Web Development
Ecommerce Development
The storefront is the easy part. What decides the cost is variants, stock synchronisation, tax rules and what happens when an order goes wrong.
Ecommerce development builds online stores on the platform that suits your catalogue, margins and team. The Nexclick scopes the awkward parts first — variants, stock, fulfilment, VAT and returns — because those decide the build far more than the storefront does, and they are where quotes go wrong.
Is this you?
What usually prompts the call
- You are selling through a marketplace and want your own store with the margin that comes with it.
- Your current store cannot handle how your products actually vary.
- Stock levels disagree between the website, the warehouse and the accounting system.
- You are outgrowing a hosted platform and need to know whether moving is justified.
What we do
The actual deliverables
Things that appear on an invoice, not adjectives.
- Scope the awkward parts first
- Variants, bundles, stock rules, backorders, VAT treatment, shipping bands and returns. These decide the build cost, and quotes that skip them get revised upward later.
- Platform recommendation with the trade-offs stated
- Shopify, WooCommerce or a custom build, chosen against your catalogue size, margin and team capability rather than against what we would prefer to build.
- Product data model
- How products, variants and attributes are structured. Getting this wrong is the single most expensive thing to change later, because everything else depends on it.
- Checkout and payment
- Payment gateways, express checkout, saved cards and fraud rules, with the customer journey tested end to end including the failure paths.
- Stock and order integration
- Connections to your warehouse, ERP or accounting system, built with reconciliation in mind rather than assuming both sides always agree.
- Performance on category templates
- Product grids are the heaviest and most commercially valuable templates on any store. Image handling and lazy loading addressed at template level from the start.
- Search-friendly architecture
- URL structure, faceted navigation rules and out-of-stock handling decided during the build, so the store does not need an SEO rescue six months after launch.
Checklist
The commerce questions that decide your quote
Every one of these changes the cost of an ecommerce build, and most quotes are given without asking them. Answer these before commissioning anything — from us or anyone else — and the quote you get will be one that holds.
- 01How do products vary — size, colour, material — and can a variant have its own price and stock?
- 02Do you sell bundles, kits or configurable products?
- 03Do you sell by weight, length or another continuous measure?
- 04Is stock tracked in the store, or synchronised from a warehouse system?
- 05What happens when something goes out of stock mid-checkout?
- 06Do you accept backorders or pre-orders?
- 07Are prices different for trade, retail or logged-in customers?
- 08Which VAT rates apply, and do any products carry zero or reduced rating?
- 09Do you sell outside the UK, and does that change VAT, duty or pricing?
- 10How is shipping calculated — flat, weight, zone, or a courier rate at checkout?
- 11Who fulfils orders, and does the store need to notify them automatically?
- 12What is the returns process, and does the store need to handle it?
- 13Does anything need to reach your accounting system, and in what format?
- 14How many products at launch, and how many in three years?
- 15Who will add products day to day, and how technical are they?
- 16Do you need a subscription or repeat-order model?
How it works
Step by step, with timeframes
Timeframes are typical rather than guaranteed, and they assume we get account access and approvals when we ask.
- 01Week 1–3
Scope commerce logic
Catalogue structure, tax, shipping, fulfilment and returns worked through in detail. Longer than clients expect and the reason fixed prices hold.
- 02Week 3–6
Design and data model
Storefront design alongside the product data model, so the design does not assume a structure the catalogue cannot support.
- 03Week 6–14
Build and integrate
Storefront, checkout and integrations, with edge cases exercised deliberately — partial fulfilment, refunds, stock discrepancies, failed payments.
- 04Week 14–17
Test with real data and launch
Full catalogue imported, test orders placed end to end including refunds, then launch mid-week with monitoring on conversion and errors.
What you get
Reporting and ownership
- A written commerce specification covering tax, shipping, returns and fulfilment before a price is agreed.
- The product data model documented, since it is the hardest thing to change later.
- Test orders run end to end including refunds and partial fulfilment, evidenced.
- A search-friendly URL and indexing policy agreed during the build, not retrofitted.
- Documentation and a recorded walkthrough for whoever runs the store day to day.
Tools and platforms
- Shopify, WooCommerce or Next.js commerce
- Stripe, GoCardless, PayPal
- Google Merchant Center
- ERP and warehouse APIs
- Playwright (checkout journey testing)
- Staging with production-like data
Timeline
How long this actually takes
Fourteen to eighteen weeks for a mid-sized store, and the scoping stage is longer than clients expect because commerce logic is where fixed prices succeed or fail. Integrations add time, and the constraint is almost always the system at the other end rather than the store. One thing worth saying plainly: if you are selling a straightforward range with standard variants and no unusual fulfilment, a customised Shopify theme will cost a fraction of a custom build and serve you better. We will recommend that where it is true, and it is true more often than agencies admit.
Pricing model
Fixed-price project
Fixed price against a written commerce specification, invoiced across milestones. Platform, payment and app fees are yours directly and shown at cost during scoping.
Questions
Ecommerce Development questions
Shopify, WooCommerce or custom — how do we choose?
Shopify for most retail, because it handles payments, hosting and compliance and enforces useful constraints. WooCommerce where you need full control and have someone to maintain it. Custom only where the commercial logic genuinely will not fit either — bespoke pricing, unusual fulfilment, or an integration neither platform supports.
Why does scoping take three weeks?
Because commerce logic is where fixed prices break. Variants, tax treatment, shipping rules and returns each have a dozen possible answers, and a quote given without them is a guess. The three weeks is what makes the price hold rather than being revised twice during the build.
Can you integrate with our warehouse or ERP?
Usually, and the constraint is almost always the system at the other end. Modern systems with a documented API are straightforward. Older systems with a nightly CSV export are workable but need reconciliation designed in, because the two sides will disagree eventually.
How do we handle VAT correctly?
It gets scoped rather than assumed. Zero-rated and reduced-rate products, B2B versus B2C treatment, and sales outside the UK all change the logic. Your accountant defines the rules and we implement them — we will not invent a VAT treatment, and neither should any developer.
What about ongoing costs after launch?
Platform subscription, payment processing, app subscriptions and hosting where applicable, plus maintenance if you take it. These are shown at cost during scoping so the monthly running total is visible before you commit rather than discovered afterwards.
Will the store be findable in search?
The architecture is built to be. URL structure, faceted navigation indexing rules and out-of-stock handling are decided during the build rather than retrofitted. Ongoing ecommerce SEO is a separate service, and a store built correctly gives it something to work with.
Last reviewed 28 July 2026.
Tell us what you are trying to fix
A 20-minute call, no pitch deck. The Nexclick will tell you what we would do, roughly what it costs, and whether we are the right people for it.