Quick answer: An ecommerce site for a Maidstone shop is a catalogue, a checkout and a way to get the order out the door. It is not a brochure with a buy button pasted on. A modest shop usually sits in Growth at £495, up to twelve pages. A large catalogue or a complicated move is quoted before anyone imports a product.
Makers and retailers around Maidstone, from a studio in Bearsted to a unit in Aylesford, often sell in person and want the same products online. The site has to match the stock you can actually post or collect. A product page for something you cannot supply is worse than no shop.
When a shop is worth building
Build a shop when people already ask to pay without visiting, or when you sell the same items often enough to describe them once. If every sale is a one-off conversation, a brochure and a form may still be the better site. That can be Starter at £150 or Business at £295.
Collection from Maidstone and posting to the rest of the country are different promises. Say which you do. Do not imply next-day delivery if you pack orders twice a week.
The parcels in the picture are an example illustration. They are not a client's stock and not a range we sell.
Shopify or WooCommerce
Shopify is often simpler when you want the shop itself hosted as a service and you are happy with its checkout. WooCommerce on WordPress suits a business that wants the catalogue closer to the rest of the site and is willing to look after updates.
The choice is about operations: payment providers, stock, and who packs the box. It is not about which logo is more fashionable this year. The ecommerce page says we compare them against the brief rather than picking one in advance.
Either platform has its own fees. Those fees are not our £495. Ask for both numbers before you decide. A cheap build on an expensive platform can be the wrong way round, and the reverse is also true.
What Growth includes
Growth at £495 covers an expanded site of up to twelve pages, including ecommerce when that is the agreed scope for a modest catalogue. It includes the first year of domain, hosting and SSL for the site we build. It does not include a promise of sales.
If you have more products than that scope can present properly, we stop and quote. Importing hundreds of unfinished products so the homepage looks busy is how shops launch late and confuse customers.
Year two for domain, hosting and SSL is around £60 to the providers. Platform subscription and card fees continue separately. There is no long-term contract with us just to keep the shop online.
Orders, tax and returns
Write the delivery area, the returns window and who pays postage before the first real order. Maidstone collection should have a real address and a time when someone is there. A returns policy copied from another country is not a policy.
Product photos should be of the thing you sell. A lifestyle picture that hides the size causes returns. If you do not have photos yet, do not publish the product.
Test an order with a real card or the platform's test mode, including a failed payment and a refund. The person who will read the order email should do the test, not only the developer.
Moving an existing shop
A move needs the product list, the old addresses, customer accounts if you are keeping them, and a check that payments still land in the right account. We plan that before the old shop is switched off.
Redirect each important product address to the new one. Sending every old product to the homepage loses the customer who bookmarked a single item. That mapping is part of a careful launch, as on a redesign.
Tell us the number of products and how you deliver when you ask for a consultation. A few weeks is realistic for a small brochure. A shop takes longer because the products and the test orders are the work.