Choosing the platform is the decision. The rest is execution.
A Shopify agency will tell you Shopify. A WordPress agency will tell you WooCommerce. The platform you end up on is usually decided by whoever you asked, not by what your business needs, and you live with that choice for five years. We build on all of them, which means we have no reason to steer you.
Five platforms. Four of them are wrong for you.
The right-hand column is the one that matters. Any agency will tell you what a platform is good at, far fewer will tell you when they'd steer you away from it.
Half the migrations we're asked about shouldn't happen.
Migrations are large projects, which is why agencies encourage them. Worth being clear about which reasons hold up and which don't, before you commit three months and a budget to it.
Nearly always plugins, apps and unoptimised images rather than the platform. The same problems migrate with you, and now they're on an unfamiliar system.
That's a redesign, not a replatform. You can rebuild the front end on your current platform for a fraction of the cost and keep everything that works.
Understandable, and it's a staffing problem. Moving to a platform with more available developers is sometimes right, but check whether that's actually true for your chosen destination.
You don't know their catalogue complexity, their integrations, or whether they regret it. This is the weakest reason and it comes up regularly.
Customer-specific pricing, multi-store architecture, a B2B portal, or a market the platform doesn't support. A genuine hard limit, not an inconvenience.
When the annual bill for hosting, developers and extensions exceeds what a hosted platform would cost outright, the arithmetic has changed.
Hitting API limits, order volume caps, or variant limits. These are real walls rather than annoyances, and they don't go away.
A platform no longer receiving security updates, or a compliance requirement the current stack genuinely can't meet.
Six things, every build.
Whichever platform the conversation lands on.
Platform selection, argued
Four questions, twenty minutes, a recommendation with the reasoning shown. Including when the answer is stay where you are, which happens often enough to be worth saying.
Templates, not pages
Home, category, product, cart and checkout built as reusable templates. A new product looks right without anyone building it a page.
Editable by your team
Content changes without a developer or an invoice. Landing pages, seasonal layouts, copy swaps. An agency that hard-codes everything has built itself a dependency, not a website.
Checkout configured properly
Guest checkout on, wallet payments enabled, address autofill working, and shipping costs shown before the final step rather than after.
Redirects mapped before launch
Every URL earning impressions accounted for and tested on staging. The single most common way a rebuild loses traffic, and it's a spreadsheet exercise rather than a technical one.
Feed and tracking wired in
Product feed structured for Merchant Center, conversion tracking verified, schema in place. So whoever runs marketing afterwards isn't starting from a broken base.
Two stores we've built for.
Named clients, real project pages.
A large, complex industrial safety catalogue that needed a storefront and product feed structured well enough for paid search to actually work, not just look presentable.
Read the case study →
An appliance sales and repair business whose site needed to serve two different buyer intents at once, shoppers and repair bookers, without either path getting in the other's way.
Read the case study →Eight to fourteen weeks. You approve each phase.
Nothing gets built on a decision you haven't seen, and nothing goes live until the redirects are tested.
Platform and scope
The four questions, then a recommendation with reasoning. Plus every URL currently earning traffic, exported and mapped. You get that list whether or not we build anything.
Weeks 1–2Templates, in the browser
Home, category, product, cart and checkout as reusable templates. Approved on a real phone rather than as a flat image that hides how it behaves.
Weeks 2–5Development and data
Front end built, integrations connected, and, on a migration, products, variants, customers and order history mapped and validated. The data is what takes the time.
Weeks 5–12Redirects, then watch
Redirects tested on staging, tracking verified, baseline recorded. Then two weeks of monitoring, because the first fortnight surfaces what nobody predicted.
Weeks 12–14Three bands. Fixed scope, fixed price.
Agreed before anything starts, so a change of mind is a conversation rather than a variation order.
Platform assessment
$3,500 one-time · 2 weeks
Start here if: you're weighing a replatform and want an answer from someone with no stake in which platform you pick.
- Current platform audited against your actual needs
- Platform recommendation with the reasoning shown
- Migration risk and effort estimated honestly
- Full URL and redirect map
- A clear answer on whether to move at all
Custom build
$20k–$38k 8–12 weeks
For: established stores on WooCommerce, BigCommerce or similar, with a real catalogue and existing traffic to protect.
