WhatsApp usAn online shop that actually earns its keep.
Products, card payments, orders - a proper shop on your own website, built and looked after on the same pay-monthly plan as everything we make. £99 to start, £29.99 a month plus £19.99 for the shop. No commission on your sales, ever.
What an online shop has to get right
Nobody buys what they can't see properly. Clean, consistent photos on every product - and a site design that stays out of their way - do more for an online shop than any feature list.
Guest checkout, card payment in a few taps, no surprise costs at the last step. Most abandoned baskets die at a clumsy checkout - on a phone, at night, one thumb.
Secure payment, dispatch times, returns, delivery costs - stated plainly and early. A first-time visitor is deciding whether you’re real before deciding whether they want the product.
"In stock" that's true, delivery promises you can keep, and a shipping price known before the checkout. Every surprise here becomes a complaint, a refund or a one-star review.
Each product on its own findable page with a proper title and description - so "the thing you sell + your town" searches can land directly on the product, not just your homepage.
Prices, stock, seasonal lines, offers. An online shop is never finished - which is why ours come with the looking-after built in, not billed by the hour.
What's included
Not a template with your logo on - a shop built around your products, your offer and how your customers actually buy, the same way we design everything else.
Stripe-powered card payment on your own site - Apple Pay and Google Pay included - with the money settling to your own bank account. We set it up and test it with real orders before launch.
A back office where orders arrive and products get added without a manual. We set it up, load your first products with you, and teach you to run it - most owners are comfortable within an afternoon.
Not sure yet? Start with a brochure site on the standard plan and add the shop later - it's the same monthly model with the shop add-on switched on when you're ready to sell.
Fast UK hosting, SSL, backups and software updates are part of the monthly fee - an online shop taking card payments is exactly the kind of site that must never quietly rot.
Design tweaks, new sections, changed content - covered by the plan, same as every site we build. You run the day-to-day products and orders; we keep the shop itself sharp.
Proof over promises: The Perfume Factory is a full shop build of ours - bundle builder, scent finder, checkout and all. The wider retail approach is on our shops & retail page, and the pricing page lists every cost on one screen.
How it works
Products, prices, who buys them and where the photos are up to. If you're at a market stall or a shop counter today, that's a fine starting point - it's exactly where our favourite build started.
A first design of the shop built around your actual products - the offer up front, the route to checkout obvious. You approve it before anything else happens.
We load the launch range, connect Stripe to your bank account, set delivery and returns up honestly, and run real test orders end to end - card, confirmation email, the lot.
The shop goes live and joins the standard service: hosting, security, backups, updates and edits in the monthly fee. You handle orders; we keep the machine running.
Online shop questions, answered straight
How much does an e-commerce website cost?
The wider UK market runs from roughly £30-a-month DIY builder plans to £5,000+ agency builds, plus running costs - our website cost guide has the honest numbers. Ours is plain: £99 setup, the standard £29.99 a month, plus £19.99 a month for the online shop add-on - just under £50 a month all-in for a designed, hosted, maintained shop. Card processing has its own small per-transaction fee (that's Stripe's, not ours - every online shop pays one, whoever builds it).
Can I start with a normal website and add the shop later?
Yes, and for a lot of businesses it's the right order - get found and trusted first, sell online second. The shop is a monthly add-on on the same plan, switched on when you're ready, and you can drop it again from your client portal if selling online turns out not to suit the business. No rebuild either way.
How do I actually get paid?
Card payments run through Stripe - one of the biggest payment providers in the world, the same one under plenty of household-name checkouts - connected to your own bank account. Money from orders settles to you directly on a rolling basis; we never sit between you and your takings. Setting the account up is part of the build, and it's less paperwork than opening a business bank account.
Is it worth selling on my own site instead of eBay, Etsy or Amazon?
Same answer we give hotels about Booking.com and takeaways about the delivery apps: the marketplaces bring you strangers and charge commission on every sale, forever - and the customer stays theirs, not yours. Your own shop costs the same flat fee however much you sell, and every repeat customer is commission you stopped paying. Most small sellers do best running both: marketplaces for reach, your own shop for margin, repeat buyers and the customers who searched your name.
Who keeps the products and stock up to date?
Day to day, you - adding a product or changing a price is genuinely a few minutes in the back office, and we teach you until it's boring. Behind that, the plan's unlimited edits cover the site itself: new sections, seasonal reworks, design changes. If you'd rather send us a spreadsheet of product changes and have us do the lot, that works too - plenty of clients run it that way.
Have you actually built shops like this?
Yes - the one to look at is The Perfume Factory: a Blackpool events business selling £5 perfumes from market stalls, now with an online shop built around its bundle deal, a two-tap scent finder and same-day dispatch messaging. The brief was to turn stall customers into repeat online buyers, and the whole build is on the work page to judge for yourself.