Ecommerce website design in DenverSelling online is a different business than being found online
A service website has one job: get the phone to ring. A store has to handle inventory, shipping rules, tax, card security and the long list of small frictions that make people abandon a cart. It's a bigger build, and it should be priced and planned like one.
Shopify & custom builds · 2–4 weeks typical · Denver since 2012
Before anything else
Do you need a store, or a website that sells?
These get confused constantly, and picking wrong costs real money either way.
You sell a handful of things, occasionally
Custom orders, quoted work, a few products people call about. Adding a full cart means paying platform fees every month for a checkout almost nobody uses.
- Under roughly ten orders a month
- Prices vary by customer or job
- Most sales happen by phone or email anyway
- A payment link or invoice covers it
You have inventory and repeat orders
Real stock levels, shipping that varies by weight or destination, sales tax across states, and enough volume that manual order handling is eating your week.
- Steady weekly order volume
- Fixed prices and real inventory
- Shipping and tax that need calculating
- Customers who buy more than once
Then build it properly.
The number nobody shows you
What selling online actually costs you every month
Everyone quotes you the build. Almost nobody walks you through what comes out of every single order forever. Put your own numbers in.
Card processing uses the widely standard 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction; your own rate may differ. Platform and app figures are whatever you enter. This is arithmetic on your numbers, not a quote, and it deliberately excludes the cost of building the store — that's the one-off part everyone already tells you about.
Two things fall out of this for most stores. The 30 cents per transaction hurts far more at a low average order value than the percentage does. And app subscriptions creep — three at $20 a month is another $720 a year that nobody budgeted.
Four routes
Which platform your store should live on
We build on all of these and we'll tell you which fits. Anyone who recommends the same platform to every client is telling you about themselves, not about your business.
Shopify
Purpose-built for selling. Payments, inventory, tax, shipping and abandoned carts all handled by people whose entire job is handling them. You pay a monthly fee and you don't think about card security again.
- Fastest to launch, usually 2–4 weeks
- Payment security is their problem, not yours
- Huge app ecosystem when you need something extra
- Monthly fee forever, plus app subscriptions
- Less control over the underlying code
WooCommerce on WordPress
Sensible when the store sits inside a content site you're already publishing to. The core plugin is free, but the extensions add up — shipping and inventory add-ons typically run $100 to $300 a year.
- You own everything and can move it
- Blends with an existing WordPress site
- Security and updates are now your responsibility
- Plugin conflicts are a real ongoing cost
Custom build
For product configurations, wholesale pricing tiers or bundles that no platform handles cleanly. Published research puts full custom ecommerce builds at $45,000 to $250,000 depending on catalog complexity and integrations.
- Does exactly what your business needs
- No platform fees taking a cut forever
- Far higher upfront cost
- You're responsible for everything, including payment security
Marketplaces and payment links
Etsy, eBay, Amazon, or just a payment link on a normal website. Not glamorous, and for a business testing whether anyone wants the product it's often the smartest first move.
- Almost no upfront cost
- Built-in audience already searching
- They own the customer relationship, not you
- Commission is usually higher than card processing
Where stores lose money
Every step between browsing and buying loses people
This is the shape of every online store. Each stage sheds visitors, and the fix is almost never a redesign — it's removing one specific piece of friction at whichever stage is worst.
Illustrative shape, not your numbers — every store is different, and yours are in your own analytics.
Shipping cost revealed at the end
The single most reliable way to lose a cart. Say what shipping costs before checkout, or set a free-shipping threshold and put it at the top of every page.
Forcing account creation
Guest checkout exists for a reason. Asking someone to invent a password to buy a $30 item loses a meaningful share of them for nothing.
Slow product pages
Product images are the heaviest thing on a store. Compressed modern formats and correct sizing matter more here than anywhere else on the web.
Real photos, several angles
People can't touch it. Photography is the closest substitute, and it's usually a better investment than another redesign.
Answer the return question
Returns policy, visible before checkout. Uncertainty about getting money back stops more purchases than price does.
Product schema
Structured data puts price and availability directly in search results, and lets AI assistants quote what you sell. How that works.
Straight answers
Ecommerce website questions
How much does an ecommerce website cost?
A standard Shopify build sits in normal website territory and we quote it per project. Full custom ecommerce at scale runs $45,000 to $250,000 depending on catalog complexity and integrations, according to published 2026 research. Most stores don't need the second thing, and it's worth asking hard before anyone quotes you it.
Shopify or WooCommerce?
Shopify if selling is the main event and you want payment security handled for you. WooCommerce if the store sits inside a WordPress content site you already publish to and you want to own everything. The trade is convenience versus control, and the ongoing maintenance burden is genuinely different between them.
How long does it take to build an online store?
Usually two to four weeks. The variable is almost never the build — it's product data. Photos, descriptions, weights, variants and prices for every item you sell. Stores with fifty products and no photos take much longer than the code suggests.
What are the ongoing costs of an online store?
Platform subscription, card processing on every order at typically 2.9% plus 30 cents, and app or plugin subscriptions. Ecommerce extensions on WooCommerce commonly run $100 to $300 a year on top. Run your own numbers through the calculator above — the per-transaction fee surprises people with low order values.
Can you migrate my existing store?
Usually. The important part is protecting product URLs that already rank, because losing those loses the traffic that was already buying. Same principle as any website redesign — inventory first, map every address, redirect at launch.
Do I need to worry about sales tax?
Yes, and it's genuinely complicated once you sell across state lines. Platforms handle the calculation, but the filing and the thresholds are your responsibility. This is a question for an accountant rather than a web designer, and anyone who waves it away is doing you a disservice.
How do I get my products found in search?
Product schema so price and availability show in results, unique descriptions rather than the manufacturer's copy, fast product pages, and category pages that answer how people actually search. Duplicate supplier descriptions across a thousand stores is the most common reason product pages don't rank.
Should I sell on my own site or a marketplace?
Both, usually. Marketplaces bring an audience already searching, which is worth a lot early. Your own store keeps the customer relationship and the margin. If you're testing whether anyone wants the product at all, starting on a marketplace is often smarter than building anything.
Do you work with stores outside Denver?
Yes. Ecommerce has no geography — your customers are wherever they are. Most of our clients are in the Denver metro, and we also work along the Front Range including Monument and Colorado Springs, plus out of state.
What if I only sell a few items?
Then a full store is probably the wrong purchase. A normal website with payment links or an invoice covers a handful of orders a month without a monthly platform fee. We'd rather set that up and revisit when volume justifies the upgrade.
Keep going
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Tell us what you sell
How many products, how many orders, and where you're selling now. We'll tell you which platform actually fits, roughly what it costs to run, and whether you need a store at all. Plenty of people get told to start with payment links.
Rather just talk?
1-800-481-8638
Denver, Colorado · Answered within one business day