# WordPress & Shopify Development

> WordPress and Shopify development services: custom themes, WooCommerce, and headless storefronts engineered for speed, checkout, and revenue. By Sentient Arc.

Custom WordPress and Shopify engineering: lean themes, WooCommerce builds, and headless storefronts measured on page speed, checkout completion, and revenue.

## The theme was cheap. The debt is not.
Most stores start on a purchased theme and thirty plugins, and it works, briefly. Then the stack starts taxing you: pages slow down, plugins conflict, and the checkout behaves in ways nobody chose.

Because the platform makes everything look configurable, the debt stays invisible until it shows up where it hurts: Core Web Vitals, conversion rate, and every redesign quote.

## Custom where it counts, lean everywhere
We replace sprawl with intent: a lean custom theme, purpose-built plugins only where a real requirement exists, and platform-native features used before anything is bolted on.

Where a storefront needs more than themes can give, we decouple it: the frontend becomes an engineered application while Shopify or WordPress keeps doing what it is good at, content and commerce.

## What we build
- **Theme & plugin engineering**: Handwritten themes and only the extensions a real requirement justifies, so the stack stays fast and debuggable.
- **WooCommerce & Shopify stores**: Full store builds: catalog architecture, payments, shipping logic, and a checkout tuned to convert.
- **Headless commerce**: Decoupled storefront architecture that keeps Shopify or WordPress as the backend your team already runs.
- **Replatforming & migrations**: Store moves with URLs, structured data, and order history carried over intact, staged and reversible.

## Stack
- **Platforms:** Shopify, WordPress, WooCommerce
- **Builds:** Liquid, Custom themes, Headless commerce, Next.js frontends
- **Commerce:** Payment integration, Checkout optimization, Core Web Vitals

## FAQ
**What is included in your WordPress and Shopify development services?**

Custom theme and plugin development, full WooCommerce and Shopify store builds, headless storefronts, and replatforming, engineered against speed and conversion metrics rather than feature checklists.

**When is headless commerce worth it?**

When template performance caps your conversion or your frontend ambitions outgrow the theme layer. Below that threshold a lean custom theme is cheaper and easier to run, and we will recommend it.

**Can you replatform a store without losing traffic?**

That is what the process is built to protect. Every URL gets mapped and redirected, structured data is preserved, and the cutover is staged, so search equity and order history make the move with the store.

**Do you optimize existing stores or only build new ones?**

Both. Speed and checkout audits on an existing store are a common starting point: fixing the theme and plugin layer often recovers conversion before any redesign is needed.

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Canonical page: https://www.sentientarc.com/capabilities/wordpress-shopify-development