E-commerce websites

Who it is for

Suffolk has a strong base of businesses with products worth selling beyond the county: brewers, distillers and cider makers, bakers and specialist growers, farm shops, butchers and delis, textile makers in the Stour Valley, furniture makers and ceramicists, and independent shops in market towns such as Bury St Edmunds, Woodbridge, Framlingham and Southwold. Many of them sell well face to face and through word of mouth, then find their online shop produces very little.

We also build trade ordering sites for wholesalers and manufacturers who sell to other businesses: a cleaner way to take repeat orders than email and phone calls.

Choosing a platform

	Shopify	WooCommerce	Custom build
Best for	Most small and medium shops	Shops that publish a lot of content or need WordPress	Unusual pricing, configurators or integrations
Running costs	Monthly plan plus apps and payment fees	Hosting, plugins and maintenance	Hosting and developer time
Security and updates	Handled by Shopify	Your responsibility or ours on a care plan	Ours on a care plan
Flexibility	Good, within limits	High	Highest

For most clients we recommend Shopify. It handles payments, VAT, stock and shipping rates well, and you are not responsible for security patches. We will tell you honestly when another option suits better, including when the answer is the cheaper one.

What is included

• Store setup: payments, taxes, UK shipping zones, click and collect if you have a shop.
• A design built around your products and story, not a stock theme with your logo.
• Category and product page templates written for search, not copied from supplier descriptions.
• Rules for heavy, fragile or chilled items where delivery needs special handling.
• Trade or wholesale accounts with their own pricing where needed.
• Product structured data so prices and availability can appear in Google results.
• Analytics showing which products sell, where buyers come from and where they drop out of checkout.
• Legal pages prompts: delivery, returns, privacy and terms (you or your adviser confirm the wording).
• Training on adding products, managing orders and running discounts.

Step by step

1. Discovery. Your products, margins, delivery constraints, who buys and why.
2. Catalogue structure. How products are grouped, what options and variants exist, and what each customer type needs to see.
3. Photography plan. A shot list covering hero images, detail, scale and lifestyle shots.
4. Design. Home, collection, product, basket and checkout layouts, mobile first.
5. Build and product load. We set up the store and load a first batch of products with you, then you add the rest using a template.
6. Test orders. Real test transactions across payment methods and delivery options, including refunds.
7. Launch and first-month review. We watch the checkout funnel and fix friction early.

How long it takes

A Shopify shop with up to about a hundred products usually takes five to eight weeks. Larger catalogues, trade accounts, product configurators or integrations with stock and accounting systems can take ten to fourteen weeks. Product data and photography are usually what sets the pace.

What drives the cost

• Catalogue size and complexity. Products with many variants or bundles take longer to set up.
• Custom features. Subscriptions, gift messages, delivery date pickers, trade pricing.
• Integrations. Stock systems, accounting software, couriers, marketplaces.
• Content. Writing product and category copy is time well spent but adds cost.
• Running costs. Platform plans, apps and payment fees are ongoing; we list them up front.

Common mistakes

• Copying supplier descriptions. Hundreds of other shops have the same text. It does nothing for search or sales.
• Poor photos. The single biggest reason small shops underperform.
• Delivery costs revealed at checkout. Show them early. Surprise costs are a leading cause of abandoned baskets.
• Too many apps. Each adds cost and slows the shop.
• Launching everything at once. Start with your best sellers and grow the range.

What we need from you

Online shops depend on product information more than on design. Before the build we ask for:

• A product list in a spreadsheet: name, price, variants, weight, stock, and any rules about delivery.
• Photographs, or a date for a shoot. We give you a shot list so every product has the same set of images.
• Your delivery approach: which couriers, which zones, whether chilled or fragile items need special handling, and whether you offer collection.
• Returns and refunds policy, which we turn into clear web pages for your review.
• Payment and accounting setup: which payment provider you want and whether orders need to reach your accounts software.

For food and drink producers, we also ask about allergen information, shelf life and any age checks needed for alcohol, because those affect product pages and checkout. For makers selling one-off pieces, we plan how sold items are shown so the work still appears in your portfolio.

If you already sell through a marketplace or at markets, tell us which products sell best there. That is the best starting point for what to put first on the website.

After launch

The first month after launch is when most small shops learn what really needs changing. We watch for failed payments, abandoned baskets and questions that customers email in, and adjust the product pages, delivery information and checkout to answer them. After that, a care plan keeps the shop updated and secure, with time each month for new products and seasonal changes.

How we measure it

We set up e-commerce tracking so you can see sessions, add-to-basket rate, checkout completion, average order value and revenue by source. After launch we review the checkout funnel at two weeks and again at two months, looking for the step where most people drop out, and fix that first.