Consulting
Scope before you sign.
Most consulting engagements here start the same way — a fixed-scope, fixed-price assessment that gets you to a defensible decision in three meetings. Below: the Plus-Fit Assessment, the Implementation Support retainer, and the problem spaces I help scope.
Core engagement
Plus-Fit Assessment
£3,500 · fixed scope, fixed price
Three meetings, three written deliverables, one honest read on whether Shopify Plus is the right call for the project you're scoping. Designed for merchants and product teams sitting on an agency quote — or about to ask for one.
I work alongside several of the major enterprise delivery agencies, but I'm not owned by any of them. The agency I route you to is the one I'd actually pick for your project. And if the answer is "don't do it yet," that's the answer you get.
What three meetings can do: surface the right questions, name the trade-offs, and produce the key points your team will include in your scope document. What it can't do: produce a finished scope document, a build estimate, or a guarantee. The Assessment is the spine, not the body.
Capacity: I take on roughly one Plus-Fit Assessment per month so each one gets undivided attention. If you have a fixed deadline, book ahead. All engagements require pre-payment, invoiced via Meta-You Consulting UK Ltd.
Three deliverables
- 01
Shopify Plus alignment
Is Plus the right call vs. Advanced, vs. headless, vs. a different platform entirely? Written, with the criteria and the trade-offs.
- 02
Complexity & sizing
What kind of project is this really — small, medium, large, or "don't do it yet"? Where the integration footprint actually lives, and what an honest budget tier looks like.
- 03
Key points for your scope document
The spine of what your scope document should cover — the questions to ask, the trade-offs to name, the gotchas to look out for. Your team owns the final document; the Assessment gives you the bones.
Estimate · Shopify migration
Weeks saved · risks we mitigate.
Pattern-matched from large Shopify Plus migrations I've watched go from initial call to launch. Adjust the inputs to see what typically comes up at your stage — and what the Plus-Fit Assessment mitigates.
Estimated saving
4.2 weeks
of pre-build thrash, re-scoping, and stakeholder back-and-forth
Most savings happen pre-RFP. The later you book, the smaller the window.
Blast radius if you don't catch it
1× the cost of a pre-RFP fix
Caught before any quote. The cheapest moment to discover anything.
Risks I help mitigate at this stage
Risks accumulate as you wait — each group below is added the longer you delay booking.
Numbers are illustrative. Real savings depend on team size, integration footprint, and how clearly the existing brief defines acceptance. Blast-radius multipliers are calibrated against the IBM Systems Sciences Institute finding that the cost of fixing a requirements defect grows roughly an order of magnitude per development phase. The Plus-Fit Assessment itself is fixed-scope at £3,500 — what you save in calendar time, and avoid in rework, is the upside.
Scope
What's in, what's out.
The Plus-Fit Assessment is fixed-scope on purpose. Here's the envelope, written down — including the bits I deliberately leave alone.
In scope
What I cover
-
Document & RFI review
Pre-meeting questionnaire plus a high-level review of up to 30 pages of your supplied documents (or one RFI). Enough material to come back with a useful platform-fit read in meeting two.
-
Promotions strategy & checkout impact
Promotion tactics that don't survive contact with checkout cost time and money to fix mid-build. We pressure-test each idea against what the platform will and won't allow, before the brief hardens.
-
Systems diagram review
We review your current systems diagram together with your technical leads and any other stakeholders you've identified — current state, gaps, and what the build will need to account for.
-
Data fit check (light-touch)
A high-level read on whether your existing data can power the storefront and rollout you have in mind. For a deeper, living proof-of-concept against your actual data, see the Lightweight Data PoC below — that's its own engagement.
Out of scope
What I won't do
-
Full app recommendation lists
We don't hand you a roster of apps to install before you understand the platform's context. App selection belongs in the final state with the delivery agency, after the integration footprint is settled.
-
Theme picking (custom or off-the-shelf)
Theme choice is your research call, or a conversation for the agency you eventually engage. We're not the right voice on which template to buy.
-
Tax / VAT deep-dive
Tax and VAT mechanics need a tax adviser, not a Shopify advisor. We may flag where it'll bite, but we don't model rates or jurisdictions.
