Kelly Loves
We’re more than just a Shopify Plus agency, we’re your rocket fuel.
Design & UX Web Development Marketing
Shopify Plus Design, Build & Growth Marketing
Shopify Plus Design & Build
Growth Marketing
Custom Shopify Plus Design, Build & Replatform
Liverpool is a European city, a second home for our Irish cousins, home to the oldest Chinese community in Europe and the USA’s 51st state. Always comfortable with the international, Liverpool has given the world some of its best musicians, actors and writers, it gave us football nets, the hovercraft, overhead rail and much more besides.
Now it’s home to Velstar, a dedicated development agency which began life in 2016, producing outstanding Shopify and Shopify Plus websites. In the years that followed, however, clients often stated that they were struggling to find a marketing partner that truly understood ecommerce.
In order to meet the growing needs of our clients, Velstar instead acquired the outstanding We Influence, a digital marketing agency dedicated to ecommerce excellence. This has allowed the agency to quickly begin partnering in the continued growth of clients, and deliver whatever they need to go big.
We build unique sites, complex integrations and middleware solutions, according to the needs of your business. We develop marketing strategies to match your ambitions. To do all this, we need to get to know you a little better.
That’s why our projects always start by developing an understanding of where you are, what you need and where you want to be. And always with a cup of tea or coffee.
Our incredible developers (they’ve got awards and everything), then use the knowledge we’ve built during our research period and work in partnership with our awesome design team to create and iterate.
We do this until we have created the website you need, all while making sure it’s user friendly for both you and your customers. And, importantly, that it drives sales and improves conversions.
This is no normal launch, we’re not talking a quick debugging before we push the go-live button. We have a team of dedicated QAs who will do their best to break every page in every way possible (they’re nice other than that).
Only once they’re happy, and our SEO experts say your new site is ready to rank, will we let the world see your brand’s beautiful new home on the web.
A glorious new web presence is great, but it also unlocks a world of new opportunities. Our marketing team – full of PPC pros, SEO specialists, design divas and content (uh) cwizards, can help take your brand forward, whether that’s with conquering new product groups or new territories. Your ambition is the limit.
Our in-house expertise, bolstered by 30 additional colleagues will ensure that your visibility, conversions, and retention power further success for your brand
We’ve been lucky to team up with some incredible brands. Some of them are household names, some are just starting out on their way there, but all of them have been able to take their next ambitious steps thanks to Velstar’s design, development and marketing.
We’ve got bags of talent, heaps of experience, and other obscure measurements of the good things you need to grow your business. As an agency specifically built to be Shopify focused, we offer a unique resource of Shopify talent across design development and marketing. Once you’re convinced that Shopify is the platform for you, our experts work with you to ensure the platform delivers everything you need to keep growing.
We know online success is more than just a well-designed website with a neat user experience. It’s about optimising performance throughout the whole customer journey. From awareness, right through to advocacy, we cover it all.
We hire the best people and are growing all the time to make Velstar your ecommerce analgesic, soothing the many headaches of operating and growing an ecommerce brand. Our mix of talent and passion makes us the perfect choice for ambitious ecommerce businesses looking to level up.
It’s our job to help you succeed, and we’ll invest in doing exactly that.
We know that if we do great work, our clients succeed online – and that success leads to those clients trusting us to do more great work. Combined with a commitment to clear and transparent communication (stuff goes wrong sometimes – it’s our job to fix it, not make excuses) our approach has allowed us to become growth partners for many of our clients
The big tech companies can move quickly due to dedicated quality assurance teams. We’ve brought this best-practice to web development. We’ve built apps to help streamline procurement and delivery for some of the biggest brands online. We challenge ourselves every day to do what we do a little bit better.
Dan SheardWith more than 20 years of website design and development experience, including within the complex, regulation heavy world of finance for HSBC. Dan founded Velstar in 2016 and, as CEO, has grown the business to more than 60 staff, with offices in Liverpool and Miami, as well as overseeing the acquisition of WeInfluence.
Graham WitheGraham has been a prominent member of the digital marketing community for decades, and has founded and grown several successful agencies. Following the acquisition of We Influence, which he founded in 2017, Graham became the Managing Director for Marketing at Velstar where he oversees the agency’s growth offering.
Barry KilbyNamed European Developer of the Year 2022, Barry has built businesses as well as websites for decades before joining Velstar in 2019 where he acts as Technical Director. An extremely talented engineer and in-house font of coding knowledge, Barry’s work-ethic and passion have brought hard-to-hire quality to Velstar’s web-builds.
Nicole DelaneyNicole joined the business in 2022 with exceptional credentials in the Shopify space - having worked both for Shopify itself and one of its key solutions providers. With a decade of top-level commercial experience already under her belt, Nicole made an immediate impact on the Velstar team and has been vital to its rapid growth since.
Gavin ParkinsonBeginning as a web designer back in 1999, Gavin established himself across the full spectrum of digital skills before turning his hand to client services at WeInfluence in 2019. Now Velstar’s Client Services Director, Gavin ensures that the agency’s world revolves around the visions and needs of our clients - ensuring the agency’s growth through retention and growth of client relationships.
Frederik OpedweeghAn approachable, knowledgeable polyglott, Frederik joined Velstar as a Commercial Manager in 2022 where he has worked to build and grow relationships with external partners, develop new business opportunities and begun preparing the agency’s first steps into new territories.
Barry GoffettBarry has worked on front end development since achieving sensational results in various academic courses in IT and development up to a first class BSc in 2011. He was eventually snapped up by Velstar in 2018 where he has gone on to become the Head of Development, working with the agency’s most prestigious clients.
Chris ArrowsmithChris began his career at the phenomenal Usborne Publishing, before working with global brands such as Coca-Cola, Heineken, Sky and many more as a graphic designer. Chris joined Velstar in 2018 where he has since become Head of Design - overseeing the creation of eye-catching designs that work for both brand and customer alike.
Vince HollywoodVince has been working as a developer for more than 15 years and, in that time, has worked with some of the most recognisable brands in the UK and Europe. Since joining Velstar, Vince has become an integral part of the development team and has risen to become Head of Back End Development.
