WooCommerce
My usual recommendation
Built on WordPress, so shop and content live together. Sells anything, costs hosting and maintenance only, and grows from twenty products to two thousand without a rebuild.
WooCommerce shopsEcommerce Websites
Online shops built to be found, trusted and bought from.
Product pages that answer the questions that stop people buying, a checkout that gets out of the way, and a shop that is quick on a phone: good ecommerce website design is mostly those three things.
Every step between “interested” and “ordered”.
An online shop is a series of small decisions. Each one is designed.
Most shops lose sales in the details. A product photo that is too small to judge. A delivery cost that only appears at the end. A checkout that demands an account. None of these are dramatic, but together they are the difference between a shop that converts two visitors in a hundred and one that converts four.
So the design starts from the buyer’s side: finding the product, trusting it, understanding the price and delivery, and paying without friction. Then the admin side is set up so running the shop is simple: products, stock, orders and emails without a developer.
What you get.
A working shop, trading on launch day.
- Shop structureCategories and filters planned around how customers browse and search, not how the stock room is organised.
- Product pages that sellClear photography, the answers buyers need, delivery and returns up front, and structured data for search results.
- Checkout and paymentsCard, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal and finance options, with guest checkout and the fewest fields possible.
- Delivery and tax rulesShipping zones, free-delivery thresholds, click-and-collect and VAT handled correctly from the start.
- Customer emailsOrder, dispatch and follow-up emails that match the brand and reduce “where is my order?” messages.
- Speed on mobileImages sized for the screen, no bloat, and the Core Web Vitals checked before launch.
- Search foundationsOne topic per page, descriptive titles, canonical rules for variants and filters, and a product sitemap.
- MeasurementAnalytics with ecommerce tracking, so you can see which products, pages and sources make money.
- Handover and trainingA walkthrough of adding products, managing orders and running promotions.
How it works.
Plan the shop around the catalogue.
Before design, we work through what you sell, how it is grouped, how stock and delivery work and what a typical order looks like. That decides the platform and the structure, and it is where most of the later problems are avoided.
- Platform recommendation with reasons
- Category and filter plan
- Delivery, tax and payment rules written down
Design the pages that do the selling.
Product pages, category pages and the basket get the design attention in any ecommerce website design I do, because that is where buying decisions happen. Everything is designed for the phone first, where most shop visits now start.
- Product page template designed on real products
- Checkout reviewed step by step
- Trust signals where doubts arise
Launch, then keep it selling.
A shop needs looking after: platform updates, security, backups and the occasional change. A care plan covers that, and SEO or shopping ads bring the buyers. The shop is a business asset, and it is treated like one.
- Test orders placed before launch
- Payment and delivery checked end to end
- Care plan for updates and backups
The right platform for your shop.
Three I build on, one I usually advise against. The right one depends on what you sell and how you run things.
Magento
For large catalogues and B2B
Thousands of products, trade pricing, several storefronts and deep integrations. Powerful and expensive to run, so only when the store is the business.
Magento storesShopify
Where it fits, and where it doesn’t
Quick to launch and nothing to maintain, but the fees stack up and the limits bite as a shop grows. I have built on it and rarely recommend it; here is why.
Shopify, honestlyShops in practice.
The WooCommerce shops I have built include a furniture maker, a security hardware retailer and an author’s store. Quote & Cut shows what happens when a shop needs more than a basket: a quoting engine built into WooCommerce. For speed, which matters doubly in a shop, see the guide to Core Web Vitals for business owners.
Often paired with.
Web Design
Bespoke, responsive websites designed around your customers and what you want them to do.
Learn more about web designAds Management
Google Ads campaigns and landing pages planned around enquiries, not clicks.
Learn more about ads managementBrand & Graphic Design
Logos, visual identity and graphics that look right on screen and in print.
Learn more about brand & graphic designCopywriting
Clear website copy that answers the questions your customers are already asking.
Learn more about copywritingWebsite Care
Updates, backups, monitoring and small changes, so the site keeps performing.
Learn more about website careEcommerce questions, answered.
It depends on what you sell and how you run the business. WooCommerce on WordPress is my usual recommendation: it sells anything, keeps content and shop together and costs only hosting to run. Magento is for large or B2B stores. Shopify is quick to launch but I rarely recommend it, for reasons I set out honestly. I will recommend one after understanding your products, stock, payments and delivery.
Yes. Products, categories, customers and order history can usually be migrated, and old product addresses are redirected so the shop keeps its rankings. The move is planned so trading does not stop.
Yes. Card payments, Apple Pay and Google Pay, PayPal and buy-now-pay-later options can all be set up, along with delivery rules, click-and-collect, VAT and the emails customers expect after ordering.
Through the shop’s own admin, which I set up and show you at handover. Adding a product, changing a price or marking something out of stock is a few minutes’ work and never needs a developer.
Product and category pages are built with search in mind from the start: one clear topic per page, descriptive titles, structured data so prices and availability can appear in results, and fast pages on mobile. SEO and shopping ads can take it further after launch.
Yes. Copywriting for product pages is a service in its own right: descriptions that answer the questions that stop people buying, written to be found as well as read. It is the part of ecommerce website design most often skipped, and it shows.
Let’s build your shop.
Tell me what you sell, roughly how many products, and whether you have a shop already. I’ll suggest the right platform and the next step.
- 1You send a few lines.What the business does and what the website needs to do.
- 2I reply, personally.Usually the same day, with questions and a time for a call.
- 3You get a written proposal.Scope, stages and price for exactly that. No obligation, no hard sell.
Monday to Sunday, 9am to 9pm. You talk to me, not an account manager.