the live system, resolve issues, and continue improving it as requirements change.

FAQ

Common Shopify Project Questions

Common questions our team is asked about Shopify & Shopify Plus Development.
Shopify Plus is Shopify's enterprise tier. The storefront is much the same, but Plus adds the things larger merchants actually need: checkout customisation through Shopify Functions and checkout UI extensions, higher API rate limits, expansion stores for multiple regions or brands, B2B company accounts and catalogues, Shopify Flow automation, and a dedicated support path. If you are only after a nicer theme, you do not need Plus. If you are hitting the ceiling on checkout logic, API limits, wholesale, or multi-store, that ceiling is exactly what Plus removes.
Honestly, not always. Plus is worth it when you are constrained by the platform rather than by your team: you need custom checkout logic, you are running wholesale alongside retail, you need expansion stores, or your order volume is pushing API limits. If none of those are true, standard Shopify plus good engineering will usually get you further for less money. We would rather tell you that up front than sell you an upgrade you do not need.
Roughly: audit what you have, decide what is worth rebuilding versus retiring, then move data (products, customers, order history), rebuild the storefront, rebuild any checkout logic as Shopify Functions, reconnect your ERP, accounting, and marketing integrations, map every old URL to a new one so you keep your search rankings, and cut over. The parts people underestimate are order history, customer-specific pricing, and the redirect map. We ran this migration at Culture Kings from Magento, so we plan for those from day one.
The useful question is who remains accountable after the proposal. Our senior specialists stay involved in critical storefront code, integrations, and architectural decisions, and retain that context for future changes. The trade-off is that we are a small senior team, so we take on fewer projects at once and are not the right fit when a large delivery team must mobilise immediately.
Yes, and this is a large part of our work. Off-the-shelf connector apps handle the happy path and then quietly fall apart on partial refunds, multi-currency, surcharges, or customer-specific pricing. We build integrations with retries, idempotency, reconciliation, and monitoring so failures get caught before they become an accounting problem. See the Xero, NetSuite, and MYOB integration pages.
If you were using checkout.liquid or Checkout Scripts, then yes. Shopify has retired both in favour of checkout extensibility, which means custom checkout behaviour now has to be rebuilt as Shopify Functions and checkout UI extensions. In practice that covers custom discounts, payment and delivery method customisation, validation rules, and anything you had scripted at checkout. It is a genuine rebuild rather than a config change, but the result is far more durable because it no longer breaks every time Shopify updates the checkout.

Discuss your Shopify project

Led by more than 15 years of commercial experience, our senior team helps Australian organisations ship websites that are fast, secure, accessible and built for the long term.

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