Web design for online shops, from £395
Before the build, four questions: is there margin once postage and fees come out, does it post without breaking, who packs it, and who updates stock on a busy Tuesday. Those decide whether selling online makes money.
If the answers are good we build a real shop: catalogue, basket, checkout, card payments, fast and built for a phone. If they are not, we will say so and build you something cheaper that works better.
Start by asking whether you should
Most conversations about online shops start with the build and should start two steps earlier. Is there margin in the thing once postage and payment fees come out. Does it post without breaking. Who is packing it. Who is updating stock on a Tuesday when it is busy. Those four questions decide whether an online shop makes you money or quietly costs you evenings.
We ask them first because we would rather build you a £395 site that fills a shop than a £1,200 shop that takes four orders a month. If the answers are good, the build is worth doing and it is worth doing properly. If they are not, we will tell you, and that is a shorter conversation than most agencies will have with you.
What a built online shop includes
A real catalogue and a real checkout, not a template with your logo on it.
Catalogue, basket, checkout
Products, variants, categories, a basket that survives a refresh, and a checkout that does not lose people on the third step.
Payments taken properly
Card payments through an established provider, so the money and the card details never touch anything we wrote. Their fees are theirs, not ours.
Built for a phone first
Most of your orders will happen on a phone on a sofa. If it is awkward there, nothing else about the shop matters.
Fast enough to survive
Slow shops lose baskets, measurably. We build static and light rather than stacking plugins, which is most of why ours are quick.
Findable, with product pages that rank
Real pages with real descriptions, schema, and the search terms people actually use for the thing you sell.
You can see what happened
Orders, what sold, what people looked at and did not buy. Cookie free analytics, so no consent banner to argue with.
When click and collect beats posting
If you have a shop, there is a middle option that gets ignored and often wins. People browse and pay online, then collect from you. No packing, no postage, no lost parcels, no returns by courier, and they walk into your shop where they buy something else. For a lot of independent retailers this makes more money per order than posting does and costs far less to run.
It is also cheaper to build, because the hardest parts of ecommerce are shipping rules and delivery expectations. If your customers are local, ask us about this before you ask us about a full shop. See our page for shops and independent retailers for what the rest of that site should do.
What we have actually built, and what we have not
No live ecommerce client, and we are saying so on the page
Our live clients are service businesses in Sale, Southampton and Eastleigh, and Maidstone, among others. Every retail and food entry on our work page is a concept build and is labelled one. We are not going to point at a concept and let you read it as a client.
What we offer instead is that you see the real thing before you pay. We build the preview, you look at it, and you decide with the actual site in front of you rather than a case study. See everything we have live.
Built first, paid for after, same as everything else
Tell us what you want to sell and within 48 hours you get a link to a real preview built for it. For a shop that usually means the storefront and a handful of real products, enough that you can judge it properly. If it is not right, say so and there is no cost and no chase.
£650 for a small shop selling a focused range, £1,200 for a full catalogue with categories and a complete checkout. Split into three payments if that helps, same price, no interest and no fees, within twelve months. You own it.
Care plans are £45, £85 or £150 a month with no minimum term, and for a shop taking money this is the one place we will actively recommend one. Broken checkout on a Saturday is the most expensive silence in retail.
What people ask us about online shops
Shopify exists and it is cheap. Why would I pay you to build one?
For many people Shopify is genuinely the right answer and we will say so. Where it stops being the right answer is when the monthly fees, the app subscriptions and the per-sale percentage add up to more than the thing cost to build, or when the way you actually sell does not fit the way the platform wants you to sell. If your stock is simple and your volume is small, use Shopify. If you are paying for six apps to make it behave, that is when a built shop starts paying for itself.
What does an online shop actually cost to build with you?
£1,200 is where a real online shop sits: a proper catalogue, categories, a basket, checkout, payments and order emails. £650 buys a smaller version, a handful of products sold properly rather than a full catalogue, which is the right answer more often than people expect. A build can be split into three payments, same price, no interest and no fees, within twelve months. Payment processing fees go to the payment provider and are theirs, not ours.
Do I need a care plan if I am selling online?
This is the one case where we will genuinely push you towards one. A shop that is broken on a Saturday is losing money the whole time it is broken, and nobody rings to tell you, they just leave. Plans are £45, £85 and £150 a month with no minimum term. Which one depends on how much changes week to week, and we would rather put you on the cheapest one that covers you.
How many products can it handle?
Comfortably more than most independent businesses have. The real constraint is never the software, it is who keeps the stock, the photographs and the descriptions current, which is work that does not stop. Before we build anything we will ask who is doing that. If the answer is nobody, a smaller shop with fewer products, kept accurate, will make you more money than a big one that goes stale.
Have you built an online shop before?
Not for a live client, and we are not going to dress that up. Every business we have taken live so far is a service business, and every retail or food build on our work page is labelled a concept, because that is what it is. What we can show you is the standard of what we build and how we work, and the fact that you see the actual thing before you pay a penny. If you want a supplier who can name three ecommerce clients, that is a fair thing to want and we are not it yet.
Towns with a page of their own
We are a Southampton studio and we work wherever the job is. These towns have a page of their own on what the local market looks like and who you are up against.
Other trades, and four plain guides
Each trade has a page of its own. The guides cover what a site costs, how a directory listing compares, your Google listing, and paying in parts.
Get your free preview
Your name, your business and a way to reach you. We build a real preview of your site inside 48 hours, and you see it before you pay anything.
Got it, thank you.
We will reply within 24 hours and your preview follows inside 48.
See your shop before you pay for it
We build a real working preview in 48 hours, storefront and real products. Builds from £395, care plans from £45 a month, no minimum term. Don't like it and you owe nothing.