Ecommerce Development
Shopify agency built for South African DTC brands.
Ecommerce development from first SKU to eight-figure scale. We design, build, and tune stores on Shopify, WooCommerce, and headless stacks for brands that treat their store as the main revenue engine.
The problem
Your store is leaking revenue in places your checkout report will not show you.
Most South African ecommerce sites are not losing money on ad spend. They are losing it between the product page and the thank-you page. A slow PDP on a Takealot-trained shopper. A checkout that hides delivery fees until step four. A mobile menu that hides the search bar. A discount code field that tempts people to abandon and go hunting on Google for a voucher.
And then there is the operational tax. Stock out of sync between Shopify, Takealot, and your bricks-and-mortar POS. Bookkeeping that has to reconcile R-exclusive and R-inclusive prices every month. Emails that go to promotions because your DMARC is still on p=none from the developer who left in 2021.
Ecommerce is a compounding game. Fix the store, and every rand of paid and organic traffic earns more. Skip it, and you are just running a more expensive leak.
What we do
What we actually build.
EcomSolve is a Shopify agency in South Africa, plus a lot more. We have been building and running ecommerce sites for ten years — long enough to remember when PayGate was the only option and Yoco was a rumour. We have shipped over 80 stores across beauty, fashion, supplements, homeware, food, and B2B distribution.
Work we take on: greenfield Shopify builds, WooCommerce rebuilds, Magento 1 and 2 migrations, headless storefronts on Shopify Hydrogen, multi-store set-ups for brands with both DTC and wholesale, marketplace feeds, subscription flows with Recharge or Appstle, and conversion rate work on stores that have already launched.
We also do the unglamorous work that most agencies charge extra for — proper analytics on GA4 and Shopify Analytics, Meta CAPI with server-side events (because iOS 14.5 is still eating your attribution), Klaviyo setup, email deliverability, back-in-stock, reviews with Judge.me or Stamped, and a shipping rules engine that actually reflects what your Courier Guy account charges.
- — Greenfield Shopify and Shopify Plus builds
- — Platform migrations from WooCommerce, Magento, Wix, Big Cartel
- — Headless storefronts on Hydrogen / Oxygen / Next.js Commerce
- — Subscriptions, bundles, pre-orders, and loyalty flows
- — Marketplace integrations: Takealot, Superbalist, Bob Shop, Amazon.co.za
- — ERP and accounting sync with Xero, Sage, and SAP Business One
- — Conversion rate optimisation retainers for stores doing R1m+ monthly
Our process
How the work happens.
We do not guess. Every project starts with data, maps every click, and ends with a store you understand well enough to run yourself.
Audit & strategy
If you have an existing store, we pull the last 90 days of analytics, run a full funnel audit (heatmaps, session replays, speed report, checkout drop-off), and write a one-page strategy before design even starts. If you are greenfield, we start with category structure, pricing tiers, and shipping zones.
Design the store
High-fidelity Figma designs for home, collection, PDP, cart, and checkout on mobile and desktop. We design for South African shoppers — mobile-first, clear delivery messaging, EFT and instant-EFT options surfaced, social proof above the fold. Two rounds of revisions are standard.
Build & integrate
Liquid theme build (or headless stack), integrations with payments, shipping (The Courier Guy, Aramex, PUDO lockers, Pargo), analytics, email, and any marketplace feeds. Full test harness with real test orders. We hand over a Loom walkthrough of every admin area your team will touch.
Launch & grow
Launch day includes a 24-hour on-call period (we know Friday launches are a bad idea, yet here we are). Post-launch we run a CRO retainer if you want — weekly split tests on the theme, monthly copy and offer reviews, quarterly deep audits. Most retainer clients compound 3 to 8% conversion lift a quarter.
Deliverables
What you get.
- Custom Shopify or WooCommerce theme (no copy-paste templates)
- Product migration and image optimisation for existing catalogues
- Payments, shipping, and tax setup for ZA / SADC markets
- GA4, Meta CAPI, TikTok Pixel, Google Ads conversion tracking
- Klaviyo flows: welcome, abandon, browse, post-purchase, win-back
- Reviews, upsell, back-in-stock, and loyalty app configuration
- Shopify admin training videos and standard operating procedures
Platforms & tools
The stack.
- Shopify
- Shopify Plus
- Shopify Hydrogen
- WooCommerce
- Medusa
- Klaviyo
- Recharge
- Judge.me
- Peach Payments
- PayFast
- Yoco
- Ozow
- Takealot Feed
- GA4
- Meta CAPI
Proof
Boring fundamentals, compound results.
We helped a Cape Town skincare brand grow DTC revenue 3.1x in 8 months. They came to us on a bloated WooCommerce install with a 4.8s LCP and a 1.4% mobile conversion rate. We rebuilt on Shopify with a custom Figma-to-Liquid theme, rewired their Klaviyo flows from scratch, and added a subscription option with Recharge. Mobile conversion climbed to 3.6%, average order value rose from R640 to R812 after a bundle-builder PDP, and their Meta ROAS doubled because CAPI finally had real events to work with.
A Joburg home-goods brand came to us after outgrowing Wix. We migrated 1,200 SKUs to Shopify, built a Takealot marketplace feed, and wired their Xero accounting in both directions. Six months later they hit R2.1m monthly revenue with the same ad budget they had been running for 18 months.
FAQ
Questions founders actually ask us.
Which platform should I use — Shopify, WooCommerce, or something custom?
For 80% of South African DTC brands, Shopify is the right call. Hosting, payments, PCI compliance, and a solid app ecosystem are handled for you. WooCommerce makes sense if your content and store live on the same WordPress install or if your catalogue is unusual. Custom headless (Shopify Hydrogen, Medusa, custom Next.js) is for brands doing over R20m a year who need speed and flexibility the templates cannot give them. We help you pick before we start building.
Can you integrate local South African payment gateways?
Yes. We regularly integrate PayFast, Peach Payments, Yoco, Ozow, SnapScan, and Mastercard Payment Gateway Services. For Shopify we set up the Shopify Payments bridge where available or wire up a third-party gateway with 3DS. All our ecommerce builds also include SARS-compliant VAT invoicing (15%) and proper tax line handling for zero-rated and exempt goods.
Do you handle Takealot, Bob Shop, or Loot integrations?
Yes. We build and maintain marketplace feeds for Takealot Marketplace, Superbalist, Bob Shop, and Amazon.co.za. The feed syncs your Shopify inventory so you do not double-sell, and we handle the SKU mapping and image requirements each marketplace has its own fussy rules about.
How do you approach Shopify theme development?
We build on Shopify Online Store 2.0 using the Dawn theme as a foundation, then customise liquid, sections, and app blocks to match your brand. For performance-first builds we go headless with Hydrogen or Oxygen. We do not sell pre-made themes — every store is designed from scratch in Figma, then built with clean, upgradeable code your next developer will not curse us for.
What is the cost of building a Shopify store in South Africa?
A properly designed Shopify build from EcomSolve typically runs R90,000 to R260,000 ex VAT. That covers design, development, theme customisation, payments and shipping setup, product uploads (up to 100 SKUs), marketing pixel setup, and a training handover. Migrations from WooCommerce or Magento usually add R30,000 to R70,000 depending on data volume and URL complexity.
Serious about the store? Let us plug the leaks.
Send your domain and your last three months of GA4 or Shopify revenue. We reply with an honest assessment of what is worth fixing first, usually within a day. No pitch deck.