Under The Hood: Izaac From BS Devshop

How do you explain BS Devshop and what you do to brands that are hearing about you for the first time?

Site speed optimization for Shopify.

It's difficult, it's nerdy, and takes a ton of work. I love it.

It's a particularly misunderstood niche. Everybody has either had a medium-bad experience, or straight up been scammed. In the small group of competent practitioners - most of them are purists. They tell you to delete all your tools, and are trying to get you the fastest site. It's admirable, but it's not our approach.

We coined our philosophy as Revenue First Performance (RFP). Our goal is never to 'make your site fast', it's to stop slow sites leaking revenue. Speed should be a tool to unlock more conversion, and not a goal itself. Deleting a revenue generating app so you can be faster is an anti-pattern.

We're not here to win speed awards, we're here to mitigate the speed penalty that brands pay from aggressive growth.

Was there a specific moment where you realized site speed was a real opportunity and not just a technical issue?

A while back this brand came to us with a speed issue. At this time, we were just a general development agency and didn't specialize in speed. So it was new.

Worst site I've seen... ever.

12s to load the PDP. Killing conversions and ROAS. They literally couldn't scale because when they increased traffic to colder audiences their metrics would drop and bleed cash.

An agency delivered this site (rushed), and it'd clearly been tampered with a lot by freelancers who didn't care. Messy code, bad structure - all the nerd stuff nobody notices.

The more I got into this project, the more I realized how nuanced performance was. At the time we didn't have a lot of work, so I decided to go all in. Way more hours than agreed, the timeline totally ran over. But we kept improving the site and getting better results for the client. Every week I'd say "just give me another week - I can get it tighter".

But the big "aha" moment was watching his ads performance turn around. First time I really saw how much it can affect the bottom line.

Since then I started talking about it on socials, and it resonated with people a lot more than expected. Over the next few months so many people reached out - I was convinced to pivot the agency to site speed.

It's still a misunderstood practice, and there's a lot of education that needs to happen with prospects. But it's a challenge that suits me. I like the work, I like educating, and it solves a real problem.

It's also hard. Nobody else is trying to do it (which I like).

From your perspective, what do most agencies get wrong when it comes to performance work?

Not properly vetting clients.

We've all been there (at least, in our first business). Working with a client who doesn't quite fit the mould. Yes, we can get them results. But no, they can't get our 'case study' results. The 20% CVR lift we just posted about.

Agency is peer-to-peer. It's all about people. At first - I wasn't sure if I was cut out for that model, but that's the game. If you want to do product-led growth, build a SaaS.

I personally consider it a waste if we deliver a project that gives medium results. If agency is a people game, the thing that compounds is your reputation. I'm only interested in delivering things people can talk about.

How did your background prepare you for building something this niche?

I started programming at 14. My dad was around computers a lot, so I kind of just picked it up.

Studied at University, and eventually got a job running the checkout department for one of the UK's largest apparel brands (about $500M at the time).

Did some consulting and eventually became CTO of a startup. We raised money and moved to London. Ran out of money 2 years later, closed the company - and I went into contracting.

I honestly kind of fell into everything.

While working at the start-up we built a custom social media solution (talk about scope creep). This was my first real experience with having to use caches and make things performant.

Without that experience, I don't think I could have tackled our first speed project (back when we were a general dev agency).

Things kind of snowballed from there.

I'm a lover of learning, and it's nice to find something so nerdy and niche that can materially change business margins.

What do clients usually notice or appreciate first once you start working together?

Since most of our projects are non-recurring. It's the results.

Brands that approach us know they have a speed issue, and they just want that to stop. What really impresses them is how much it impacts traffic performance.

We've seen ~28% CVR increases at consistent session counts after our optimization. We have data to suggest it will do better, but it's magically when you seen the number really change.

It's also a huge source of pride for the brands. My favorite compliment is "our team keep using the site and can't believe how smooth it is".

Revenue aside, it's nice for brands to know they're giving their customers a good experience. Something they can be proud of.

What truly differentiates BS Devshop from others operating in this space?

We're site speed exclusive. This is already a niche, but we also won't work with brands unless we can see a clear performance problem.

Our whole focus is Revenue First Performance.

If we don't think there is a revenue lift available - we're not interested in the work. We can offer some consulting, and give recommendations on how to shave some extra milliseconds. But if it's not going to change the business economics - you're better off working with freelancers.

We're also the only agency I know that does site speed for Shopify.

What’s a shift happening in performance or e-commerce that more agencies should be paying attention to?

I think people are waking up to the data of performance.

I don't have exact data - but I know for a fact attention spans are getting shorter. People have less patience, paid media and marketing is more competitive.

The impacts from site speed are becoming more pronounced.

It's always been an interesting balance. The Google page speed team actually invested some serious money and research into speeding up the internet (yes, the internet). They noticed for every speed increase they got from the hardware side - websites got larger to compensate.

Which meant the general speed of websites remained the same. Whatever additional budget was added due to tech, was then removed by sloppy engineering or extra tools / content. Balance.

This is what made me realize the real bottleneck with performance is that you're limiting your tools. Sites add new things to generate revenue, but adding too many of them hurt performance and destroy margins.

Shopify has recently put a ton of new effort into performance tracking and making things faster. The rise of AI + app marketplaces increases the quantity of apps but seriously decreases the quality.

I think performance is going to become a bigger field with the 2 trends converging: lower quality tools + shortened attention spans.

What’s one lesson you learned the hard way while building your agency?

Be simple.

Things could always be better, you could always optimize more. I want to work on this, and as I get business, I invest more time into systems. But the one thing more frustrating than not having enough time - systems you rely on breaking.

Don't automate shit that doesn't need it yet. Don't create a complicated system that can be solved in a few hours every week and is reliable.

Every system requires maintenance, don't bother unless the ROI is really there.

You can't break a spreadsheet and a calendar event every week. Do the simple stuff.

If you could go back to Day 1, what would you approach differently?

Get close to the money asap.

If you're trying to deliver a service, what are the real concerns of the brand? What things do they prioritize before talking to you?

There's no real formula, but when you can see their priorities, it gets easier to add value in a way they care about.

It's not about if the brand has a problem, it's if they care about the solution. There's 1million things that need fixing.

What are they working on now? What problem get's them to the next level?

Still learning this lesson. It never stops, you just go higher up the ladder.

What’s the best piece of advice that’s stuck with you over time?

Maybe too-much-info, but I think it changes by the decade. Advice only really hits when you need it. Every now and then I'll remember a sleeper quote from my dad. He will have dropped it years ago and I hardly noticed - then suddenly, I remember it 8 years later when it applies, and I'm like "wow, he's amazing".

Current contenders for this decade:

Dave Chapelle - "People think I have a fun job. A job is a job... I'm fun"
George Mumford - "you can't think about your performance, you have to think 'what's the next play'.... if you keep doing that, you can go anywhere"
My friend Z - "Maybe we have to do 20,000 hours".

All great people in their respective fields.

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