When Does a Small Business Need an Online Shop Rather Than a Website?

The question people ask is how much an online shop costs. The question worth asking first is whether you should have one, because a shop that takes four orders a month is not a small success, it is a slow drain on your evenings and it makes the whole website worse.

Here is how we decide, the four questions we ask before quoting, and the middle option most people never consider.

The four questions, before anything else

1. Is there margin once postage and payment fees come out? Card processing takes a percentage and postage is rarely what you think. A product with thirty per cent margin can arrive at nearly nothing by the time it is in a box and on a van.
2. Does it post without breaking or spoiling? Heavy, fragile and perishable are three different expensive problems.
3. Who is packing it? Not in theory. Which person, on which day, while the shop is open.
4. Who updates stock on a busy Tuesday? This is the one that quietly kills online shops. Selling something you do not have produces a refund, an apology and sometimes a review you cannot remove.

If all four have good answers, an online shop is worth building properly. If two of them do not, we would rather build you something cheaper that works better.

When a website is the better answer

A great many businesses that ask for a shop actually want a website that makes people come in or ring. That is a £395 or £650 build rather than a £1,200 one, it takes less of your time to run, and it usually makes more money.

• You sell mostly to people who live nearby.
• Your products vary, need fitting, or need explaining before somebody buys.
• Your margin is thin and postage would eat it.
• Nobody has an hour a day spare to run it.

If that is you, put the money into being found and into the page being convincing, and revisit the shop when something changes.

When a shop genuinely earns its place

• People already ring up asking whether you can post one. The clearest signal there is, and it costs nothing to notice.
• You have products with real margin that post easily. Small, sturdy, not perishable.
• You sell the same things repeatedly. Repeat purchase is where online selling compounds.
• Your customers are not all local. If somebody two hundred miles away wants what you have, a shop is the only way they can buy it.
• Somebody owns it. An actual named person responsible for stock, photographs and packing.

What a built shop includes

At the £1,200 end, a real shop rather than a product page with a payment link.

• A catalogue with categories, variants and stock, structured so search engines can read the products.
• A basket that survives a refresh and a checkout that does not lose people on step three.
• Card payments through an established provider, so card details never touch anything we wrote.
• Order confirmation emails that look like they came from you.
• Built phone first, because most of your orders will happen on a sofa.
• Cookie free analytics, so you can see what sold and what people abandoned without a consent banner.

At £650 we build a smaller version: a focused handful of products sold properly rather than a full catalogue. That is the right answer more often than people expect, and it is a far easier thing to keep accurate.

What it costs to run, honestly

The build is once. The running cost is mostly your time, and it is the part nobody warns you about: photographing new stock, writing descriptions, keeping numbers right, packing, answering where is my order, and handling returns.

Card processing fees go to the payment provider. Care plans are £45, £85 or £150 a month with no minimum term, and this is the one situation where we will actively recommend one, because a checkout that breaks on a Saturday loses money the entire time it is broken and nobody rings to tell you. They just leave.

Where we stand, stated plainly

We do not have a live ecommerce client. Every business we have taken live is a service business, in Sale, in Southampton and Eastleigh, in Maidstone and elsewhere, and every retail or food entry on our work page is labelled a concept build because that is what it is.

So we are selling this on what we can build rather than on somebody else's sales figures, and you should hold us to that. What we can offer instead of a case study is that you see the real thing before you pay: a working preview with your storefront and real products in it, built in 48 hours, free, and if it is not right you say so and there is no cost and no chase.

If you would rather have a supplier who can name three shops they have built, that is a fair thing to want and we are not it yet. We would rather say that than dress up a concept.

How to decide this week

Count how many times in the last three months somebody asked whether you could post something. If the answer is more than a handful, build a small shop for exactly those products and see what happens. If the answer is never, build the website that fills the shop instead and stop thinking about it.

Either way, see it first. Our page on online shop builds has the detail, and the one for shops and retailers covers the rest of what the site should do.

Common questions

Written by Harry Taylor, co-founder of SH Studios. He designs the sites and works with the businesses that use them.