The brief: every sale matters
Sofa Guys runs Facebook adverts to its website, so the site has two jobs: sell a sofa to someone who has just tapped an advert on their phone, and get everyone else browsing the range, checking the measurements and coming to the Bingley showroom to sit on one. Their old shop was built on a hosted platform held in the previous provider's account, which meant it could not be handed over or changed without them.
So we built a new shop rather than inherit the old one. They signed up on 18 October 2026, we built the first draft that evening, and the new shop went live on the 22nd on WooCommerce with a custom theme in the shop's own charcoal and blue. Card payments through their own Stripe account were switched on three days later, once Stripe had approved it.
Three screens that tell the story
Moved without losing a thing
All 61 sofas came across from the old store's own data, with every colour and size, its price, its "was" price and its measurements, rather than being typed in again. The old web addresses - from the previous platform and from an even older shop before that - now take people straight to the same sofa on the new site, or to the right collection if that sofa is no longer sold, so links in Google and in old adverts keep working.
The checkout takes cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay, Klarna, and Clearpay on smaller orders, all through Stripe, with no commission to us. The shop's Facebook and Google advert tracking came across too, and it only loads after a shopper says yes on the cookie banner. Behind the scenes each sofa tells Google its price, stock and delivery terms, and the shop tells Google where the showroom is and when it is open.
Built for the shop to run
The owner runs the shop from his own admin screens, not WordPress's: change a price or a photo for one colour, add a new sofa, pick what shows on the homepage, change the opening hours. Orders follow the way the shop actually works - ring the customer, book the delivery, out for delivery, delivered - and the customer gets an email at each step. Shoppers who would rather talk can ask about any sofa on WhatsApp from the page they are looking at.
Measured, not claimed
Tested on Google's own PageSpeed servers on 8 November 2026, the homepage scores 95 for performance, 93 for accessibility, 96 for best practices and 100 for SEO on mobile, and 98, 97, 96 and 100 on desktop. It is a photo-led shop page, so it is not a perfect 100: on a mobile test the main content appears in 2.9 seconds and the page weighs 1.1MB. When we ran the same test on the old site on 17 October 2026 it scored 62 for mobile performance, with the main content taking 5.4 seconds and a 1.6MB page. Verify it yourself, or put your own site through our free website check to see how it compares.
Why this matters if you don't sell sofas
Because the same problems turn up in most small online shops: a site you can't take with you, product pages that don't answer the questions people ask before they buy, and orders that end up managed in a notebook. A shop on our plan is yours to run, hosted on our own UK servers, with no commission on what you sell. See what we build, or tell us about your shop.
Online shop websites: the questions we get asked
How much does an online shop like Sofa Guys cost?
£99 setup, then the standard £29.99 a month plus £19.99 a month for the online shop add-on - £49.98 a month all-in for a designed, hosted and maintained shop with 3 content edits a month. There is no commission on sales; the only per-order cost is Stripe's card fee, which any shop pays whoever builds it. More on what we build on our ecommerce web design page, and every price is on the pricing page.
Can you move my shop off a platform I don't control?
Usually, yes - this is one. The old site sat in the previous provider's account, so it could not be handed over. We rebuilt the shop from the store's own product data, moved the domain across, and pointed the old web addresses at the new pages so links in Google and in old adverts still land on the right sofa. It went live four days after sign-up. You can cancel our plan any time with 30 days' notice.
Can I run the orders and products myself?
Yes. This shop has its own admin screens: prices and photos for every option, measurements, new sofas, homepage picks, enquiries and opening hours. Orders move through a delivery workflow - call the customer, delivery booked, out for delivery, delivered - with an email to the customer at each step and a printable delivery sheet. Anything bigger is covered by the plan's 3 content edits a month.