Services / Web / Online stores

A checkout that gets out of the way

Most online stores lose the sale somewhere between the product page and the payment. We build shops where the pages are instant, the stock number is true, and the checkout asks for nothing it does not need, on a phone, one-handed, in a hurry.

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Why it matters

The cost is the wait

Almost every store has the same shape of problem: plenty of people arrive, far fewer reach the basket, and a large share of those abandon at the checkout. The reasons are rarely mysterious. The product page took four seconds to load on mobile data. The size guide was a PDF. The delivery cost appeared for the first time on the final screen. The card form asked for a company name.

Underneath the shopfront there is a second store customers never see, and it is the one that decides whether you make money. Stock counts that match the warehouse. Shipping rates that match what the carrier will actually charge. Refunds that do not depend on someone remembering to do three things in three systems. Orders that reach your accounts package without being retyped. Get that wrong and every good sales day generates a day of admin.

We build both. Sometimes that means a custom storefront on top of Shopify, so you keep the operational comfort of a platform you already trust while escaping its template limits. Sometimes it means an open commerce engine you fully control, because your pricing, bundling or trade rules do not fit a hosted platform. We will tell you which your business actually needs, including when the honest answer is that a well-chosen standard theme would serve you perfectly well.

What you actually get

Built to be trusted

The list below is roughly in order of how much money each item tends to be worth.

A checkout with nothing extra in it

Guest checkout, wallet payments, address autocomplete, and delivery costs shown early rather than sprung at the end. Every field removed is a small increase in completed orders, and the fields are removed deliberately, not by accident.

Product pages that answer the question

Fast, image-rich pages with real variant handling, honest stock messaging, specification and fit detail where people look for it, and reviews if you have them. This is the page that does the selling; everything else exists to get people to it.

Search and filters people can steer

Typo-tolerant search, filters that match how your customers describe things rather than how your catalogue happens to be organised, and merchandising rules so you can push the lines you need to move.

Stock that tells the truth

Live levels synced with your warehouse or ERP, with the awkward cases (overselling, back orders, partial shipments, pre-orders), decided with you before a line of code is written. That is where the expensive surprises live.

Shipping and returns that match reality

Real carrier rates at checkout, label generation, tracking updates sent to the customer, and a returns flow your team is not quietly managing in a spreadsheet.

Selling in more than one country

Prices in the visitor's currency, tax calculated correctly per country, invoices that satisfy local rules, and localised content. Done properly, opening a new market becomes a settings change rather than a second store.

Where it earns its keep

Same pattern, different desks

Three stores, three completely different bottlenecks, and only one of them was the design.

01 · Fashion & lifestyle retail

The returns rate hiding in your size guide

The problem: Mobile traffic dominates, imagery is enormous, and returns eat the margin. Customers order two sizes because the guide is a low-resolution image and no review mentions fit, so every sale carries the cost of a probable return.
What we build: Aggressively optimised imagery so a gallery loads instantly on mobile data, structured size and fit data on the product page, fit feedback captured in reviews, and a returns flow that records a reason every single time.
What changes: Fewer speculative double orders, a returns dataset that tells your buyers which lines run small, and a phone experience that no longer stalls on the one page that sells.

02 · B2B & wholesale

The customers who must not see the same price

The problem: Trade buyers need account-specific pricing, minimum order quantities, credit terms and fast reordering. Consumer platforms handle none of that well, so orders arrive by email and somebody retypes them into the system.
What we build: A logged-in trade store with per-account price lists, order pads and one-click reorder from history, quote requests where a price genuinely needs a human, and orders flowing straight into your ERP or accounts package.
What changes: Your reps stop being an order-entry service, buyers can place an order at six in the morning without waiting for a callback, and the retyping errors disappear along with the retyping.

03 · Food, drink & subscriptions

Repeat revenue that survives a failed card

The problem: Subscription boxes live or die on churn, and a large share of that churn is involuntary: expired cards, failed payments, and customers who wanted to pause for a month and cancelled because there was no pause button.
What we build: Proper subscription mechanics: skip, pause, swap and change delivery date, all self-service, plus automatic retries and dunning when a payment fails, with the customer told in plain language before the box fails to arrive.
What changes: Recoverable churn actually gets recovered instead of quietly leaving, and your support inbox stops being the only way to move a delivery by a week.

The technology

The tools behind it, named

Commerce is the area where the platform decision matters most, and where it is easiest to be sold something you will regret. Here is what we build on, and roughly when.

6 layers · 32 technologies

The storefront

Your shop's actual pages, rendered ahead of time so a product page appears instantly. On mobile that is worth more than any single design decision.

