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E-commerce & WooCommerce Stores

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Product page in the AK Apothakary online store
AK Apothakary · Online store

Pizza looks simple. Crust, sauce, cheese, toppings. Then we built an online ordering system for a local pizza restaurant, and every rule the kitchen followed had to become a rule the website could enforce:

  • Some crusts only come in certain sizes.
  • Some toppings or crusts cost extra.
  • Some options are mutually exclusive (only one kind of sauce per pizza).
  • Some ingredients aren’t available every day because of supplier constraints.
  • When the pepperoni runs out, customers shouldn’t be able to order it.

At the counter, an intelligent human handles all of that in conversation, sometimes by yelling back to the kitchen to find out if an ingredient has been “86’ed”. Online, the website has to handle it alone.

That’s the difference between a website and an online store. A regular business website explains who you are and gets people to call. A store has to do that and also take the order, calculate tax and shipping, charge the card securely, track inventory, send the receipt and hand the order to whoever fills it. If any link in that chain breaks, the money stops. And it must do it all while surviving relentless attacks from scammer bots and fraudsters trying to test if their stolen credit cards still work so they can use them elsewhere.

What we build

  • Online stores on WooCommerce, the e-commerce system that runs on WordPress. You own the site, the data and the customer list. Nothing is locked inside someone else’s platform. You’re not “renting your customers” like you are on marketplaces like eBay and Etsy and Amazon, where they can take your stream of customers away.
  • Products with options and rules. Sizes, variations, add-ons, bundles, subscriptions, rentals and event tickets. If your product has choices, we can build the logic behind them.
  • Inventory that stays correct. Sold-out items stop selling, and availability can change by day or location.
  • Checkout that doesn’t lose people. Clear prices, no surprise fees on the last screen, and as few steps as possible. No “dark patterns”.
  • Shipping, tax and payment setup, which can add significant complexity to any store.
  • Analytics that follow the sale all the way to “order complete,” so you know which marketing brings in buyers and not only visitors.
  • Customer care. Get them on your mailing list for remarketing, because your past customers are your best future customers.

Some of our online stores

AZ Hives North America · Website
Agricola Slovenia · Website
AK Apothakary · Website
See more of our work

Checkout is where sales go to die

We worked with a well-known food and beverage event that sold tickets for more than $400 a person. The marketing worked: thousands of clicks, low cost per click, lots of buzz. Sales didn’t follow. The tickets were sold through the venue’s outside ticketing platform:

  • It forced buyers to create an account.
  • It pushed pre-checked insurance twice and had a pre-checked donation.
  • It required an email verification to finish paying. For some buyers that email never arrived.
  • It allowed no tracking, so nobody could see where people gave up.

A store you control, with a checkout you can see into, avoids all of that.

An ornate antique brass cash register with rows of round number keys, a side crank and a decorated drawer front
The original checkout. It never made anyone create an account, verify an email or decline the trip insurance. Zero abandoned carts in a hundred years.

Ready for the rush

When a local restaurant launched online ordering with us, business took off. Too many orders landed in the same fifteen minute timeslot, and the kitchen couldn’t keep up. The fix couldn’t be to immediately build a bigger kitchen. We added pickup time slots that limit how many orders each window can take. Before we launch a store, we ask what happens if it works better than expected.

Marketplace fees add up

Marketplaces like Etsy, Amazon, eBay and Poshmark bring you shoppers, and they charge for it on every sale:

  • Etsy charges a 6.5% transaction fee on the item price and shipping, plus payment processing and a listing fee. When a sale comes through Etsy’s Offsite Ads, it takes another 12% to 15%.
  • Amazon takes a referral fee of roughly 6% to 15% in most categories, and more in some, plus a monthly fee for professional sellers.
  • eBay takes a final value fee of about 13% on most sales, plus a per-order fee.
  • Poshmark keeps 20% of every sale over $15.

Fees change often, so check each marketplace’s current rates. This marketplace fee comparison is a good starting point.

Those fees can be your entire margin, and the difference between being profitable and losing money.

On your own WooCommerce store, you pay the payment processor’s fee, usually around 3% plus a few cents, and keep the rest. Many sellers keep a marketplace shop for discovery and bring repeat customers to their own store, where every sale costs less and the customer relationship belongs to you.

Moving from Shopify and others

Shopify, Wix, Etsy and Squarespace are all fine places to start. Some businesses outgrow them and want more control over customization, costs and data. Some platforms also take a percentage of every sale on certain plans, on top of payment processing, and that adds up as you grow. See the website platforms we work with for more on choosing a platform. We move stores from other platforms to WooCommerce:

  • Products and images. Descriptions, variations and product photos move over and keep their structure.
  • Customer accounts. Customers come across too. Shopify won’t export passwords, so we plan the reset messages with you.
  • Past orders. Many customers re-order the same thing multiple times, especially for consumables. Make it easy for them.
  • Redirects. We set up a redirect for every old URL if necessary, so the search rankings you worked for come with you.

Keeping it running

Stores need care after launch: updates, backups, speed tuning and security. Our Managed Hosting keeps WordPress and WooCommerce sites running smoothly for our clients, so they can spend their time on orders instead of plugins.

Questions people ask

WooCommerce itself is free, open-source software. You pay for hosting, for any paid extensions your store needs (some shipping, subscription and booking features are paid add-ons) and your payment processor’s fee, usually around 3% plus a few cents per sale. There’s no platform percentage on top.

Yes. Many sellers keep a marketplace shop for discovery and send repeat customers to their own store. There are plugins that connect WooCommerce with marketplaces like Etsy, Amazon and eBay, and we’ll tell you whether one fits the way you sell.

Yes. Products, images, customer accounts and past orders come across, and every old URL gets a redirect. Shopify won’t export passwords, so customers set a new one, and we plan those messages with you.

Credit and debit cards through processors such as Stripe, Square or PayPal, plus Apple Pay and Google Pay through those same processors. We’ll help you pick the one with the right fees for your sales.

WooCommerce can calculate tax at checkout, and automated tax services can look up the right rate for each address. That helps in Colorado, where many cities collect their own sales tax. We set it up, and your accountant decides what you owe.

Card-testing bots try stolen card numbers with small orders. We use the payment processor’s fraud tools, bot protection on the checkout and firewall rules in front of the site, and we keep an eye out for unusual order patterns.

What our clients say.

Following [Wild Iris Marketing]’s advice, we ran a highly targeted promotion following some regional weather. It was so successful, we spent all day answering phones and taking orders and didn't have time to do anything else!
Margaret MillsMarina Pool, Spa & Patio
In just three short months, Mindy built a following for my business such that when we opened our doors, we had immediate sales, and at the end of Day 1, we were sold out.
Ripple Pizza & Ice CreamGoogle review

More reviews on our Testimonials page and on Google.

Let's talk about your store

Call us at 720-526-3636 or send a note through our contact form. Tell us what you sell and how you sell it now. We’ll ask a lot of questions about your products, because that’s where the hard part of a store lives.

Let's Talk

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Works well with: Website Design & Maintenance · Website Platforms We Work With · Custom WordPress Development · SEO & Analytics · Digital Advertising

Serving: Evergreen · Conifer · Bailey · Genesee · Morrison · Golden · Lakewood · Wheat Ridge & Arvada · Littleton · Ken Caryl & Highlands Ranch · Denver · the 285 Corridor · and clients everywhere by phone and video

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