App Stack Audit & Management
Every app scored on cost, script weight, overlap and actual usage. We remove what is redundant and own the relationship with what stays.
Dubai, UAE
Shopify Apps & Ongoing Growth Support in Dubai
A named Shopify team on retainer for Dubai stores carrying two languages, several GCC markets and a courier stack.
Delivered remotely for brands across Dubai and United Arab Emirates.
Scale · Dubai
Why Dubai brands come to us for this
- App audit that finds the duplicate translation, currency, COD and shipping apps bilingual stores accumulate
- Heavy translation and currency scripts replaced with native Markets configuration or a Shopify Function where possible
- Arabic regression testing built into every release, because a routine app update can break right-to-left layout
- Courier and last-mile integration health monitored as a standing backlog item, not investigated after orders fail
- Structural work scheduled into the summer, with a change freeze held through Ramadan and the Eid peaks
Bilingual, multi-market stores collect apps faster than anyone. A translation app, a currency switcher, a COD fee app, an instalment provider app, a second shipping-rules app because the first could not handle a zone, a courier integration per carrier, a review app that does not support Arabic so someone installed a second one that does. Each adds a subscription, a script on the page and another thing that can break the right-to-left layout after an update nobody scheduled. We routinely inherit Dubai stores paying for two apps that solve the same problem in different languages.
The retainer exists so that stops compounding. We take ownership of the stack, score every app on cost, script weight, overlap, Arabic support and actual usage, and replace what we can with native Shopify Markets configuration or a small Function — COD fees and prepayment discounts being the obvious candidates. On a bilingual store this is usually the single largest speed win available, because translation and currency apps tend to be the heaviest scripts loading on your page.
Then a prioritised backlog worked every sprint: a named developer, a named strategist, defined response targets and a monthly report. The recurring UAE-specific items sit permanently in that backlog — Arabic regression testing after every theme or app update, courier and last-mile integration health, market configuration when a new GCC country opens, and seasonal readiness. Not a ticket queue, and not another full rebuild eighteen months after the last one.
Local context
Working across eleven hours, and freezing before Ramadan
Dubai is eleven hours ahead of Albuquerque and there is no version of that which is convenient. Your evening, from around 7pm, is our morning, and that is where the calls go. Everything else runs asynchronously, which means handovers are written properly and questions are anticipated rather than asked, because a missed question costs a day rather than an hour. One thing does work in everyone's favour: since the UAE moved to a Monday-to-Friday working week with a Saturday and Sunday weekend, our working weeks line up, which was not true a few years ago. The retainer's shape then follows the local calendar. Structural work — app consolidation, speed, new market configuration, theme refactors — gets done in the quieter summer. As the October-to-April season builds we shift capacity to merchandising and readiness, and we hold a hard change freeze through Ramadan and the Eid peaks, with the seasonal switches, cutoffs and delivery notices built and tested well before anyone needs them.
Scope
What Apps & Support includes
The same standard of work we run for every client — applied to a Dubai brand’s realities.
Full service detailCustom App & Function Development
Private apps, Shopify Functions and admin extensions built when a subscription stack is more expensive or slower than owning the code.
Theme Maintenance & Speed
Quarterly Core Web Vitals review, dead-code removal, dependency updates and regression testing against Shopify's platform releases.
Priority Bug Support
Named Slack channel with defined response times: two business hours for revenue-blocking issues, one business day for everything else.
Monthly Optimisation Workstream
A ranked backlog of improvements, features and experiments, with an agreed sprint capacity so a fixed number of items ship every month.
Quarterly Roadmap Review
A session on what shipped, what it moved, and what the next quarter should target. Priorities get reset against your commercial plan, not a fixed contract scope.
Scoped and quoted for your Dubai store
We do not work off a rate card. Every Dubai engagement starts with a fixed statement of work — named deliverables, named dates, one number — written after we have looked at your store, not before. If a smaller first step would serve you better, we will say so.
Get this scopedHow it runs
From kickoff to results
Store Health Check
App stack, theme code, speed, integrations and open bug list documented in the first two weeks. You get the findings whether you continue or not.
Stabilise
Redundant apps removed, urgent bugs cleared, monitoring and staging environments set up. Usually pays for a chunk of the first quarter in cancelled subscriptions.
Backlog & Cadence
A shared, ranked backlog and a fixed sprint rhythm. You always know what is in flight, what is next, and what capacity is left.
Ship Monthly
Two-week sprints with a demo and changelog at the end of each. Work is visible in your own board, not hidden in an agency system.
Review & Reprioritise
Monthly reporting on what shipped and what it moved, then a quarterly reset of priorities against your commercial goals.