Next.js
React
TypeScript
Tailwind CSS
shadcn/ui

The commerce engine

Catalogue, basket, orders and inventory. Shopify when you want someone else running the operational side; an open engine when your pricing and rules genuinely do not fit a hosted platform.

Shopify
Medusa
WooCommerce
PostgreSQL
Prisma

Taking the money

Card details go straight from the customer's browser to the payment provider and never touch your systems, the safest route and the lightest compliance burden.

Stripe
PayPal
Adyen
Klarna
Apple Pay
Google Pay

Search & merchandising

So a customer who half-remembers a product name still finds it, and so you can push what needs pushing this month.

Algolia
Meilisearch
Elasticsearch
Cloudinary

The back office

Stock, fulfilment, invoicing and the syncs that stop a record sales day turning into a week of retyping.

Xero
QuickBooks
Zapier
n8n
Make
Airtable

Marketing & what actually converts

Email flows, ad attribution, and honest measurement of exactly where the basket is being abandoned.

Mailchimp
Google Ads
Google Analytics
PostHog
Hotjar
Klaviyo

Product names and logos are the property of their respective owners and are shown to describe the technologies we work with. Their use does not imply any partnership, sponsorship or endorsement.

How we deliver it

Live behind a human first

Eight to sixteen weeks depending on how much of your back office has to be connected. The storefront is rarely the long pole.

We follow the money backwards

Before any design, we look at your current funnel: where people drop out, what they search for and find nothing, and what your support inbox is full of. That tells us which parts of the shop are worth building well and which are fine as standard.

The platform decision, in writing

Shopify or an open engine, with the trade-offs set out plainly: monthly cost, transaction fees, what you can change yourself, and what would be genuinely hard to undo later. You make the call with the numbers in front of you.

The unglamorous rules workshop

Tax, shipping zones, stock behaviour, back orders, partial shipments, refunds, fraud thresholds. Nobody looks forward to this session and it is the one that prevents the expensive launch-week surprises.

Catalogue and content migration

Products, variants, images and descriptions moved across and cleaned on the way. Old product addresses are mapped to new ones, because a store that loses its search rankings at launch loses a season.

Test with real money

Real transactions end to end in a staging environment (payment, refund, partial refund, declined card, out of stock at the last second) plus a load test at the traffic you expect on your busiest day, with a safety margin on top.

Launch, then tune

We watch the funnel through the first weeks and change the things the data actually points at. The month after launch is usually where the largest conversion gains are still available.

Before you commit

The questions worth asking

Shopify, or something custom?

For most stores below a certain complexity, Shopify running the commerce with a custom storefront in front of it is the right answer. You get the design freedom without owning payments, PCI scope and inventory infrastructure. An open engine earns its place when your pricing, bundling or trade rules genuinely do not fit, or when platform fees at your volume outgrow the cost of running your own. We will show you that arithmetic rather than a preference.

Will this increase our conversion rate?

Usually, and the largest gains normally come from speed and checkout rather than from the design. But we will not quote you a percentage. Anyone who does is inventing it, because it depends on your traffic, prices and products. What we will do is measure your current funnel before we start, so the effect afterwards is a measured number rather than a feeling.

Can we keep our existing warehouse or accounts system?

Almost always, and it is usually the right call. We integrate rather than replace, and we agree up front which system is the master for each piece of data: stock, price, customer. Two systems both believing they are in charge is the root of most e-commerce data problems, and it is entirely avoidable if it is decided early.

What about PCI compliance?

Card details go directly from the customer's browser to the payment provider and never pass through your servers, which keeps you in the lightest compliance tier. That is not the same as having no obligations, there is still a questionnaire to complete and sensible security to maintain but it removes the part that is genuinely onerous and expensive.

How do we survive the busiest day of the year?

We test for it. Before a peak we simulate the traffic you expect plus a margin, find what gives way first, and fix it, so your capacity is a documented number rather than a hope. We also agree in advance what gets switched off if things go wrong, because a shop that can still take orders with recommendations disabled is a great deal better than one that cannot take orders at all.

Who does the product photography and copy?

Not us, unless you ask us to arrange it. We will tell you what each product page needs in order to sell well and build the structure that accommodates it, but the words and images are usually better coming from you or a specialist who knows your category. Underestimating this is the single most common reason a store launches late.

Where are you losing the sale?

Send us your store and your rough monthly numbers. We will tell you where the funnel is leaking, whether a rebuild is really the answer, and which platform we would put you on.

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