Websites & Stores · Service 02

Online stores that stay fast when the orders arrive.

E-commerce development for Toronto and GTA businesses — built on WooCommerce, Shopify or something custom, whichever genuinely suits how you sell. The catalogue can triple and the checkout still has to hold up on a phone, on transit, on a bad connection.

Fixed quotePayments and tax configured Tested on real devicesYou own the store
Talk about your store → Compare platforms

The part customers actually touch

Every tap between browsing and buying

A store is not a catalogue with a payment button bolted on. It is a sequence of small decisions, and each one loses people if it hesitates. Add a few items below — this is a working cart, not a picture of one.

Choosing the foundation

WooCommerce, Shopify, or something custom

There is no universally right answer — only the one that fits your margins, your catalogue and how much you want to own. Here is the honest trade-off on each.

Checkout

Every extra step is somewhere to lose the sale

Most abandoned carts are not price objections — they are friction. Forced account creation, a shipping cost that appears at the last moment, a form that rejects a postal code with a space in it. Drag the slider to see a checkout collapse from five steps to one.

01Create an account
02Shipping address
03Delivery options
04Billing address
05Payment

Scope

What an e-commerce build covers

All of it is in the quoted price. The things that usually turn into change requests elsewhere — tax rules, shipping bands, a staging site — are in scope here.

01

Catalogue structure

Categories, variations, attributes and filters designed around how people actually shop your range, not how your spreadsheet is organised.

02

Payments

Card, Apple Pay and Google Pay configured and tested, with the fee and settlement implications explained before you commit to a provider.

03

Shipping & tax

Canadian tax rules including HST by province, plus shipping bands, free-shipping thresholds and pickup options.

04

Checkout design

The shortest path that still collects what you need, with guest checkout and address autofill as defaults.

05

Product pages

Images, specs, stock state and delivery expectations laid out so the common question is answered before it is asked.

06

Performance

Image handling, query tuning and caching, because a store gets slower every time you add products — unless it was built not to.

07

Order operations

Emails, invoices, stock alerts and the admin screens your team uses every day, set up so packing does not need a workaround.

08

Analytics

Ecommerce tracking that reports revenue and funnel drop-off, not just sessions.

09

Launch & handover

A staging site, a test order end to end, and a walkthrough of adding products yourself — recorded so you can rewatch it.

Performance targets

A slow store is an expensive store

Stores accumulate weight — plugins, tracking scripts, high-resolution photography. These are the thresholds every build is held to before launch, and again whenever the catalogue grows.

Largest Contentful Paint

—

How quickly the main product image and price appear. Past this, people start leaving before the page finishes.

Interaction to Next Paint

—

How fast the store responds to a tap on "add to cart" — the moment hesitation costs you an order.

Cumulative Layout Shift

Nothing jumping under a thumb while images load. Mis-taps on a checkout button are lost sales.

These are Google's published Core Web Vitals thresholds — the targets a build is held to, not measured results for any particular store. Real figures for your site are shared during the work.

Questions

E-commerce development, answered

How much does an e-commerce website cost in Toronto?
More than a brochure site, because there is more to build and more to test — payments, tax, shipping and stock all have to behave correctly before launch. The number depends on catalogue size, how many variations each product has, and what has to connect to your existing systems. As with every project here, it is quoted as a fixed price against a written scope before work starts.
Should I use WooCommerce or Shopify?
If you want full ownership, no per-sale platform fee and freedom to change anything, WooCommerce. If you would rather trade some control for someone else handling hosting, security and PCI compliance, Shopify. The comparison above lays out both honestly — and if your margins are thin, the monthly platform fee is worth modelling before you decide.
Can you migrate my existing store without losing rankings?
Yes, and the redirects are the part that matters. Every old product and category URL needs to point at its new equivalent, which is unglamorous work that is easy to skip and expensive to skip. Order history and customer accounts can usually come across too, depending on the platform you are leaving.
Will I be able to add products myself?
Yes. Adding products, editing prices and managing stock are everyday tasks, and the store is built so they do not require a developer. You get a recorded walkthrough at handover. If you would rather not, a care plan can cover it.
How do you handle Canadian sales tax?
GST, HST and PST are configured by province at build time and tested with real order scenarios before launch. If you sell internationally, we set the rules for the regions you actually ship to rather than guessing at the rest.
What about payment fees and PCI compliance?
Card details are handled by the payment provider rather than touching your server, which keeps the compliance burden where it belongs. We explain the fee structure of the providers worth considering before you commit, because on thin margins the difference between them is real money.