Ecommerce web design in Newcastle, NSW: a shop that is easy to buy from.

Product pages, a cart and a checkout on the front. Stock, payments, postage, tax and returns behind it. The second list is where the work is and where the decisions are.

Everybody arrives at this conversation talking about the front: how the product pages look and how the checkout flows. That part is real and it is the smaller half of the build.

What sits behind it

• Stock. What you have, what happens when it runs out, and whether the website and the shop floor are looking at the same number.
• Payments. Who processes the card, what the fee is, and what happens to a failed payment.
• Postage. What it costs, who calculates it, and whether it changes by weight, size or destination. This is the one that eats build time.
• Tax and invoices. GST handled correctly and a receipt that satisfies your accountant.
• Returns. What a customer does, and what happens to the stock number when a parcel comes back.

A shop where those are settled is a straightforward build. A shop where they are not is a series of surprises with a website attached.

Because the shop is open when the door is shut, and because it reaches past the people who can drive to you. Both are real, and both come with work attached that does not exist on a service website.

A local retailer with an online shop is selling in the evening and on Sunday, and to people in Maitland and Port Stephens who were never going to make the drive. That is the case, and it is a good one.

What comes with it is a second business to run. Orders have to be picked, packed and posted, stock has to stay honest, and somebody has to answer the message asking where a parcel is.

The businesses we have seen do well out of it are the ones that decided who was doing that work before the site was built, rather than discovering it in the first busy week.

Postage, stock, returns and who packs the orders. Those four are business decisions rather than website ones, and a build that starts without them stalls waiting for them.

This is the list we ask for first, and it is the reason some shop builds take a fortnight and some take six months.

What has to be decided

• How postage is charged. A flat rate, by weight, by destination, or free over an amount. Every one of these is a different amount of work.
• Where the stock number lives. The website, your point of sale, or a spreadsheet. If it lives in two places, they will disagree.
• What happens on a return. Who the customer contacts, what they get back, and what happens to the stock.
• Who packs and posts. A person, and the hours in their week it takes. This is the one most often left unanswered.
• What you are legally on the hook for. Refunds, faults and delivery are covered by consumer law, not by your policy page.

The rules on that last point are set out plainly by the ACCC, and they apply to a Newcastle shop the same as to a national one.

The platform, the payment fees, the postage, and somebody's hours every week. The hours are the cost nobody puts in the plan and the one that decides whether it is worth it.

A shop carries an ongoing cost no other website has, regardless of who built it, because money moving means somebody is taking a percentage.

Where it goes

• Platform. A monthly fee if you are on a hosted shop, or hosting and upkeep if the shop runs on your own site.
• Payment fees. A percentage of every sale plus a few cents. Worth reading closely, because they differ.
• Postage. What you charge against what it actually costs. The gap is quiet and it compounds.
• Hours. Picking, packing, posting, answering. The real cost, and the one that shows up as somebody's evening rather than an invoice.

None of that is a reason to avoid it. It is a reason to know the numbers before the build rather than in month three.

Settle the business decisions, choose the platform against them, build with real products, test a live order with a real card, open quietly, then fix what the first orders show you.

1. Settle the four decisions

Postage, stock, returns, who packs. Written down. Everything after this is faster once they exist.

2. Choose the platform against them

Not before. The postage rules and where the stock number lives are what decide which platform is sensible.

3. Build with real products

Real photographs, real descriptions, real weights. A shop built on stand-in products hides every problem the real ones would have shown.

4. Buy something yourself, with a real card

The whole way through, including the receipt, the confirmation email and the refund. Then do it on a phone.

5. Open quietly

Before you tell anybody. The first orders always teach you something about packing or postage.

6. Then fix what they showed you

Postage rates that were wrong, a product that needs a better photograph, a question three customers asked. This is the part that makes it work.

The build is short once the decisions are made. Product photographs, descriptions and weights are what stretch a shop out, because every product needs all three.

The order it happens in

• The business decisions get settled. Postage, stock, returns and who packs. Nothing is built yet and this is where a build gets stuck if it is skipped.
• The shop is built with real products. Photographs, descriptions and weights. This is the long part and it is content rather than code.
• It opens quietly and gets corrected. A real order bought with a real card, then the first weeks of packing telling you what was wrong.

A business with a hundred products and no photographs of them is not a fortnight away from a shop, whatever the platform advertises.

Ask who owns the shop and the customer list, what a product change costs afterwards, how postage is being handled, and whether you can move the shop elsewhere. The customer list is the one worth being firm about.

We do this work in Newcastle, so we are not neutral. These are the questions we would want asked of us.

• Who owns the shop and the customer list? The business, in accounts in its own name. Ours are set up that way before a product is added.
• What does adding a product cost afterwards? It should be something you do yourself. If it is a job, that is a monthly cost in disguise.
• How is postage being calculated? The rules, in writing, against what it actually costs you to post.
• Can I move the shop elsewhere? Products, orders and customers exported whenever you want, without a fee for asking.
• Am I locked in? Ours runs month to month and always has. Any arrangement you cannot leave at the end of a month is worth a second look.

Plenty of Newcastle businesses run a hosted shop themselves and never need a developer. The point to bring somebody in is when the shop has to agree with something else the business already runs.