Store owners ask for a Shopify developer when they mean a designer, and for a designer when the job is code. I understand why. From the outside both people change how the store looks.
They are different jobs. Hire the wrong one and you pay twice: once for the work, and again for someone else to finish it.
I do both. I design Skin Boutique Online, a skincare store on Shopify, and I write its theme code. So I see where one job stops and the other starts every week. This is how I would explain it to a store owner.
What a Shopify designer does
A designer decides what the customer sees and in what order.
That covers the headline on the homepage, which product comes first, how big the photos are, where the reviews sit and what the product page says before the price. It also covers the type, the colours and how the store reads on a phone.
Most of this work happens in the theme editor. A current Shopify theme lets you add sections, reorder them and change their settings with no code at all. A good designer can take a healthy theme a long way with those tools alone.
The designer’s result is a store that makes sense to someone who has never heard of you.
What a Shopify developer does
A developer makes the store do things the theme cannot do by itself.
Shopify themes are written in Liquid, with HTML, CSS and JavaScript around it. A developer works in those files. Typical jobs:
- a section your theme does not have, such as an ingredient table or a routine shown in steps
- a product page that changes with the product type
- an app that has to be connected, or removed without leaving its code behind
- a slow page that has to load faster
- a move from an old theme to a new one without losing content
The developer’s result is a store that works the same on every page and that your team can still edit afterwards.
Where the two overlap
The overlap is the theme editor and the small code changes around it.
A designer who can write some CSS will fix spacing and type without calling anyone. A developer with a good eye will make sensible layout choices without a mock-up. For a small store that overlap is often enough.
The trouble starts at the edges. A designer hands over a layout the theme cannot produce, and the developer builds something close to it. Or a developer builds exactly what was asked, and nobody checked whether a customer can follow it. In both cases the store owner ends up in the middle, translating.
How to tell which one you need
Start from the problem. The job title comes second.
You probably need a designer if:
- visitors arrive and leave without looking at a product
- the homepage does not say what you sell
- the photos, the banners and the product pages look like three different stores
- you have a current theme and have never been through its settings properly
You probably need a developer if:
- you know what the page should look like and the theme will not let you build it
- something is broken: a variant picker, a cart, a section that disappears on a phone
- an app slowed the store down
- you are moving to a new theme and want nothing lost
You need both if you are redesigning the store and the design asks for sections the theme does not have. That is most redesigns.
One test helps. Write down the three changes you want most. For each one, ask whether you could do it in the theme editor if you had a free afternoon. If yes, it is design work. If no, it is code.
Hiring one person for both
There is a reason to hire one person who does both, and a risk.
The reason is that nothing gets lost between the drawing and the build. I design a section knowing what Liquid can do, so I do not draw things I would later have to water down. And when I write the code I know why the section exists, so I do not build a version that is technically correct and useless to the customer.
The risk is that one person is rarely equally strong at both. Ask to see a store they designed and ask which parts of it they coded. Then ask how your team will edit those parts later. A custom section should have its own settings in the theme editor, so you can change the text and images without the person who built it.
Also ask where they do the work. Changes should be made in a copy of your theme, not in the live one. You look at the copy, you approve it, and only then does it go live.
The rest of the questions are in how to hire a Shopify designer.
What I would do first
Before you hire anyone, open your store on a phone and try to buy your best seller. Note every place where you hesitate.
Then sort the notes. The ones about what the page says and shows go to a designer. The ones about what the page does go to a developer.
If the list has both kinds, that is the work I take on. Here is what I do for Shopify stores, and here is where to start a project.