-
Driving cross-functional alignment
We name where the gaps between finance, ops, merchandising and tech sit — but we don't run the change-management programme to close them. That's your internal lead's job.
-
Build-phase engineering
The Assessment ends with key points for your scope document, not code. If you want me to deliver some of the work (typically migrations), that's a separate engagement scoped from the Assessment output.
Who this is for
Teams (or teams-of-teams) working on a medium-to-large Shopify project — typically with an in-house product or eng lead, a merchandising stakeholder, and someone close to the operations or ERP side. If your budget is tighter or the project is genuinely small, say so in the contact note; I'll suggest shortcuts where they exist and tell you when the Assessment isn't the right next step.
Where this fits
Next to agency discovery, not instead of it.
Most delivery agencies run their own discovery phase — typically a show-and-tell plus Q&A, scoped against whatever PM tooling they use. That phase is where the time and attention vortex grows for your team. The Plus-Fit Assessment doesn't replace agency discovery — it gets your org ready to make the most of it when it happens.
Ready, not rushed
Walk into agency discovery prepped — with the core areas the build will need clarification on already named. Low attention at high stakes is a bad combination, and the last-minute rush is where the most expensive trade-offs get made by accident.
Better for you and the agency
A well-informed client has a better experience of both the build and the day-to-day agency interface. The agency gets clearer answers faster; you get fewer surprises. Discovery covers ground instead of bottoming out on basics — and the relationship starts with trust, not tension.
Honest about what I can find
I won't catch everything — three meetings can't replace a full discovery. But pattern-matched from many past projects, I can flag the areas that most often need clarification. When agency discovery starts, you're dialled in rather than learning the questions in real time.
How the three meetings run
Two weeks, three sessions, three documents.
01
Discovery & Plus alignment
Kickoff with your CTO and ecommerce project lead. We discuss the scope you're considering, agree on the data and details I'll need, and send a pre-meeting questionnaire. I review up to 30 pages of supplied documents or one RFI at a high level — enough to come back with a platform-fit read.
→ Deliverable 01 · Shopify Plus alignment
02
Systems review & sizing
I come back to your technical leads and any other stakeholders you've identified with structured written feedback against your responses. We review the systems diagram together, capture comments, and confirm the core features that matter most — enough to size the project honestly.
→ Deliverable 02 · Complexity & sizing
03
Overview document & sign-off
Final Q&A, then I prepare and submit the high-level overview document — including the system diagram — for you to sign off as complete. That's the artefact your team takes into agency discovery.
→ Deliverable 03 · Key points for your scope document
Other services
Alongside the Plus-Fit.
Two smaller engagements that often come up — usually after a Plus-Fit Assessment, sometimes on their own. Both are fixed-scope, fixed-price, and require pre-payment.
Ongoing
Implementation Support retainer
£1,250/month · up to 5 hours
For teams already on Shopify Plus who want a senior pair of eyes on architecture decisions, ad-hoc queries against the instance, and quote reviews when a new piece of work comes in. Most clients add this after the Plus-Fit Assessment; some come for it directly.
- Up to 5 hours of advisory and Shopify-instance query support per month
- Async-first — Slack or email, with calls when needed
- Architecture sanity checks on what your team or agency is shipping
- Cancel anytime, no minimum term
One-off · data-dependent
Lightweight Data PoC
£1,000 · 2 meetings + PoC
A small, living proof-of-concept against your real data to show what your existing catalogue, customer or order data can and can't power as it stands — before the build commits to assumptions about it.
- Meeting one: scoping with your data team — what we're proving, what we'll need
- Direct access to your real data (Shopify, CSV, PIM export, or supplier file)
- A small, living proof-of-concept showing what your data can and can't power as it stands
- Meeting two: playback — walk-through of findings, what to fix vs. what to design around
- Pre-payment in full at booking. We don't start until the data is in hand — no data, no PoC
No data, no PoC. The whole point of the engagement is to look at your actual data, not hypothesise about it. If access can't be arranged, the engagement doesn't start (and the fee is refunded).
Not sure which one fits?
Send a short note about the project. I'll come back within one business day with a clear read on whether the Plus-Fit Assessment, the retainer, or neither is the right next step.