ECOMMERCE WEBSITE DESIGN GOLD COAST
When the checkout breaks at nine at night, you'll be ringing me
An online store is the one kind of website that can cost you money while you’re asleep. When something goes wrong with yours, you don’t want a ticket number and a response time — you want the person who built it.
I design and build Shopify and WooCommerce stores for Gold Coast businesses, and I’m the one who answers when they need something.
Your website is your shopfront, and nobody's on the floor
In a shop you can read a customer’s face, answer the question and walk them to the counter. Online, the website has to do all of that on its own.
Within about ten seconds someone is deciding:
can I trust this business?
can I find what I want?
is the price clear?
what’s the shipping?
can I pay the way I want?
what happens if I need to send it back?
If any of that is hard work, they don’t ask for help.
They leave.
A successful eCommerce website removes those barriers and creates a clear path from discovering a product to completing a purchase.
Is your store quietly costing you sales?
Having an online store isn’t the same as having one that works.
The usual culprits:
- Products are hard to find, or the navigation makes sense only to you.
- The mobile experience is an afterthought.
- The site is slow.
- Checkout has too many steps.
- Carts get abandoned and nobody knows why.
- Product pages don't answer the obvious questions.
- Payment options are limited, or shipping costs appear as a nasty surprise.
Small issues across the customer journey can quickly add up to lost sales.
SHOPIFY OR WOOCOMMERCE?
There isn’t one right answer. It depends on what you sell, how you work and what you want to do next.
Shopify suits businesses that want a platform built purely for selling — simple product management, hosting handled, payments straightforward, and a big library of add-ons.
WooCommerce suits businesses that want more control, deeper content and SEO, unusual product requirements, or a store that lives inside a WordPress site.
I’ll tell you which one I’d pick for your business and why — including the times when that’s the option I’d make less money on.
Shopify
Shopify can be a great option for businesses wanting a dedicated eCommerce platform that’s straightforward to manage and built specifically around online selling.
It can be particularly suitable for businesses wanting:
- Simple product management
- Reliable eCommerce hosting
- Easy payment processing
- Large app ecosystem
- Multi-channel selling
- Reduced technical management
WooCommerce
WooCommerce offers extensive flexibility and is particularly powerful for businesses wanting their Ecommerce store integrated closely with a WordPress website.
It can be ideal for businesses wanting:
- Greater website flexibility
- Advanced content and SEO capability
- Custom functionality
- More control over website structure
- Complex product requirements
- Integration with an existing WordPress website
BUILT AROUND THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY
From First Click to Completed Order
A store isn’t a set of pages, it’s a journey, and it breaks at the joins. So I look at all six stages, not just the pretty ones.
1.
Discovery
People arrive from search, Google Shopping, social and ads, and they land in different places. The store has to make sense wherever they come in.
2.
Navigation
Categories, filters and search that let someone find a product without learning your system first.
3.
Product pages
Everything a customer would have asked in person — images, description, price, options, shipping, and a reason to believe you.
4.
Cart
Fewer distractions, an obvious next step, and a sensible place to suggest something that goes with it.
5.
Checkout
Fast, familiar, and short. Nobody should have to work hard to give you money.
6.
After the order
Confirmations, shipping updates, review requests and a reason to come back. This is where most stores stop, and it’s where repeat customers are made.
Connected to the rest of your business
Where it makes sense, I’ll connect your store to what you already run — MYOB, Xero or QuickBooks, your email marketing, your CRM, inventory, shipping providers and payment gateways. The point is that an order goes from checkout to fulfilment without anyone retyping it.
Built so people can find it
A store still needs customers. I set up search-friendly URLs, sensible product and category structure, a proper heading hierarchy, mobile performance and page speed from the start — so ongoing SEO and Google Shopping have something to work with.
Why people build with me
One person, start to finish
You’ll never explain your business twice.
I think about whether it sells
I don't disappear once it launches
I'll recommend the smaller option
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How much does an eCommerce website cost?
It depends on the number of products, the functionality, the integrations and the platform. Once I understand what you’re selling, you get a fixed price and a clear scope.
Should I use Shopify or WooCommerce?
Can you redesign my existing Shopify store?
Can you improve my existing WooCommerce website?
Can you migrate my existing online store?
Can you upload my products?
Can you connect payment providers?
Can you set up shipping?
Will my eCommerce website work on mobile?
Can you help after the website launches?
YOUR NEXT CUSTOMER IS
ALREADY ONLINE
You don’t need the biggest store. You need one people can buy from without having to think about it. Ring me on 0421 513 978.