A web shop is the only kind of site where you can see straight away whether it works. Either people buy, or they don't. That's awkward because there's no hiding behind an impression, but it's also good because every decision can be checked against a number.
This post is about what to decide before the build, where the money really goes, and what most often kills sales on otherwise tidy shops.
A ready-made platform or a custom web shop
The first question, and the most important.
A ready-made platform: Shopify, WooCommerce and the like. You start quickly, the monthly cost is predictable, everything standard already exists. You pay a subscription, in some cases a percentage of sales, and you're tied to what the platform allows.
A custom web shop: everything is yours, from the look to the rules. A more expensive start, no subscription for the shop itself, no percentage of sales and no limits on what it can do.
The rule that holds in practice: if you sell standard goods in a standard way, take a platform. If your way of selling has something of its own (prices per customer, volume discounts, B2B terms, a product configurator, delivery that depends on a schedule), the platform will fight you at every step.
Urban Design is an example of the second group: wholesale hospitality equipment, where the price depends on the customer and the catalogue and ordering have to work together.
How much does a web shop cost
- A ready-made platform with a tailored look: €500 to €1,500 to build, plus €30 to €100 a month.
- A custom web shop, standard scope: €1,500 to €3,000.
- A larger catalogue, B2B rules, integrations: from €3,000.
My ranges per service are on the pricing page. On top of the build come payment fees, around 1.4% + €0.25 per transaction for European cards, regardless of how the shop is built.
Payments and fiscalisation
The part most often underestimated in Croatia.
Cards. Stripe is the simplest to set up. Croatian processors such as CorvusPay, WSPay and Monri take a bit more paperwork, and KEKS Pay, Aircash and PayPal are handy as extra options. Most often you connect whatever you already use.
Cash on delivery is still a significant share of orders and needs to be planned for, not ignored.
Fiscalisation. If you take card payments, the receipt has to be fiscalised. That isn't an add-on bolted on at the end but part of the system from the start, and how it's done depends on how your accountant handles it today. Projects that forget it discover the problem a week before launch.
Bank transfer for B2B customers who work that way.
What most often kills sales
Roughly in order of how often it happens:
A checkout that surprises. A delivery cost that only appears on the last step is the most common reason for abandoned carts. Say it early, even if it's awkward.
Mandatory registration. Guest checkout has to exist. An account can be offered after the purchase.
A process that's too long. Every extra field loses some people. For physical goods you need a name, address, email and phone; the rest is surplus.
Poor photos. The customer can't pick the product up, so the photo does that job. Several angles, the real size, the product in use.
Unclear delivery and returns. When it arrives, what it costs, what if it doesn't fit. If that isn't written down, the customer assumes the worst.
Slow on mobile. Most traffic comes from phones. If the catalogue takes four seconds to load, some customers never see the product.
No contact. A visible phone number raises trust even with people who will never call.
SEO for a web shop
Shops have a problem ordinary sites don't: lots of pages that look alike.
- Product descriptions have to be yours. A description copied from the supplier is shared with fifty other shops and none of them stands out.
- Category pages are the most valuable. "Restaurant frying pans" is searched more often than a single model.
- Structured data for product, price and availability: that's how the price shows up in search results.
- Filters mustn't create endless addresses. Without control over that, Google indexes thousands of variants of the same list.
- Products you no longer sell aren't deleted without a redirect.
After launch
A web shop isn't finished on launch day; that's when it starts giving you data.
Three things are worth watching: where people abandon the cart, which pages get opened but don't sell, and what people search for in the shop's own search. That last one is the most useful because it literally tells you what customers want and can't find.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to build a web shop?
Five to eight weeks for a smaller shop, eight to twelve for a larger catalogue with variants and stock. The catalogue is usually the bottleneck: photos and descriptions take longer than development.
Can I move my existing shop?
Yes. Products and orders are moved over, and old addresses are redirected one to one so you don't lose visibility.
Do I need a mobile app?
Almost never. A good shop on a phone does the same job without an install.
Who owns the shop after delivery?
With a custom build: you. The code, the data and the catalogue are yours, with no subscription for the shop itself.
Where to start
Tell me what you sell, how many products there are and how the price is set. From that it's quick to see whether a platform is enough or building pays off.
Describe your case or see my work.