A developer wants a cut of my sales instead of a flat fee to redesign my store, is that normal?
A developer offered to redesign my store and handle technical fixes for a cut of future sales instead of a flat fee. Is that normal, and how do I even scope a redesign project properly?
What's going on
A merchant posts in a Shopify Facebook group that their store needs a redesign plus broader technical help, and mentions a developer who wants to be paid a percentage of sales going forward instead of a flat project fee or hourly rate. The post draws a strong response because it touches two problems merchants run into constantly: not knowing how to scope a redesign so it actually improves the business, and not knowing whether a revenue-share arrangement with a contractor is normal or a bad deal.
The real issue usually isn't simply needing a redesign. It's that three different problems have been bundled into one ask: the store looks dated or converts poorly, which is a design problem; something technical is broken or missing, which is a development problem; and sales aren't where the merchant wants them, which is often a marketing or conversion problem that a redesign alone doesn't fix. A vague, bundled ask like this is exactly what invites a vague, high-risk compensation offer like a percentage of sales, because there's no clean way to price or verify the work otherwise.
Why it happens
Shopify doesn't provide a built-in workflow for scoping a project or vetting a contractor. It gives you a Partner Directory to find help and a speed report to measure performance, but defining redesign, technical help, and more sales as separate, measurable deliverables is left entirely to the merchant. Without that separation, both sides tend to default to loose terms, and loose terms invite loose, riskier compensation structures like revenue share.
Percentage-of-sales offers also show up because building a portfolio is valuable to newer or unproven developers. A revenue-share deal gets them store access and a case study without the merchant paying much upfront, which can look attractive to a cash-conscious merchant even though it shifts risk in ways that are hard to unwind later.
5 ways to fix it
Get a written scope before anyone talks about price
Split the ask into separate, named pieces: visual and theme redesign, technical work such as custom code or app integrations, and conversion or performance goals. Ask any developer you're considering for a scoped statement of work tied to each piece, with concrete deliverables and a way to check them off later, such as specific templates redesigned or specific bugs fixed. A vague request to redesign the store and help sales is the most common reason these arrangements go wrong, because nobody can later verify whether the work actually happened.
Treat a percentage-of-sales fee as a red flag, not a discount
A developer who wants a cut of your revenue instead of a flat fee or hourly rate is effectively asking to become an unpaid-until-later business partner without a partner's accountability. Ask upfront how sales would be defined and tracked, whether the percentage keeps running after they stop touching the store, and what happens if the redesign doesn't move any numbers. Most established Shopify developers and agencies price by project or retainer, precisely because revenue share is hard to audit and rewards them whether the change was genuinely good work or just aggressive discounting.
Check your store's speed report before paying anyone to fix performance
Shopify shows a store speed score in the admin under Online Store, based on your home page, top product page, and top collection page, along with a comparison to similar stores. Check this before hiring anyone for performance work. It tells you whether the real problem is something a good developer can fix quickly, like bloated apps or unoptimized images, or a genuinely bigger project. Be wary of a redesign proposal that never mentions your actual current score.
Vet through Shopify's Partner Directory, then verify with references
Shopify runs a Partner Directory where you can find developers, designers, and conversion specialists and filter by service type, budget, and location. Being listed there is a floor, not a guarantee of fit. Ask any candidate for two or three references from similar redesign projects, and ask those merchants what happened to their conversion rate after launch, not just how the finished site looks.
If you agree to a flat fee, tie part of it to milestones you can check
A middle ground between hourly billing and revenue share is a fixed project fee split across milestones, such as design approval, a staging build, launch, and a short post-launch fix period, with a small portion held back until that final period confirms nothing broke. This gives you leverage without tying your ongoing revenue to a contractor indefinitely.
Bottom line
There's no Shopify setting that solves needing a redesign and not knowing how to structure the help; this is a scoping and contracting problem first, and a technical one second. Check your store's speed report to see whether the real issue is performance rather than design, split the redesign and technical work into separate deliverables you can verify, and be skeptical of any percentage-of-sales arrangement, since it's rarely how established Shopify developers price work and makes it much harder to tell later whether the money was well spent. If the underlying issue turns out to be page speed or tracking rather than the design itself, a narrowly scoped fix is usually cheaper than a full redesign engagement.
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