Storefronts that load, checkouts that finish
Retail software answers to two numbers: how fast the product page paints, and how many people who start checkout finish it. We build storefronts and the systems behind them with page weight treated as a commercial constraint rather than a cleanup task for later.
What makes e-commerce & retail software hard
Before anything about us. These are the constraints that shape every e-commerce & retail build, and the reason generic delivery comes unstuck here.
Weight costs sales
A product page that takes six seconds on mobile data has already lost the visitor. Page weight is a commercial number that happens to be measured by engineers.
Three systems, one stock count
Storefront, warehouse, and marketplace listings each believe they know how many are left. An oversell is the customer finding out first.
A month of traffic in one afternoon
Sale events do not ramp up. They arrive, and the architecture either absorbs them or discovers its limit in public.
E-commerce & Retail capabilities
Four areas we take on in this sector. Each one is work we do rather than a category we list.
Catalogue pages that arrive before attention leaves
Product and category pages are the entrance to the whole funnel. They have to be legible to a crawler on the first request and usable on a phone on mobile data.
- Server-rendered catalogue and product pages
- Faceted search and filtering
- Structured data for rich results
- Responsive image pipelines
- An agreed page-weight budget
- Content edits that do not need a deploy
Where these projects actually go wrong
The recurring failure patterns in this sector, what we do differently, and what that changes. You will not find a claimed figure here. Those belong to engagements we can name, and we do not name what we cannot evidence.
Product pages ship megabytes of unoptimised imagery and a marketing tag stack nobody has audited, so mobile visitors leave before the first image resolves.
A page-weight budget agreed before design, images in modern formats sized to their container, media that loads on interaction, and an argument about every third-party script.
The page becomes usable on mobile data instead of only on office wifi.
Stock drifts between the storefront, the warehouse, and marketplace listings, and the first visible sign of it is a refund.
One authoritative source per SKU, synchronisation built around that decision, and reconciliation that reports drift instead of quietly absorbing it.
A discrepancy shows up as an exception on a screen rather than as an apology to a customer.
Checkout asks for a phone number, a company name, and an account it does not need, and every field takes a share of the people who started.
A stripped checkout with guest purchase as a first-class path, validation inline, and errors that can be corrected without losing the form.
Fewer places for a buyer who has already decided to fall out of the flow.
The sale event is the first real load test the architecture has ever had.
CDN-fronted delivery, autoscaling tiers, and a load test against the projected peak before the campaign is sent.
The capacity limit gets found in a test window rather than during the promotion.
Commitments, not promises
How we build for e-commerce & retail clients. Each one is checkable in the work itself rather than a claim about results you cannot see.
Page weight has an owner
A weight and Core Web Vitals budget is agreed before design and checked before release, so nobody meets the number for the first time after launch.
Images done properly
Modern formats, sized to the container they render in. Media is the usual reason a retail site is slow, and unaudited marketing tags are the second.
Peaks tested beforehand
Sale capacity is load-tested against your projected peak in a test window, not discovered while the campaign email is landing.
Three ways this usually starts
Prices are not listed because they depend on scope. We quote a range after discovery, along with the specific things that would move it toward each end.
Discovery
Best before you commit
A short paid engagement that ends with a scoped plan you own, whether or not we build it. If the honest answer is that you should not build software at all, that is what the document will say.
- Requirements and constraints captured
- Technical and integration assessment
- Architecture and approach outline
- An estimate as a range, with its drivers
- Risks named rather than implied
Project build
Best for a defined outcome
A scoped build with an agreed deliverable, run in short cycles with something you can review at the end of each one. Suited to work where the shape of the outcome is already clear.
- Fixed scope with a change process
- Something reviewable every cycle
- Design, build, test, and deploy
- Documentation and runbooks
- Handover to your team
Dedicated team
Best for an ongoing roadmap
A small team working continuously against your priorities, with capacity you can plan around. Suited to products that keep changing rather than projects that finish.
- Named engineers, consistent over time
- Priorities you set each cycle
- Direct access to the people building
- Shared repository and tooling
- Exit on notice, with no lock-in
Page weight is a business metric, not a technical one
We cut our own site from 81MB of assets to 21MB and nothing on screen got worse. Most heavy sites are not heavy by decision. They are heavy because nobody owned the number.
Server rendering, and why your SEO still depends on it
Search engines execute JavaScript now. That has not made client-only rendering safe for anything whose discovery matters to the business.
Most cloud migrations do not need a rewrite
The instinct to re-architect everything on the way to cloud is how a migration becomes a multi-year programme that stalls. Move it first. Then fix what the bill points at.
E-commerce & Retail: what buyers ask us
Including the ones where the answer is no. A limit stated up front is worth more than a capability claimed now and found out later.
If a hosted platform fits your catalogue, your checkout, and your integrations, use it. We will say so, and we would rather say it than sell you a build you do not need. Custom earns its cost when the platform is fighting you: unusual pricing or bundling rules, deep ERP integration, a catalogue shape it will not model, or performance its themes cannot reach.
We agree a page-weight and Core Web Vitals budget before design starts, then check it before release rather than after a complaint. In practice that means server-rendered catalogue pages, images in modern formats at the size they render, video that loads on interaction, and a hard look at every third-party script. Marketing tags are usually the heaviest single thing on a retail site, and nobody owns them.
Yes, where they expose an API or a scheduled export. The decision that matters is which system is authoritative for each field: stock, price, product copy. Most sync problems are two systems both believing they own the same value, so we settle that at architecture stage rather than discovering it in production.
Only if we test it against your projected peak first, which we build into the plan. Load testing beforehand is the difference between finding a capacity limit in a test window and finding it while traffic arrives. We also make sure the failure mode is graceful, because a slow page still takes orders and an error page does not.
We do the engineering half: server-rendered pages, structured data, clean URLs and canonicals, sitemaps, fast loads, and correct handling of pagination and faceted navigation. Keyword research, content production, and link building are a separate discipline. We work alongside whoever does that for you rather than pretending to.
Yes, and you should assume it. Catalogue copy, campaign content, and merchandising surfaces get wired to whatever CMS or admin suits your team, so routine changes do not queue behind a deployment. If changing a line of copy needs an engineer, that is a design failure on our side.
Industries we work in
Healthcare
Patient portals and clinical tooling, built to be audited
Fintech & Banking
Payment flows and the ops tooling behind them
Education
Learning platforms built by people who run one
Logistics
Tracking and field apps for teams without a signal
Real Estate
Listing platforms that are fast and findable
Manufacturing
Production visibility for the floor and the office
Insurance
Quote and claims flows that survive an interruption
Let's talk about your e-commerce & retail project
A scoping conversation costs nothing. You leave with a clear view of the approach, a budget range, and the main risks named out loud, including an honest no if we are not the right firm for this.