Almost every Shopify store we are asked to rescue has the same history: a theme was bought, then customised in a hurry, then customised again by somebody else, until updating it became a risk nobody wanted to take.
The fix is not more discipline later. It is a small number of decisions at the start.
Build sections, not one-off pages
If the marketing team cannot compose a new landing page from existing blocks, they will ask a developer every time — and each request adds another one-off template. Custom sections cost more up front and stop that cycle.
Count the apps
Each app is a script, a stylesheet and a dependency you do not control. Three apps solving adjacent problems usually cost more in load time than one piece of custom work, and they keep costing it every month.
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