Shopify Development, SEO, and Paid Media delivered by one Shopify Premier Partner team.
When you reach a certain point in your growth journey, you are managing a development partner, SEO agency, and paid media agency. Each one has its own objectives, its own ways of working, and its own roadmap. Theme changes go live without the paid agency knowing, and SEO issues never get prioritised as the developers have their own set of objectives they're working towards.
Our Shopify developers, SEOs, and paid media experts work on a single roadmap, with shared KPIs. They prioritise based on what is most valuable to your business, rather than what is in their channel roadmap.
We work across all three services, but if you have a need for a single service, we can start there.
Shopify brands who want to scale choose Herd
Each of our three services can be delivered individually, or can be combined to create a single Growth Retainer, allowing your team to spend less time managing agencies, and more time focused on merchandising the site.
We can start with the area that you need support in most and when the numbers make sense, expanding into other areas over time.
A team of designers, developers, and Shopify engineers delivering against an agreed roadmap, with clear KPIs. Our roadmaps typically include new feature creation, conversion and basket size improvements, integrations, app assessments, page speed enhancements, and site maintenance.
We build using Shopify's native functionality wherever possible, which keeps monthly app costs to a minimum, and page speed fast. We build sections including reusable components so that your eCommerce and merchandising teams can do their jobs, without needing development support. Find out more about our Shopify development approach.
Technical SEO, content, and Digital PR managed within a single organic media team. We use our Discover, Demonstrate, Demand framework that powers our Shopify GEO work. We make our clients visible in Google and AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Gemini, and focus our efforts on the products or services that deliver the greatest returns for the business first.
Our SEO experts are used to working in Shopify on a daily basis, and work hand in glove with our developers, meaning when a technical change is needed, we brief it, spec it, and ship it efficiently.
Our Paid Media team work across the platforms your audience are using on a daily basis to be inspired, and be moved through the conversion journey. Whether your audience uses Google, Meta, TikTok or another platform, we build the right structure, manage the campaigns, and focus on delivering profit over vanity metrics.
Before we make a change to your ad setup, we want to understand the finances that power your business. Products or categories with the highest margin, the cost of goods sold, return rates, and everything else that impacts what we can afford to spend to acquire a customer.
We understand the economics behind your business, and make sure we push that data back into ad platforms, so their algorithms go after 'good sales' rather than any sales.
As part of our retained Shopify services, we can also offer consultancy across an array of areas. From choosing the right technology, to understanding what the right digital marketing strategy is for your business.
We start by understanding your business and objectives, your internal setup, the technology that you use, and your market and customers, and then advise on the right approach for growth, be that market share or profit.
Many of our clients start with a single service, where they have a gap in what their agencies deliver, or where their internal teams don't have the time. When we think that adding a second would have a commercial benefit, we'll have that conversation with you and show you the commercial reasoning.
When you expand your services, your core account team stays the same, and we build the service into the current roadmap.
Four stages. One onboarding approach. Whether you work with us for one service or three.
Every retainer starts with the same onboarding process. The aim is to get under the hood of your business, and understand the opportunities, challenges, and how we make you more money.
We start by reviewing your market, audience, and your performance, before assessing your store and your channel setup.
We agree the tactics that we'll deploy to deliver growth, through a prioritised roadmap, with clear KPIs and deadlines against it. The roadmap will make clear the choices we will make and tactics we'll double down on first. For PDHSports, we spotted the padel growth early and our roadmap aligned to this.
Our roadmap will have clear KPIs, delivery dates and agreed cadence for reporting, calls, and face to face meetings.
You'll get access to our planning portal with clear delivery dates and tasks assigned to members of your growth team. Feedback on specific items within the roadmap, drop in new support requirements, or let us run with it.
You'll be assigned an account lead who is responsible for ensuring our delivery aligns to your objectives, and performance is on track, while having access to the developers, designers, and marketers working on your account day to day.
We'll review performance against the numbers that matter to your business, and highlight opportunities or risks, as if it were our own business. We want to measure performance as close to net profit as possible, with channel performance indicators giving the day to day context to performance.
We align our reporting to your needs, be that monthly, weekly, or a different schedule.
Our eCommerce Scorecard is a lite audit of your store, scored out of 100 across four areas.
Presence: Your visibility in organic search and, increasingly, in AI answers.
Foundation: The technical health of the site that sits underneath your marketing.
Experience: What it actually feels like for a customer to shop on your website.
Reputation: What customers say about you once they've made a purchase.
What you'll receive:
Shopify retainer FAQs
Can we retain you for one service?
Yes. Development, SEO and paid media can be scoped and priced as their own retainer. You can start with one and keep your existing agencies for the others.
Will you work alongside other agencies?
Yes. If you retain us for a single service, we'll agree with your other agencies who owns what, and how we best communicate to help your business. We'll make sure all jobs have an owner and roles and responsibilities are clear, whether it's a landing page build for a campaign, or a new product launch that requires promotion.
Can we change the mix of services?
Yes. You can add an additional service at any time. If you'd like to rebalance your retainer, and your suggestion meets our minimum requirements per service, this is something we can look at with notice.
Do you only work with Shopify brands?
Our Growth Retainer and development retainer services are specific to brands already on the Shopify platform. If you are looking to migrate to Shopify, we can help. If you are looking for paid media or SEO support, we do support brands on different eCommerce platforms.
Who will we work with day to day?
You will have a named client strategist who is responsible for ensuring we are delivering work that helps meet your objectives, and is aligned to our overall strategy. You'll also have direct access to the specialists working on your account, be that SEO, paid media, or development.
If you'd prefer to read more on our approach first, our Shopify Growth Playbook sets out how we approach growth on the platform. Read contributions from technology partners at the forefront of the industry, including Salesfire, Yotpo, Gorgias and more.
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