Shopify Store Management & VA
A developer who runs the store: theme code and the day's orders in the same afternoon. Setup, listings, apps, migration and SEO, with five regional stores run for one brand.
Store setup, theme work, product listings, apps, orders and SEO. Handled by a developer, not a checklist follower.
There is a gap in the Shopify market. On one side, virtual assistants who can upload products but cannot touch Liquid. On the other, agencies who will rebuild your theme for five figures but will not answer a question about a stuck order. I sit in the middle. I will edit the theme code and process the day's orders in the same afternoon.
My rate is $10 per hour. There is no agency margin on top, because there is no agency. You are hiring the person doing the work. For defined projects I quote a fixed price up front, so the number does not move unless the scope does. For ongoing work, a weekly block you can scale up or down.
What store management covers that a VA does not
Store setup and theme customisation
New store from scratch, or surgery on the one you have. I work directly in Liquid, so changes go beyond what the theme editor exposes. Custom sections, collection layouts, product page rework, hover-swap product images, region-specific banners. I built the full Shopify stores for Adaptive Automate, a tech accessories retailer, and Synful Novelties, a lingerie brand that needed editorial design and discreet-packaging messaging.
Product listings and merchandising
Titles, descriptions, variants, metafields, image ordering and collection logic. Done for conversion, not just completeness. Product titles get written for how people search, not how your supplier named the SKU.
Apps, integrations and the ones to avoid
Most struggling Shopify stores I open have eleven apps installed and four doing anything. I audit what is there, remove the dead weight, and configure what is left. Reviews, subscriptions, upsells, loyalty, shipping rules, referral and affiliate programs. I have built cashback, referral and partner program pages as custom Shopify landing pages rather than paying monthly for an app to render them.
Orders, fulfilment and customer messages
Daily order processing, tracking updates, supplier coordination and customer replies. The routine work that keeps a store from quietly leaking refunds.
On-page SEO for Shopify
Collection and product page titles, meta descriptions, alt text, internal linking between collections, and structured data. Shopify's defaults leave a lot on the table, especially on collection pages, which are usually a store's strongest ranking opportunity and usually the most neglected.
Running five regional stores for one brand
For DECKO I manage five Shopify stores across Australia, Germany, Hungary, New Zealand and the United States.
Same brand in every region, with five product sets, five currencies, five sets of shipping rules and five audiences.
A room visualiser page across all five regions, plus cashback, B2B partners and affiliate pages.
A theme change has to land the same way in every region, and product data has to stay aligned across five catalogues.
Anything hardcoded in one region eventually breaks in another. If you are running more than one storefront, that is the experience you are hiring.
Week to week
- 01Access and auditStaff access to the store, then a pass over the theme, the app list, the collection structure and the order queue, with what I find written down.
- 02Clear the backlogThe stuck orders, the broken links, the app conflicts and the listings that were never finished. The routine work first, so the store stops leaking.
- 03Fix the themeTheme work starts once the backlog is clear, so a Liquid change is not competing with an unshipped order.
- 04Merchandising and SEOTitles, descriptions, variants, metafields, alt text, internal links between collections and structured data. Collection pages first, because they are usually the strongest opportunity and the most neglected.
- 05A weekly rhythmOrders and customer messages daily, a change log weekly, and a standing list of what is worth doing next.
Store management or a Shopify virtual assistant?
A Shopify virtual assistant handles the queue: uploads, orders, replies. Useful, and often all a small store needs.
What a VA usually cannot do is edit Liquid, debug a theme conflict after an app update, write a custom section, fix Core Web Vitals, or restructure a collection for search. That is the line where store management starts.
I do both, which means one person instead of two, and no handover gap when a task turns out to need code.
Recent Shopify work
There is also a demo storefront if you would like to see theme customisation work without a client NDA in the way. Password available on request.
Before hiring
Do you work on my existing store or only new builds?
Both. Most of my Shopify work is on stores that already exist and need someone to take them seriously.
Can you edit theme code, or only use the Shopify editor?
Theme code. Liquid, CSS and JavaScript, on a duplicated theme so nothing goes live until you have seen it.
Do you handle more than one store or region?
Yes. I currently manage five regional stores for one brand across four countries.
Will you handle daily orders and customer emails too?
Yes, that is included in a management retainer.
Can you improve my store's Google rankings?
I handle on-page SEO: titles, meta descriptions, alt text, collection structure, internal linking and structured data. That is the part inside the store. Link building and content marketing are separate work.
How fast do you respond?
Within 24 hours on weekdays. I am on Philippine Standard Time, UTC+8, which overlaps well with Australian and Asian business hours.
Built with this service
Other ways I can help
I build software, and I measure whether it works.
The same questions I research are the ones I ask on client builds: is it reliable, is it fast, is it easy to use, and is it secure. Those four drove satisfaction in my ICT portal study, and they shape how I scope and test every project.