- Everything in the assessment
- Custom front end, built to be editable
- Product and category templates
- Checkout configured and tested
- Full redirect mapping and staging tests
- Feed, schema and tracking wired in
- Two weeks post-launch monitoring
Enterprise & migrations
$38k–$60k+ 12–16 weeks
For: Adobe Commerce, headless builds, B2B portals, multi-store architecture, or a full platform migration with years of data.
- Everything in the custom build
- Platform migration with full data mapping
- B2B pricing tiers and wholesale portals
- Multi-store and multi-currency setup
- ERP and CRM integration
- Extended launch support
- Assessment fee credits against a build. If you don't proceed, the recommendation and redirect map are yours, and another developer can work from them.
- Building on Shopify? Same team, slightly different process, and it's priced separately, see Shopify web design.
- You own everything. Code, hosting access, documentation. No licensing arrangement, and nothing that requires us to maintain it.
Before you call.
Which eCommerce platform should we use?
It comes down to four questions: who maintains the site after launch, whether your pricing or catalogue logic is genuinely unusual, what has to integrate with it, and your realistic annual budget beyond the build. Those four narrow it to one or two platforms every time.
Broadly: WooCommerce for content-led stores already on WordPress with someone to maintain it. BigCommerce for large catalogues with complex variants. Adobe Commerce only for genuine enterprise complexity. Shopify for most other cases. The comparison above includes when we'd steer you away from each.
Should we migrate off WooCommerce or Magento?
Often not. "The site is slow" is usually plugins and images rather than the platform, and those problems migrate with you. "It looks dated" is a redesign, which costs a fraction of a replatform.
Good reasons do exist: hitting a hard platform limit, maintenance costs exceeding what a hosted platform would cost outright, or a compliance requirement the current stack can't meet. The two lists above separate them, and we'd rather talk you out of a migration than take the project and watch you regret it.
Will we lose our search rankings?
Not if the redirect work happens before launch rather than after. Every URL currently earning impressions gets mapped, tested on staging, and verified at go-live. Product URL structures rarely translate one-to-one between platforms, which is exactly where most migrations lose traffic.
What we won't promise is zero movement, a short unsettled period of a couple of weeks is normal while search engines re-crawl. Knowing that in advance is what stops it becoming a crisis.
Can our team update the site without a developer?
Yes, and it's worth asking every agency you speak to. We build with editable sections so your team creates landing pages, swaps images and changes copy without touching code.
Agencies that hard-code layouts create a dependency where every content change is billable. That's a commercial model, not a technical necessity, and it's the single thing clients most regret not asking about.
What does it cost and how long does it take?
A custom build is $20,000 to $38,000 over 8 to 12 weeks for most established stores. Adobe Commerce, headless, B2B portals or a full migration run $38,000 to $60,000+ over 12 to 16 weeks. A platform assessment is $3,500 and credits against a build.
On a migration, the data mapping takes the time rather than the design. The breakdown is above. Building on Shopify is priced separately, see Shopify web design.
Do you build on Shopify too?
Yes, and honestly it's the right answer more often than not. Fastest to launch, best conversion tooling out of the box, deepest app ecosystem. It has its own page because the process differs slightly, see Shopify web design.
This page exists because Shopify isn't always right. Complex B2B pricing, multi-store architecture, deep WordPress integration and customer-specific catalogues are all cases where something else fits better.
Do you handle SEO and ads after launch?
Yes, as separate services rather than bundled in. eCommerce SEO for organic, eCommerce PPC for paid, Merchant Center for Shopping feeds.
The build wires the foundations in either way (feed structure, schema, conversion tracking), so whoever runs marketing afterwards isn't starting from a broken base. That happens whether you continue with us or not.
What comes after the build?
Tell us what you're on and what's frustrating you.
That's usually enough for a useful first answer. We'll tell you whether the problem is the platform or something cheaper to fix, which platform we'd actually recommend and why, and what a rebuild would realistically cost and take. Including when the answer is stay where you are and fix three things, which is a considerably shorter conversation than the one you were expecting.
No platform preference · Fixed-price scope · You own everything we build