Shopify care plans and hands-on store operations cover

A store needs looking after, not just building

Launch day is the start of the job, not the end of it. Shopify ships updates constantly. Apps change, and occasionally stop working. A customer finds the one combination of options that breaks the basket. Somebody has to be watching, and in most growing retailers that somebody is the owner, at ten o'clock at night.

Our care plans exist so that it is not you. A plan gives you a team that knows your store, tracked hours each month, and a plain-English report showing where they went and what we would suggest next. If a month looks like it will run over its allowance, we tell you before it does and you decide. The plans and what each includes are on our pricing page.

What a care plan covers

Mostly the unglamorous work that stops small problems becoming expensive ones.

• Updates. Theme and app updates tested before they go live, and Shopify's own changes checked so a new feature does not quietly break an old customisation.
• Fixes. A broken filter, a discount that will not apply, a checkout field that has stopped validating. Fixes come first in the queue.
• Small improvements. The new banner, the extra form field, the landing page for next month's promotion. Too small to quote separately, too important to leave.
• Speed checks. Regular checks on page speed and Core Web Vitals, because stores get slower as images, apps and scripts pile up.
• App audits. A regular look at every app installed: what it costs, what it does and whether you still need it.
• Backups before changes. A copy of the theme taken before any edit, so anything can be undone.

Store operations cover: the part most agencies will not touch

The gap is a retailer doing well enough to need help, but not yet big enough to hire a full-time ecommerce manager. The agency looks after the code. The owner does everything else: listing the new range, chasing the courier, processing the return, answering the where-is-my-order emails. It is exactly the work that slips when things get busy. Store operations cover puts our team into that day-to-day work alongside you, on the same tracked hours.

Listings

New products set up properly: titles, descriptions, variants, images, pricing, collections and SEO fields. Existing listings tidied when they drift. Seasonal ranges loaded in good time and retired when they are done.

Orders and returns

Orders moved through to fulfilment, problem orders chased, address queries sorted, returns and exchanges processed against your policy, refunds issued correctly so the accounts stay clean.

Customer service inbox

Cover for your customer emails on the days or weeks you need it: holidays, peak season, a member of staff leaving. We work from your tone of voice and your policies, and escalate anything we are unsure about rather than guess.

Reporting

A monthly view of how the store is actually doing: sales, conversion, traffic, best and worst sellers, what changed and why, in language that does not need translating.

Why this matters without an ecommerce manager

A full-time ecommerce manager is a serious salary, and for many growing retailers the role does not yet add up to a full-time job. The work still exists, though, and when it is shared around existing staff it gets done late or not at all. Cover gives you the part of an ecommerce manager you actually need, for the hours you need it, from people who also know how the store is built. When the person processing a return notices the returns page is out of date, they can fix that too.

What "replies within the hour" means

One promise on response times, kept simple enough to hold us to it. We are available from 6am to midnight, and an email sent in those hours gets a reply from a person within the hour, usually much faster. Not a ticket number, not a holding message from an account manager. A reply from someone on the team who has read what you sent, telling you what we will do and when.

• Hours means 6am to midnight, UK time. An email sent at 11pm gets a reply that night; one sent at 2am gets a reply first thing.
• Reply means a considered answer, not an acknowledgement. For small things it is usually the fix itself.
• Store down means checkout broken, site unreachable or orders not coming through. These jump the queue, every time.
• Everything else is scheduled against your plan's hours, in the order you tell us matters, with dates you can see.

How a care plan starts

• Store health check, if we did not build the store. Theme, apps, speed, integrations and catalogue, looked at properly. Fixed fee, written report, yours to keep whether or not you go ahead.
• Pick a plan. Plans differ by hours and by whether they include store operations cover. We will tell you plainly which fits, even if it is the smaller one.
• Onboarding. Access set up in your name, your policies and tone of voice written down, and a first month that usually clears a backlog.
• Month by month. Work logged, report sent, priorities reviewed. You can move between plans as the business changes.

Who this is for

Growing UK retailers whose store has become too important to leave to whoever is free. If you have ever lost a weekend to a broken checkout, or have a box of new stock that has waited three weeks to go online, this is the service we built for you.