Store Setup & Launch
Set up once, properly.
Most of the expensive problems in an online store were created in its first week: a catalog structured the wrong way, tax set up by guesswork, a platform chosen before anyone asked what the business actually needed.
What setting up involves
Getting a store selling is the easy part. Getting it set up so it still makes sense at ten times the catalog size is the part worth paying attention to.
- Choosing the platform. Based on your catalog, how much custom work you need, and what you are willing to maintain. Not on which one we prefer.
- Catalog structure. Categories, product options, and variants organized so they hold up as the range grows, then imported.
- Payments, shipping, and tax. Configured and tested with real transactions, including the shipping rules that are easy to get subtly wrong.
- Theme setup. A clean, fast storefront that works on a phone, built from a solid theme rather than assembled from scratch for its own sake.
- Apps and integrations. The ones you actually need, connected to your existing tools. Every app is a recurring cost and a thing that can break.
- Pre-launch checks. Test orders, tax and shipping verification, analytics, and the basics of search setup before anyone sends traffic at it.
How a build runs
Three phases, with the store in your hands at the end of it.
1. Work out what you need
What you sell, how you ship it, what you already use to run the business, and where you expect the catalog to be in a couple of years. That decides the platform.
2. Build and configure
Store built, catalog loaded, payments and shipping set up, integrations connected. You see it working before it's public.
3. Launch and hand over
Go live, then a walkthrough of running it: adding products, handling orders, and knowing which settings not to touch.
Deciding where to build it
The platform question usually comes first, and it's worth getting right before anything else happens.
Platforms we build on
What each one is good at, and which kinds of store tend to outgrow it.
See platformsStore Automation
If you already know the manual work is coming, it's cheaper to design it out at setup than to bolt it on later.
About automationGuides
Walkthroughs of specific platform moves and the questions that come up before one.
Browse guidesStarting a store from nothing?
Tell us what you plan to sell and how you plan to ship it. That's enough to have a useful first conversation.