Lightening Tech Evidence, not opinion

Build & Design

E-commerce

What this category covers

E-commerce work is not website building with a basket attached. The job is to build something that takes money and keeps count of stock without a person standing behind it, which means four things have to be joined and stay joined — the goods, the money, the delivery and the customer.

That distinction sets the standard of care. On a brochure site, a small error makes a page look wrong. Here it charges a card twice, sells an item that is not in the warehouse, or sets a delivery rate slightly low and loses money on every order for three weeks before anyone notices. Mistakes here are denominated in currency, which is why the work is specified more tightly and tested harder than ordinary web development.

The buyers fall into three groups. Brands already selling through social messages or a marketplace, with demand but no storefront of their own, losing margin and customer data. Established stores where one part has broken — payments that half work, a product page that gets traffic and no orders, a platform that has become a maintenance tax. And scaling brands that have run out of room inside a theme.

The services below cover building on Shopify and WooCommerce, moving between them without losing search position, headless storefronts where there is a real reason for one, payments proven against failure rather than success, product page conversion work, and recurring revenue.

Services
10
Detailed pages
10

02

E-commerce

10 services

  1. 01

    Shopify store setup

    Theme, products, payments, shipping and apps — ready to launch.

    For
    DTC brands
    From
    $700–$4,000
    Time
    2–4 weeks

  2. 02

    WooCommerce store

    A WordPress commerce build with payment and tax set up properly.

    For
    SMEs, local retail
    From
    $600–$3,500
    Time
    2–5 weeks

  3. 03

    Custom headless commerce

    A Shopify or Medusa back end behind a custom Next.js storefront.

    For
    Scaling brands
    From
    $6,000–$35,000
    Time
    2–4 months

  4. 04

    Product page CRO

    Layout, copy, reviews and trust signals, aimed at conversion.

    For
    E-commerce owners
    From
    $400–$2,500
    Time
    1–3 weeks

  5. 05

    Store migration

    Woo to Shopify or back, with SEO and order history intact.

    For
    Growing stores
    From
    $800–$5,000
    Time
    2–4 weeks

  6. 06

    Payment gateway integration

    Stripe, PayPal, local gateways, wallets and cash-on-delivery flows.

    For
    Any store
    From
    $300–$2,000
    Time
    3–10 days

  7. 07

    Subscription & recurring commerce

    Subscribe-and-save, boxes, and dunning management.

    For
    DTC brands
    From
    $1,000–$6,000
    Time
    2–5 weeks

  8. 08

    Marketplace integration

    Amazon, Etsy, eBay and Daraz listings with inventory sync.

    For
    Retailers
    From
    $500–$4,000
    Time
    2–4 weeks

  9. 09

    Inventory & order automation

    Stock sync, supplier feeds and auto-fulfilment rules.

    For
    Multi-channel sellers
    From
    $700–$5,000
    Time
    2–5 weeks

  10. 10

    Retention & abandoned cart flows

    Klaviyo or Mailchimp automations that bring revenue back.

    For
    E-commerce owners
    From
    $400–$2,500 + $300/mo
    Time
    1–3 weeks

How the work runs.

  1. 01

    Scope

    What you actually need from E-commerce, written as deliverables rather than adjectives.

    A day or two

  2. 02

    Price and date

    A fixed scope, a number and a delivery date, agreed before anyone starts.

    Same week

  3. 03

    Build

    The work itself, with something you can open and look at rather than a status report.

    The bulk of it

  4. 04

    Handover

    Files, access and a walkthrough. Nothing is held hostage.

    Final day

See where the site stands before you brief anyone.

Before scoping E-commerce work, it helps to know what the site is doing today. The audit reports what it checked, what it found, and — the part most tools leave out — what it could not check, and why.

See the website audit Talk about this work

Questions people ask before they commit.

Shopify or WooCommerce?
Shopify when you want to sell rather than administer, when you value not being responsible for updates, and when the standard checkout does what you need. WooCommerce when a WordPress site already exists and works, when transaction margin matters more than convenience, or when you need something the hosted checkout will not let you change. We make that call after hearing about your catalogue, your market and who will look after the site day to day.
What will a store cost me to run every month?
Whichever platform plan you are on, plus the apps or extensions you genuinely keep — reviews, email, and sometimes a page builder or a subscription tool. On a self-hosted build, hosting, backups and licences take their place. We put that estimate in writing before a build starts, with current prices, and we do not install anything with a recurring fee without your written approval.
Can you work on the store I already have?
Yes, and most of this category is exactly that — a checkout that leaks, payments half-connected, a product page that gets traffic and no orders, a catalogue that needs to move platform. We look at what is there and quote against what we find rather than against an assumption.
Do you handle payments for my country?
We integrate whatever your business can legitimately hold an account with, which is decided by where you are registered, what you sell and which providers accept that category. Markets that run on cash on delivery are a different build again, with courier reconciliation and refused-parcel handling to design around. What we do not do is open or hold payment accounts on your behalf.
Do you write product copy and prepare images?
Yes, priced separately, because it is separate work and usually the largest single piece of a store build. Product data and photography consume more of a launch timeline than design does, which surprises almost everyone the first time.
What happens after launch?
A handover walkthrough, written notes, and a fixed period where anything we built that misbehaves is fixed at no charge. Beyond that, new work is new work, and problems originating in a third-party app, theme or platform are their own thing. If you want ongoing maintenance, particularly on a self-hosted store, we would rather agree it on day one than after the first outage.

Work that usually comes with it.