The problem wasn’t just the website.
Customers liked the service. The friction sat around it: changing an order, understanding delivery, managing subscriptions and keeping the digital experience connected to what actually happened on the road.
Before spending more on acquisition, I prioritised fixing the service and the operating foundation underneath it.
Move to a platform the business could actually own.
I compared the existing WooCommerce setup with Shopify and defined what the new system needed to support: self-service subscriptions, delivery rules, migration, tracking and day-to-day administration.
External developers built the initial Shopify implementation. I defined the product and operational requirements, sourced and coordinated the team, managed scope and led QA from the client side.
The goal wasn’t maximum customisation. It was a system the business could maintain.
Checkout was only the start.
A customer’s postcode determined whether we could deliver and which day they belonged to. That date then had to stay consistent across their subscription, order creation, routing, driver workflow and customer communications.
I built the logic connecting those pieces using Shopify Flow, tags, metafields, EasyRoutes, Loop and Klaviyo.
Subscription and delivery systems: postcode to doorstep
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Not every edge case needs another system.
Subscription billing could drift away from the physical delivery date in some scenarios.
I explored more automated technical options, then weighed the benefit against the extra cost and maintenance. We chose a proportionate solution rather than adding complexity the business would have to carry indefinitely.
Make the next decision measurable.
I defined the tracking requirements, brought in an analytics specialist and then validated purchase and subscription-signup tracking across the live service.
That gave us a usable foundation for later Brisbane expansion, referrals, offer testing and paid acquisition.
Fewer handoffs for everyday changes.
The first rebuild followed a familiar pattern: research, design, specification, developer, QA.
Over time I started making more changes directly. AI, Shopify and automation tools let me move from a problem to configuration or code, testing and release without creating a developer handoff every time.
I still used specialist developers where the problem genuinely needed specialist depth.
The point was not to remove expertise; it was to stop paying the cost of a handoff when one wasn’t necessary.
What changed
- Shopify commerce and self-service subscriptions in production
- connected delivery routing and delivery-day logic
- customer communications connected to operations
- validated ecommerce and campaign tracking
- more everyday changes handled internally
- lower dependency on external specialists for routine changes