Proof
Apps & Support results
Anonymised under NDA. Figures pulled from the client’s own analytics.
Supplements (Subscription DTC)
~$4.2M/yr, 60% subscription revenue, 22 SKUs, US · Shopify Plus (Recharge, Klaviyo)
Monthly subscription churn hit 9.4% and the cancel flow was a single button on a hosted page nobody had touched in three years. Support processed 340 subscription changes a month by hand because customers could not do it themselves. The named constraint: no forced logins. The brand refused to gate account access behind a password reset, which ruled out every off-the-shelf portal.
9.4% → 6.1%monthly subscription churnheld for five consecutive months, not a single-month dip
+34%12-month customer LTV$187 to $251 on the subscriber cohort
19% → 38%of revenue from email + SMScategory benchmark for a healthy program is 25-40%
-71%subscription support tickets340/mo to 98/mo after the self-serve portal launched
Outdoor & Sports Gear
~$7M/yr, 480 SKUs, US + EU via Shopify Markets · Shopify Plus (Shopify Markets, 3 regions)
Paid social carried 81% of revenue and CAC had climbed 44% in eighteen months. Organic sat at 2,100 sessions a month against category competitors doing ten times that, and the EU storefront duplicated the US catalogue with no hreflang at all. The named constraint: three national retailers own the head terms with link profiles this brand could not match in a year, so the plan had to win on query depth instead of authority.
+186%organic sessions2,100 to 6,000/mo, branded queries excluded
+21%conversion rate on organic traffic1.9% to 2.3% after the collection and PDP work landed
$61 → $45blended CACorganic share of revenue went from 8% to 24%
+38%revenue year over yearwith paid media spend down 12%
In their words
Clients on this work
$1,900/mo of app spend cancelled
“First month they cancelled eleven apps we were still paying for, just under $1,900 a month, which covered more than half the retainer before they shipped a line of code. The backlog lives in our own board and we rank it together — it is not a bucket of hours that quietly evaporates. Two years in and I have never had to chase a bug fix twice. We are twenty minutes from their office and they still turn up in person for the quarterly, which I appreciated more than I expected to.”
OwnerSporting goods brand, ~$4M/yr · Albuquerque, NM
Verified client, 2025FAQ
Apps & Support in Dubai — your questions
Calls happen in your evening from around 7pm Gulf time, which is our morning, and we keep them for decisions rather than status. Everything else is asynchronous: written handovers at the end of each side's day, a shared backlog you can see at any hour, and enough context in every ticket that we can act without waiting on you. We are honest that this means some questions resolve overnight rather than in ten minutes, so the work is planned to absorb that.
No. ConversionEX is based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with no UAE trade licence, no free zone or mainland entity and no staff in the Emirates. We work with Dubai brands remotely and invoice from the US. If a piece of work legally requires a locally licensed provider, or a physical presence, we will say so and stay out of it rather than find a workaround.
Yes, and it is usually the cleanest way to do it. A new market means catalogue, pricing, currency, language weighting, domain or subfolder routing, shipping rates and payment methods — real work, but sprint-sized once the foundations exist. We scope it against your available capacity so you can see what it displaces before committing, and we flag where the blocker is regulatory rather than technical.
Because right-to-left is the first thing third-party code breaks. An app update that ships new markup, a theme update that touches a section, or a new review or upsell widget can all reverse an alignment or push a drawer off-screen, and the English side will look perfect throughout. We keep an Arabic regression checklist covering navigation, filters, cart, checkout and email, and run it on every release rather than waiting for a customer to report it.
A named developer and strategist, an agreed sprint capacity, priority bug support, app stack management and monthly reporting. Capacity is set in hours per month and rolls over one month if unused. Anything outside scope gets quoted separately before work starts.
Three months, then rolling with thirty days' notice. The three months exists because the first month is mostly stabilisation and you would not see the benefit of the arrangement inside a shorter window. We do not do twelve-month lock-ins.
When the subscription cost exceeds roughly $500 a month, when the app injects scripts that hurt Core Web Vitals, or when you need logic no vendor offers. Below that threshold, buying is almost always the right answer and we will say so.
Next step
Apps & Support for your Dubai brand.
Thirty minutes with the strategist who would actually run your account. We screen-share your store, read your data live, and tell you the three highest-value things we can see from the outside.
Shopify or Shopify Plus stores doing $150k/mo or moreFounder, CEO or eCommerce lead on the callNo deck and no pitch — we open your store instead
Prefer to write it out? [email protected] gets a real reply the same business day, Mon-Fri, 9am-6pm MT.