From setup to ongoing success

We help you launch your Shopify store, make it look sharp, and get your products in front of the right people. We don't just leave you to it once you go live either. We're here for the long haul, helping with the operational side that most store owners end up wrestling with.

What we can help with

Store setup, theme selection, payments, and launch planning.
Theme customisation and design that fits your brand properly.
Product photography and visual content for your store.
Operational support for stock, order flow, systems, and troubleshooting.
Ongoing support for promos, new features, and day-to-day questions.
Email marketing, ads, and SEO support to drive traffic and sales.

We've run stores ourselves

This is the part that makes us different from most Shopify agencies: we have been the merchant, not just the developer. We ran The Toy Box, our own online retail store, and Andrea has years of hands-on experience running and growing online retail brands — inventory, fulfilment, Klaviyo email flows, ads and the daily grind of ecommerce operations.

That experience shapes the advice we give. We wrote up what running our own store taught us in E-commerce lessons from the Toy Box.

Recent Shopify projects

Golf 360 — Shopify store for NZ's premium golf retailer, with email marketing and SEO support.
The Toy Box — our own store, and the proving ground for how we run ecommerce properly.
Irrigation Online — Shopify ecommerce build making irrigation products easy to order nationwide.

See more in our work.

Why choose What the Heck?

We're certified Shopify Partners, but more importantly, we've run stores ourselves. That means we understand fulfilment, inventory, customer flow, and the real day-to-day decisions that affect sales.

Real operational experience, not just development.
Long-term support when you need an on-call Shopify team.
Practical advice in plain language.

Shopify guides worth reading

We publish practical, NZ-focused Shopify guides. Good places to start:

Common questions

Can you help after the store is live?

Yes. Support after launch is a big part of what we do.

Can you fix or improve an existing Shopify store?

Yes. A lot of our work is improving stores that are already trading — theme fixes, speed, product structure, conversion improvements and sorting out apps that have piled up.

What about product photos and content?

We can help with photography, sourcing imagery, and writing product or site content.

Can you set up marketing and email too?

Absolutely. We regularly set up Klaviyo, email flows, and supporting traffic channels.

Should I use Shopify or WooCommerce?

For most NZ retailers we recommend Shopify — it is reliable, secure and far easier to run day-to-day. We compare them honestly in Shopify vs WooCommerce.

Shopify E-commerce