Tech debt. Slow speeds. A marketing team with their hands tied. Got a Shopify Plus site that feels like more pain than gain? If so, you’re probably considering the pros and cons of replacing your theme versus fixing what you already have in place.
Here’s how to assess if you’ve outgrown your Shopify Plus theme and decide whether to refactor your current theme or start over.
4 Signs Your Shopify Plus Theme is Holding You Back
For many of the Shopify Plus brands we work with, the tipping point of this decision usually comes when a brand identity update is on the horizon. The website will need to be updated. But that’s easier said than done when you’re bottlenecked by tech debt.
That’s usually when we hear, “it just feels like this site wasn’t built right.”
Tech debt often revolves around the theme since most customization occurs on the front end. When this tech debt gets out of hand, it starts to hold you back.
We've noticed a few red flags that show when tech debt is becoming a real problem:
#1: You have a heavily customized theme.
If your Shopify Plus theme is so tailored to your business, there may be workarounds built in and shortcuts taken on best practices for maintainability and upgrades. Your Shopify Plus theme isn’t suitable for the future – and that needs to change.
2#: Slow loading.
Shoppers want quick and easy experiences, and they won't stick around for a sluggish site. Poor page load time may mean your theme has accumulated technical debt or you’ve outgrown your current theme.
—www.shopify.dev
#3: Your marketers can’t steer the site.
All tasks seem to require development hours. Our internal team needs to work at a faster pace. Why can’t marketing take the reins and accelerate?
If you’ve said any of this before, then you already know how marketing can drive your brand, revenue, conversion rates, and average order value. Development hours don't usually quite measure up in the same way. Especially when those hours are spent wrangling a suboptimal Shopify theme.
Your Shopify Plus site should help you allocate resources where you’ll get the most ROI. Your end goal? Less low-value work and more high-value work. Focus on efforts that significantly impact your commerce revenue and operations.
#4: Your design system is poorly maintained or non-existent.
Slacking on your Shopify design system is like inviting chaos to the party. You’re probably struggling with inconsistent branding and user experience. Not having that solid foundation can mean confused users, less trust in your brand, longer development times, higher costs to maintain, and scaling headaches. Plus, without a design system, developers are basically left reinventing the wheel every time they build something.
Refactor vs. Redesign: Picking the Right Path
If you’re experiencing any of the pain points above, you may be at a crossroads. There are two paths forward for your Shopify Plus theme: refactoring the existing site or going all-in on a new theme.
Check out the framework we used to evaluate technical debt and help a Shopify Plus merchant (a beauty brand at a global consumer goods company) decide what to do.
Step #1: Start With a Site Audit
The competitor baseline here is built from similar client beauty brands as a benchmark. It stands as an example of the evaluation criteria to go through in an audit.
Start your audit by reviewing these critical areas. You'll define each item as “unstable” or “ok to reuse.”
- Theme and Designs: While checking out the theme base and design system, we also assessed whether dreadful page builder tools were in use and if all the store templates were converted to 2.0 already or not.
- JavaScript and CSS Health: Taking a look under the hood, we targeted areas for clean-up, including unused apps.
- Commerce Ahead of the Curve: For these Shopify Plus merchants, maximizing revenue meant prioritizing the checkout process.They needed to migrate from the soon-to-be-sunsetted checkout.liquid to Checkout Extensibility. (By the end of 2025, Checkout Extensibility will be the only way to customize your Shopify checkout process.)
Step #2: Decision Time
Now you have your site audit, it’s time to answer the question: should you throw away what you have and build new? Or is it worth saving? Be sure to look at your budget, timeline, and design needs when deciding the best way forward, and make sure that it can be future-proof as well. Consider the impact on your site speed, editorial experience, and how fast things get done in development.
For the Shopify Plus merchant in this example, the best path forward was to refactor. This way, they maintain the same look and feel on the surface (they had an optimal UX and many custom promotional logic built-in to their theme), but eliminate their technical debt. They won’t see the change, but they’ll feel it in performance gains.
Making the right call for your site
The impact of technical debt on your Shopify Plus store performance, marketing efforts, and overall growth can be huge. Where to go with your theme – whether you renovate or tear it down and build new – isn’t an easy decision. That’s where Third and Grove can help.
At TAG, we’re experts in eliminating tech debt, cleaning house and improving functionality and performance on Shopify Plus storefronts. Feeling stuck on where to go next? Give us a shout. We’re not afraid to tell you what path makes the most sense.