What Store Development Includes
Shoppers only see the storefront, but a working store has many moving parts. Typically, we build:
- catalog structure, filters and search that help shoppers find what they need in a few clicks;
- product pages with photos, specs, variants, stock status and reviews;
- a cart and checkout with no unnecessary fields, card payments and a choice of shipping options;
- an admin panel where your team manages products, prices, promotions and orders;
- sync with your accounting system, CRM and marketplaces;
- baseline SEO setup and sales analytics from day one.
When You Need a Store — and When to Start Simpler
Your own store pays off when you plan to sell consistently, want control over pricing, design and customer data, and don't want to depend on someone else's platform rules.
If you're just testing demand for a few products, you can start by selling on Amazon or with a simple landing page and an order form. And if the idea is to bring many sellers' products together on one site, you don't need a store — you need a marketplace with seller dashboards and seller payouts.
Platform: Hosted, Open Source or Custom
Hosted platforms like Shopify let you launch without a server or in-house developers. The upside is stability and a ready-made ecosystem; the downside is monthly fees, transaction fees and limits on customization.
OpenCart or WordPress with WooCommerce are free, open-source platforms. You own the code, and there are plenty of ready-made extensions. The downside: extension quality varies, and the store needs ongoing technical maintenance.
A custom build, for example on Laravel, makes sense for large catalogs, complex pricing, multiple warehouses and high traffic. It costs more upfront but has no platform limitations.
We're not tied to any single platform and recommend the one that fits your volume and plans.
Template or Custom Design
A ready-made template customized to your brand is faster and cheaper to launch. It works if your product range is typical and the priority is to start selling quickly. The downside: your store looks like hundreds of others, and non-standard sections are hard to add.
Custom design is the choice when brand drives sales: fashion, beauty, products with personality. It lets us design the product page and customer journey around your catalog, but it takes more time to plan.
Payments, Shipping and Accounting Integration
Stores typically connect Stripe, PayPal, Shopify Payments, buy now, pay later options, Apple Pay and Google Pay, plus UPS, FedEx and USPS with shipping options shown at checkout.
We set up sync with accounting software (such as QuickBooks) and CRMs (Salesforce, HubSpot and others) so prices and stock levels on the site stay current and orders go to your team automatically. If you also sell on marketplaces, we set up automatic product feeds for Amazon and Google Merchant Center.
Mobile, Speed and Search
Most shoppers visit stores from their phones, often from social media ads. That's why we design the catalog, filters and checkout for small screens first: large buttons, filters in a separate panel, minimal typing, address autocomplete and shipping options picked from a list.
Speed directly affects sales, too. We compress images, avoid unnecessary scripts and test the store in PageSpeed Insights before launch. For search engines, we set up clean URLs, title templates for categories and products, product schema markup with price and availability, and block filter-generated duplicate pages from indexing.
What to Prepare Before Kickoff
- A spreadsheet or export of your products with names, prices, specs and photos.
- Payment, shipping and return policies, plus copy for the store's policy pages.
- Access to your accounting system, CRM, payment providers and shipping carriers.
- Your logo and brand guidelines, plus examples of stores you like or dislike.
How to Tell Your Store Is Performing Well
The key metrics are conversion rate, cart abandonment, average order value and repeat purchase rate. We set up ecommerce reports in Google Analytics 4 so you can see at which step shoppers drop off and which products sell from which ads.
Just as important is how easy the store is for your team: how long it takes to process an order and whether anyone has to re-enter data by hand.
Common Mistakes When Launching a Store
- A long checkout form. Every extra field and forced account creation reduces completed purchases.
- Weak descriptions and photos. Shoppers can't hold the product, so specs and photos have to do the job of a sales associate.
- Updating stock by hand. Sooner or later, the site shows products that are out of stock.
- Launching without analytics. Without data, you can't tell which ads pay off and which don't.
What Affects Cost and Timeline
- Platform: a ready-made solution with customizations or a custom build.
- Design: an adapted template or a design created from scratch for your brand.
- Catalog: number of products, variants and attributes, and filter complexity.
- Integrations: accounting, CRM, marketplaces, non-standard payment or shipping methods.
- Sales logic: wholesale pricing, customer accounts, multiple warehouses, multiple languages.
- Migration: whether data and URLs need to be moved from your old store.
We give you a final price once we've seen your catalog and processes, so the estimate reflects the real scope, not assumptions.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will you add products to the store? We can set up imports from a spreadsheet, your accounting system or a supplier price list. Manual product entry and copywriting are discussed separately.
Will we lose Google rankings when moving to a new store? There's a risk if URLs aren't carried over and redirects aren't set up. We handle this as a mandatory part of every migration.
Can we sell both retail and wholesale on one site? Yes. Wholesale customers see their own prices and terms after logging in, while retail shoppers see the regular catalog.
Does the store also need a mobile app? Usually not at launch: a user-friendly mobile site is enough. A shopping app is worth considering once you have a large base of loyal customers who buy regularly.
Who will support the store after launch? We can take it on with our ecommerce support service: updates, fixes, new features and help with promotions.
Why Promodex
Online stores are part of the 750+ projects the agency has delivered since 2015, including Mamyn Dim, Varvara Home, Zoo Expert, Supermarket Krasy and others. Each store is built by our in-house team — designers, developers, SEO specialists and marketers — so after launch we can help not only with the tech but also with marketing and sales growth.
