Online stores for retailers
A customer can find the item, add it and pay without getting lost.
An online store rests on four things: complete product pages, a readable cart, a reassuring checkout and a back office you can run yourself. I scope the rest around your catalogue.
Stripe
& Shopify securely integrated
Fast
light product pages that load quickly
Secure
encrypted payments, no card data stored
What is built in for a store
What I see most often in online stores
Before proposing anything, I look at your current store and note what is costing you orders. These are the situations that come up most often with the retailers I talk to.
The customer has to create an account before paying
Someone buying once does not want to pick a password to spend $40. It is one of the steps where carts get abandoned most. Guest checkout, with an email and an address, solves it.
Shipping costs only show up at the last step
The customer shops with a price in mind, then discovers $18 of shipping at checkout. Showing the shipping cost on the product page or as soon as an item is added to the cart avoids the bad surprise and the abandoned carts that follow.
Photos come off the camera at 5 MB and go online untouched
On cellular data, the product page takes several seconds to appear and the visitor goes back to Google. Images need to be resized, converted to a light format and loaded only when they reach the screen.
Site inventory does not match store inventory
An item shown as available has been sold for two weeks. You refund, you call the customer to apologize, and you lose the sale and the trust at the same time.
The catalogue is one long page with no filters
A customer looking for a specific size, colour or price range has to scroll and guess. Search and category filters change the experience completely on any catalogue past thirty items.
You cannot change a price yourself
Every correction goes through an email to someone else and waits three days. You should be able to edit a price, a photo or a description yourself, in two minutes, on a weekday evening.
What goes on the store
The list adapts to your catalogue, but here is what is in place on most of the online store projects I deliver.
Complete product pages
Photos from several angles, variants, dimensions, shipping time and return policy, because those are exactly the questions that trigger a phone call or an abandoned cart.
Stripe online payments
Cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay. Card numbers never pass through your server, so there is no banking data for you to protect.
Guest checkout
The customer enters an email and an address, pays, and can create an account afterwards if they want one.
Shipping costs calculated early
Shipping and in-store pickup show up before the payment step, based on the postal code.
Shopify or WooCommerce back office
You add a product, change a price or close a line when it sells out, without having to email me.
Automatic order emails
Confirmation, shipping notice and tracking number go out on their own, which cuts most of the where-is-my-order calls.
Promo codes and gift cards
Useful for the holidays and for recovering an abandoned cart without lowering your prices permanently.
Indexable category pages
Each category gets its own address, title and text, which gives Google something other than your home page to rank.
Selling online when your customers are in the Estrie region
Many retailers in Sherbrooke, Magog and Coaticook already sell in store and want to add online sales without losing touch with their local customers. In those cases I keep in-store pickup as a delivery option, with the address and opening hours visible right on the product page, and I set up a local delivery zone covering Sherbrooke, Lennoxville, Windsor and Coaticook. A customer browsing on a Tuesday evening sees they can pick the item up the next day, and the order goes through without a phone call. I also work with retailers in Granby and Bromont, part of Estrie since 2021, and the delivery zone is set up the same way.
Possible e-commerce scopes
Essential store
Catalogue, cart, payments and product pages based on your real inventory.
Custom after diagnosisComplete e-commerce platform
For heavier catalogues: filters, integrations, multilingual or useful automations.
Custom after diagnosisFrequently asked questions about online stores
Can I add products myself?
Yes. You get a back office where you add a product, change a price, replace a photo or mark an item out of stock without going through me. I walk you through it at launch and leave a short written guide. If you’d rather hand the updates to me, that works too, but it isn’t required.
How much does an online store cost in Quebec?
It depends mostly on the number of products and the number of variants per product. Thirty items with no options take far less work than a catalogue of 800 references with sizes, colours and inventory to synchronize. I give a fixed price after seeing your real catalogue and how you handle orders, and the scopes are detailed on the pricing page.
Shopify or a custom store?
Shopify suits you if you want the least technical management possible and your catalogue fits its model; you pay a monthly subscription plus a commission on sales. A custom store makes sense when you have unusual pricing rules, configurable products or an existing management system to connect. I recommend one or the other based on your volumes, and I say so plainly when Shopify is the better choice for you.
Do you handle hosting and updates?
Yes, if you want that, through a monthly maintenance plan covering hosting, backups, updates and security patches. Otherwise I hand over all the access at delivery and you continue with the provider of your choice. Either way, the domain name, the code and your customers' data belong to you.
How long before the store is online?
Count on 7 to 14 days depending on the content. The timeline depends less on development than on how long it takes to gather photos, descriptions, prices and shipping weights. When that content is ready in advance, it’s closer to seven days.
Does the store handle taxes and Law 25?
The store calculates GST and QST based on the shipping address, using your registration numbers. For Law 25, I put in place the privacy policy, the consent request for tracking cookies and the contact details of the person responsible for personal information. Your company’s overall compliance stays your responsibility; I handle what happens on the site.
Useful pages before you start
If you are still comparing providers, these pages answer the questions that come before signing.
- web design
The design and page structure process, before we even talk about a catalogue.
- SEO and conversion
How your product pages earn traffic and what gets worked on to turn a visit into an order.
- website redesign
For a store that already exists and costs you more in frustration than it brings in.
- website maintenance
Hosting, backups, updates and monitoring once the store is live.
- pricing
The available scopes, what each one includes and the price ranges.
- web agency in Sherbrooke
Who I am, how I work and the area I serve in the Estrie region.
Reviews
What clients say, on Google
The reviews below come straight from the studio’s Google profile. You can click any name to check the profile yourself.
Get your catalogue online properly
A store where you manage products and prices day to day.
Launch my store