Online shops built to actually sell
An online shop is not a website with a basket bolted on. It is a system that has to take money reliably, tell you what sold, and not fall over on the day you get busy.
We build shops on foundations that handle the unglamorous parts properly: card payments, VAT, delivery rules, stock counts, order emails and refunds. Those are where most cheap e-commerce builds quietly fail.
Payments run through Stripe, so card details never touch your server and you are not responsible for storing them. Money lands in your bank account, and you get a dashboard showing exactly what has been paid.
What is included
- Product pages with images, options, variants and stock levels
- Secure card checkout via Stripe, Apple Pay and Google Pay included
- Delivery rules by weight, price or postcode, and VAT handled correctly
- Order confirmation and dispatch emails that reach the customer
- An admin area to manage orders, stock and refunds without calling us
- Product data structured for Google so items can appear in shopping results
The parts people forget
Abandoned baskets, returns, out-of-stock behaviour and postage thresholds all decide whether a shop makes money. We set these up deliberately rather than leaving defaults in place, and we will talk you through the choices in plain English.
What it costs
Shops start at £1,500 for a straightforward catalogue. Larger stores with many product variants, trade pricing, subscriptions or stock syncing sit in the £2,500 to £5,000 range. Payment processing fees are charged by Stripe directly and are not ours.
Shopify, WooCommerce or custom, the honest comparison
There is no single right answer, and an agency that only ever recommends the thing it likes building is not advising you.
Shopify is the sensible default for most first shops. It is reliable, it handles tax and payments, and the monthly fee buys you a large problem-free surface. The trade-offs are the platform fee, the monthly cost per app you bolt on, and a ceiling on how far the checkout and product logic can be bent.
WooCommerce is cheaper in licence terms and very flexible, but it is a WordPress site underneath, which means plugin updates, security patching and someone competent responsible for it. Without a care plan it is the option that most often goes wrong.
A custom build makes sense when your pricing, stock or ordering rules do not fit the shape a platform expects: trade accounts with negotiated prices, complicated delivery, hire rather than sale, or stock that lives in another system. Below that threshold it is usually an expensive way to buy what Shopify already does.
We build on all three and will tell you which one your situation actually calls for, including when that means the cheapest of the three.
What a shop costs to run, not just to build
The build price is the part everyone compares. The running costs are the part that decides whether the shop makes money, so they should be on the table before you commit.
- Card processing: charged by Stripe per transaction, direct from them, never through us
- Hosting and care, from £30 a month, more for shops with regular updates
- Platform fees, a monthly cost on Shopify, none on a custom or WooCommerce build
- Apps and plugins, each with its own monthly fee; they add up quietly, so we keep them few
- Your own time, packing, dispatch and customer questions do not disappear
Getting the first sales
A new shop with no visitors sells nothing, and no amount of design changes that. It is worth being clear about this before launch rather than after a quiet first month.
The routes that work are the unglamorous ones: appearing for the specific product terms people search, structured product data so items can show in Google Shopping, an email list you own, and the audience you already have from the physical side of the business. We set up the technical parts of all of these; the ongoing work is either yours or an SEO plan.
Common questions
How do I get paid?
Straight into your own bank account through Stripe, normally within a couple of working days of the sale. You hold the Stripe account, so you are always in control of the money, we never sit between you and your revenue.
Can I sell in more than one currency?
Yes. Stripe handles multi-currency, and we can show prices in the visitor's local currency. It is worth deciding early, because it affects how prices and delivery rules are set up.
What about existing products, do I re-type everything?
No. If your products are in a spreadsheet, another shop platform or a supplier feed, we import them. Re-typing a catalogue by hand is a waste of your time and introduces mistakes.
Do I have to worry about card security and PCI compliance?
Not in the way you would if card numbers touched your own server. Checkout runs through Stripe, so the card details go directly from the customer to Stripe and never reach your site. That keeps you in the simplest compliance category rather than the one that requires an audit.
What are my legal obligations selling online in the UK?
You need clear pricing including VAT where it applies, delivery terms, and a returns policy that meets the Consumer Contracts Regulations, which give most online customers a 14-day right to cancel. We build the pages and the checkout wording to accommodate all of that, but the policies are yours to set, and for anything unusual you should take your own advice.
Do you take product photographs?
No, we are not photographers. We will tell you what the shop needs, consistent backgrounds, consistent crop, enough angles, and whether your existing images clear that bar. For most catalogues, poor photography costs more in lost sales than a photographer costs to hire.
Can the shop connect to my till or stock system?
Often yes, if the system has a way in. Some modern EPOS products sync stock automatically; some older ones have no integration at all, in which case the honest answer is a scheduled import or manual updates. We check this before quoting rather than discovering it mid-build.
Related
Tell us what you need
Describe the project in a couple of sentences and we will come back with a fixed price and a realistic timescale. No obligation, and no sales sequence.
Start a build