Ecommerce
Ecommerce that sells without eating your margin
Selling online is not just a shopping basket bolted onto a website. It is stock that stays right, a catalogue somebody can actually maintain, postage that does not lose you money, and a checkout that does not make people give up halfway through.
Orders to pick
4 collections · 6 to post
An illustration of the sort of screen this builds towards - yours is built around how you actually work.
The problem
Where online shops actually go wrong
Very few shops fail because the design was not pretty enough. They fail on the boring things. The stock figure on the website does not match the shelf, so you sell something you have not got and start the customer relationship with an apology. The postage was set once and never revisited, so every heavy item quietly loses money. Adding a product takes twenty minutes of fiddling, so new stock never goes up.
The other common failure is the checkout. People arrive ready to buy, then get asked to create an account, then get surprised by a delivery charge at the last step, and they leave. Most of the money in ecommerce is not won by getting more visitors - it is won by not losing the ones who were already going to buy.
And if you have a physical shop, there is a real advantage sitting unused: people will happily buy online and collect today rather than wait two days for a parcel. Click and collect is the single most underused feature in small-business retail.
What it does
Built around the jobs you do every day
A catalogue you can actually run
Add a product in a couple of minutes, with variants for size, colour or spec, without needing me every time stock changes.
Stock control that stays honest
Live stock levels, low-stock warnings, and the option to stop selling or take backorders when something runs out.
Secure card payments
Stripe checkout with Apple Pay and Google Pay, fully PCI-compliant, with card details never touching your server.
Click and collect
Let local customers buy online and pick up today. Costs you nothing in postage and often brings them into the shop to buy something else.
Delivery that adds up
Postage by weight, by basket value, by postcode or free over a threshold, so shipping stops being a slow leak on every order.
Order management
One screen for what needs picking, packing and posting, with tracking numbers, dispatch emails and refunds handled in a few clicks.
Search and filtering that works
Customers find things by brand, spec, price or compatibility instead of scrolling nine pages of products and giving up.
Product pages built to rank
Clean URLs, unique titles and descriptions, and product structured data so listings show price and availability in Google.
What changes
The difference it makes
- You sell outside opening hours, to people who would never have walked past the shop
- Stock stops being sold twice, so customers stop getting apology emails
- Postage stops quietly costing you money on the heavy items
- Click and collect turns online browsers into people standing in your shop
- You can see what actually sells, rather than what you think sells
Worked example
A worked example: a shop with more stock than shelf space
An independent retailer had far more range than they could display. Customers assumed they only sold what was in the window, so the deeper stock - the specialist items with the better margin - barely moved. They also had a steady stream of people ringing to ask whether something was in.
The shop we built put the whole range online with proper filtering, so somebody looking for a specific spec could find it in seconds. Every product page shows whether it is in stock for collection today or coming in later that week. Click and collect was set up as the default option for local postcodes, with delivery there for everyone else.
The interesting part was not the parcels. It was that a good share of the online orders were collected in person, and a decent number of those customers bought something else at the counter while they were in. The website ended up driving footfall rather than replacing it.
How it works
From first conversation to live
01
Understand what you sell
Product range, variants, how you price, how you post, and what makes your stock different from the next shop's.
02
Build the shop
Catalogue, basket, checkout, payments, postage rules and the admin side you will live in every day.
03
Load stock and test properly
Real products, real prices, real test orders including a refund, so nothing surprises you the week you launch.
04
Launch and keep improving
Go live, watch what people search for and where they drop out, and tighten it. The first month teaches you more than the planning did.
Not sure whether this is the right fit? Arrange a quick chat and I'll tell you honestly.
Who it suits
Where this works well
Computer Shops
A catalogue people can filter by spec, repair jobs customers can track themselves, and click and collect that brings them into the shop.
Retail Stores
Sell the range that will not fit on the shelf, let people reserve and collect today, and turn online browsing into footfall.
Car Dealerships
Stock that goes live in minutes, test drives booked online, and part-exchange and finance enquiries that arrive already qualified.
Cafes
Pre-orders that beat the morning queue, loyalty without the cardboard card, and catering enquiries that stop being a phone call.
Questions
Ecommerce Solutions - the common questions
Should I just use Shopify?
Sometimes, honestly, yes - if you sell straightforward products in a standard way, Shopify is decent and I will tell you so rather than sell you something you do not need. Custom makes sense when your products are complicated, when the shop has to talk to something else you run, when the monthly fees and app costs have crept past what a build would cost, or when you want to own the thing outright.
Can I add and edit products myself?
Yes, and this matters more than almost anything else. If putting a product up is a faff, it does not get done, and a shop with stale stock stops selling. The admin side is built to be quick for the things you do daily and clear enough that a member of staff can be shown it in ten minutes.
How are card payments handled - is it secure?
Payments go through Stripe, which handles the card details on their own PCI-compliant systems. Card numbers never reach your website or your server, so you are not storing anything you would not want to be responsible for. Apple Pay and Google Pay come as standard, and they make a real difference to how many people finish checking out on a phone.
What about postage costs?
We set rules that match what shipping actually costs you - by weight, by basket total, by postcode, or free over a threshold if that suits your margins. Getting this wrong is one of the most common ways small shops lose money without noticing, so it is worth a proper conversation rather than a guess.
Will my products show up on Google?
Each product gets its own clean URL, a unique title and description, and product structured data so Google can show the price and whether it is in stock right there in the results. That does not guarantee a top spot on competitive items, but it is the groundwork, and it is what most template shops never bother doing properly.
Can it connect to my till or accounts?
Often, yes. If your till system or accounting software has an API - Xero and QuickBooks do, and many EPOS systems do - orders and stock can be kept in step automatically. Tell me what you run and I will find out exactly what is possible before quoting, rather than promising and hoping.
Related solutions
Most businesses end up needing more than one of these. They're built to work together rather than as separate systems bolted side by side.
Want to see what this would look like for you?
Tell me how your business runs day to day and I'll come back with a clear, fixed quote - and an honest view on whether it's worth doing.