# E-commerce design and development > WooCommerce, Shopify and custom e-commerce, built for conversion and for Google. Free quote. Fionard is one of our projects. Page: https://www.studiojem.it/en/services/ecommerce/ Sell direct, and the cut you were leaving to the platforms stays with you. Selling online is not putting a cart on a website. It's building a system: catalogue, payments, shipping, stock, order emails, customer support. When one piece jams, your customer notices before you do — and buys somewhere else. We design and build stores on WooCommerce, Shopify and custom platforms, and we stay for the whole journey: from the first product upload to the first sale. We work with physical shops opening their online channel, makers and producers selling beyond the island, and brands born digital. Over 200 projects have taught us one thing worth more than any technology: the platform matters less than the sales model. First we understand how you sell — margins, volumes, who ships, who answers customers — then we choose the tool. Never the other way around. ## What's included ### Sales model analysis How many products, how many variants, what margins, who packs the boxes, how returns work. It looks like paperwork; it is the project. Every answer changes the platform, the catalogue structure and your future running costs. ### Store design and product pages Not a bought theme with your logo on it. The product page is the page that sells — photos, variants, availability, shipping times and costs, return conditions. Every unanswered question there is a sale that stops there. ### Payments Stripe and PayPal as the baseline: cards, digital wallets, plus bank transfer and cash on delivery where they make sense. Fast checkout, 3-D Secure, automatic receipts. Payment is the moment of maximum distrust — it has to be the cleanest step on the site. ### Shipping and inventory Carriers and rates by zone, weight and order value — with a free-shipping threshold if your margins can carry it. Tracking sent automatically, stock updated on every order, alerts when a product runs low. ### E-commerce SEO Product and category pages optimised for search, Product structured data showing price and availability in Google results, clean URLs, lightweight images. Ongoing [SEO](/en/services/seo/) can come later; the foundations go in from day one. ### Migration from other systems From PrestaShop, Magento, an old WooCommerce or a closed platform: we move products, customers and order history across, and set 301 redirects on every page. A store that migrates without a redirect map loses years of rankings in a week. ### Training and handover In the end the store is yours: a hands-on session covering products, orders, discounts and content, plus written documentation. We don't keep clients hostage. ## Method A complete e-commerce build takes 6–10 weeks. The path is always the same, whatever the platform. - **Sales model** — A working session on numbers and processes: catalogue, margins, logistics, returns, who does what after launch. This is where the platform choice and the final quote come from. - **Catalogue architecture** — Categories, attributes, variants, filters. The invisible part that decides whether a customer finds the product in three clicks or leaves — designed before we draw a single screen. - **Design and build** — Product pages, listings, cart, checkout, service pages. Mobile-first: if the checkout doesn't flow under one thumb, it isn't ready. - **Integrations and testing** — Payments in test mode, shipping with real rates, transactional emails, invoicing. Before launch we run complete test orders: we buy, we pay, we return. - **Launch and iteration** — We go live, train you on daily management, and read the first data together: where visits come from, where carts stall. An e-commerce store isn't delivered — it's started. ## What we build with On Shopify we build custom themes without piling on apps that slow the store down and multiply monthly fees. On WooCommerce we pick a few solid extensions and keep everything current through monthly maintenance. Custom projects run on Next.js and React with Stripe and server-side rendering, so product pages are readable by Google from the first byte. Around the store: GA4 with e-commerce tracking, Search Console, and transactional emails treated with the same care as the pages — the order confirmation is the most-opened email you'll ever send — plus [Ads campaigns](/en/services/ads/) with conversion tracking already in place. Shopify · WooCommerce · WordPress · Next.js · React · Stripe · PayPal · GA4 E-commerce · Search Console · Figma ## Shopify, WooCommerce or custom? It's the first question in every project, and the honest answer is: it depends on how you sell and who runs the store day to day. - **Shopify, the simple option** — Hosting included, automatic updates, a tidy admin, payments out of the box. In exchange you pay a platform fee and accept its limits: deep customisation goes through third-party apps. For a straightforward catalogue and no appetite for maintenance. - **WooCommerce, the flexible option** — No platform fee, full control over content and features, a huge ecosystem of extensions. The flip side: hosting, updates and security are your responsibility — or ours. For stores sharing a site with rich editorial content or unusual pricing logic. - **Custom, when the model doesn't fit** — Product configurators, on-demand production, multi-vendor marketplaces, sales tied to calendars. When the purchase flow is the heart of the business, bending a template costs more than building the right platform — like the [AVOY](/en/work/avoy-it/) marketplace or [hoopit](/en/work/hoopit-app/) ordering. ## The mistakes that block sales We've watched these repeat for years, even on well-built stores. Not one of the four is a design problem. - **Opening and waiting** — A store with no traffic is a warehouse with the shutter down. Organic visibility and campaigns get planned with the store, not "later, if there's budget left". - **Copy-pasted product pages** — The supplier's description, identical on a hundred sites, doesn't rank and doesn't convince anyone. Writing original product copy takes time — the best-spent time in the whole project. - **Surprise shipping costs** — The number-one cause of abandoned carts: a cost nobody mentioned appears at checkout. Times and costs belong on the product page, before the cart exists. - **Obstacle-course checkouts** — Forced registration, pointless fields, steps that restart on the first error. Every extra field is a percentage of orders lost: a checkout is designed to be finished. ## How much it costs A WooCommerce or Shopify store covers design, development, payment and shipping integration, SEO foundations and training. A custom platform gets a dedicated quote based on flows and integrations. Around the store: monthly maintenance, migration, an extra language with SEO, email marketing setup. Before looking at the price, look at the cost of a store that doesn't sell: you pay that one every month, forever. ## FAQ ### How much does an e-commerce site cost? It depends on catalogue, variants, integrations and goals: those are the items that shape the price, and they differ a lot between a platform (WooCommerce or Shopify) and a custom build. Tell us about your sales model in the configurator at /en/quote/ and you'll get a free written quote. ### Which platform do you use? WooCommerce, Shopify, or custom development. It depends on what you need: WooCommerce for maximum flexibility, Shopify for ease of management, custom when your sales model doesn't fit the mould. ### Can I run the store myself? Yes. We provide hands-on training and written documentation so you can manage products, orders and content on your own. We stay available when you need us. ### Do you offer support after launch? Yes: monthly maintenance plans with updates, backups, security monitoring and ongoing technical support.