eCommerce Website Development
Most shoppers meet your store on a phone, on a mobile connection, with one thumb. They arrive on a product page from a search result or an advert, not on the home page. The storefront has a few seconds to show the item, the price and a way to buy it.
This page is about the part of the shop customers see and touch: the theme, category and product templates, search, filters and the mobile layout. Payment, tax and shipping logic are covered on our eCommerce development page.
The pages that carry the shop
A store has thousands of URLs but only a handful of templates. Each one has a single job.
Product page
Name, price, stock state, variant picker and the buy button visible without scrolling. Delivery cost and returns terms close by, because hidden costs end purchases.
Category page
A grid that loads quickly, filters that match how people choose, and sorting that remembers its setting when the visitor goes back.
Search results
Tolerant of spelling mistakes, aware of product codes, and never an empty page. No result should offer nearby categories.
Basket
Editable quantities, a clear total, and an honest delivery estimate before the customer is asked for an email address.
Home page
A route into the catalogue for people who arrive without a product in mind. It matters less than most owners expect.
Account area
Past orders, tracking, saved addresses and a way to reorder. Useful mainly for repeat and trade buyers.
Where storefront time goes
Slow shops are rarely slow for one reason. These are the usual causes, in the order we check them.
Images
Product photographs uploaded at camera size and scaled down by the browser. We serve resized files in modern formats, set width and height so the page does not jump, and load pictures below the fold only when needed.
Third-party scripts
Chat widgets, review badges, trackers and pop-ups, each added for a good reason and none ever removed. We measure the cost of every script and ask who still uses it.
Apps and plugins
Each extension adds its own stylesheet and JavaScript to every page, including pages where it does nothing.
Uncached pages
Category and product pages can be served from a cache for most visitors. Basket and account pages cannot, and the two must be kept apart.
Fonts and layout shift
Several font weights loaded before any text appears, and banners that push content down after it has rendered.
What we check on a real phone
A narrow browser window on a laptop is not a phone. These checks are done by hand on devices.
- Buttons large enough to press without zooming
- Variant pickers usable with one thumb
- The right keyboard for email, phone and postcode fields
- Address autofill working in the checkout form
- Image galleries that swipe and pinch correctly
- Filters that open, apply and close without losing position
- Sticky bars that do not cover the buy button
- Text readable in daylight, with sufficient contrast
How the storefront is built
We design with your products in the templates from the start. Placeholder text hides the awkward cases.
Measure the current store
Page speed field data, search terms, exit pages and the devices your visitors use. This gives a baseline to compare against later.
Templates with real products
The longest product name, the item with one photo, the category with four hundred lines. Layouts are built to survive them.
Review on your phone
Every two weeks you receive a link. Open it on your own device and buy something in test mode.
Launch and re-measure
After release we take the same measurements again and report the difference, whichever way it went.
Theme technology by platform
The storefront is written in whatever the platform expects, so another developer can maintain it.
- Shopify
- LiquidOnline Store 2.0 sectionsTheme app extensions
- WooCommerce
- PHP templatesBlock themesWordPress hooks
- Magento
- Layout XMLPHTML templatesHyva
- Headless
- Next.jsReactTypeScriptStorefront APIs
- Measurement
- LighthouseCore Web Vitals field dataBrowser dev tools
Storefront questions
Should we buy a theme or have one written?
A bought theme is a fair start for a small catalogue. It carries code for features you will never switch on. A written theme contains only what your store uses, and costs more at the outset.
Will a faster site sell more?
We cannot promise that. A faster site removes one reason for people to leave. Price, range, delivery terms and trust decide the rest.
Can you improve the store without a redesign?
Often, yes. Image handling, script clean-up and template fixes can be done under the existing design.
Do you build to accessibility standards?
We build to the WCAG level your adviser specifies and test with keyboard and screen reader. We do not issue conformance statements. An independent auditor does that.
Who writes product descriptions and takes photographs?
You do, or a copywriter and photographer you appoint. We set the image sizes and text lengths the templates need.
Show us the store as it stands
Send the address of your shop and name the page that bothers you most. We will look at it on a phone before we answer. We reply within one business day.