Service
E-commerce web design in Wales: a shop that delivers to the right postcodes
An online shop for a Welsh business has four decisions to make before anyone designs a page: what you sell online, how it gets to the customer, what the delivery rules are by postcode area, and whether the products need Welsh. We build shops on top of the Business package, quoted before we start, with payments through Stripe or PayPal, and we do not take a cut of sales. The shop is yours, the customer data is yours, and the monthly platform fee is zero unless you choose Shopify with your eyes open.
The four decisions
Settle these on the first call and the shop designs itself
- What goes online
- Rarely everything. A butcher in Ruthin sells the boxes and the Christmas order online and the counter stays a counter. A pottery in Aberaeron sells the twenty pieces that post well. Start with the range that ships, and let the counter trade stay on the phone.
- How it travels
- Royal Mail for anything under 2 kg, a courier for the rest, your own van inside a radius, and click and collect from the shop or a stall at the Saturday market. Each is a delivery method with its own price and its own cut-off, and the checkout offers only the ones that apply to the basket.
- The postcode rules
- Wales has seven postcode areas, LL, SY, SA, CF, NP, LD and part of CH, and a shop in Machynlleth does not deliver to CF the way it delivers to SY20. Own-van zones, courier surcharges for the islands, no chilled goods on a Friday: the checkout enforces your rules so you never refund an order you could not fulfil.
- Welsh on the product pages
- Category pages, the checkout, the confirmation email and the welcome in Welsh are the base for a shop in the Welsh-speaking counties. Product pages follow where the sales are, because translation is paid by the word. A shop selling to England from Cardiff can start in English and add Welsh later.
Platform
Shopify, WooCommerce, or built for you: the honest comparison
Each is right for someone. The wrong one costs a small shop a monthly fee for features it never uses, or a growing shop a rebuild in year two.
| Shopify | WooCommerce | Built on our stack | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost to you | Shopify's plan fee plus apps, every month, for ever | Hosting plus paid plugins, and the time to update them | Hosting and care at £159 a year; Stripe's fee per sale, which every platform charges |
| Who it suits | A shop managing stock daily, running discounts, selling on Instagram and in person from one till | A business already on WordPress with someone who maintains it | A stable range of under a couple of hundred products that wants a fast site it owns outright |
| Speed on a phone | Good if the theme is kept lean; apps slow it | Depends entirely on the plugins; usually slow | Fast: static pages, the checkout loads on demand |
| Welsh | Possible with the translation apps; the checkout is partly Shopify's | Possible with a plugin; fragile on updates | Built in: /cy/ pages, Welsh checkout and emails |
| Delivery rules by postcode | Yes, with an app for anything beyond zones | Yes, with a plugin | Yes, written to your rules |
| Leaving | Export the products; the theme and apps stay behind | Take the whole site; keep maintaining it | The site is yours and runs on any host |
We set up Shopify properly when it is the right answer and charge for the set-up, not a percentage. We do not build WooCommerce from new; we will work with it on the SEO side if you already have it.
What the shop must do
The parts a customer never notices until they are missing
The checkout works with one thumb. Apple Pay and Google Pay first, card second, address looked up from the postcode, and a guest checkout, because nobody in Llanidloes wants an account with a cheese shop. Every field that fails says why, in the language the customer chose.
The emails are yours. Order confirmation, dispatch with the tracking link, the Christmas cut-off reminder, all from your own domain with SPF and DKIM set so they land in the inbox. A shop whose confirmation goes to spam loses the second order.
The product page answers the question. Weight, size, what is in it, allergens where the law expects them, how it is packed, when it ships, and a photo of the thing on a plain background and a photo of it in use. A product with two photos and a paragraph outsells one with a name and a price.
Google can read the products. Product structured data with price and availability, so the item appears with its price in search and in the free product listings, and a product sitemap that updates when stock does. The monthly work then earns the category searches, “Welsh cheese delivered” and the like, which are the searches a shop lives on.
You can run it. Prices, stock and a new product are yours to change from a phone. Under hosting and care we do the rest: a new delivery rule, a seasonal category, the Welsh version of a change. Ask for the audit with your product list and we quote the shop, not a range.
Questions businesses in Wales ask us
How much does an online shop cost?
It is quoted on top of the Business package at £1,200, because a shop is that site plus the products, the checkout, the delivery rules and the emails. The extra depends on how many products and how many delivery rules, and the quote fixes it before we start. We take no percentage of sales, ever.
Shopify or something you build?
If you will manage stock daily, run discounts and want an app for everything, Shopify, set up properly by us, and you pay its monthly fee. If you sell a stable range of under a couple of hundred products and want the site to be yours with no monthly platform fee, we build the shop on our own stack with Stripe. The table on this page is the honest comparison, and the audit says which fits.
Can I limit delivery to certain postcodes?
Yes, and most Welsh shops should. Own-van delivery inside LL11 to LL14, courier for the rest of the UK, no chilled goods to Ynys Môn on a Friday: the rules are yours and the checkout enforces them, so nobody in Aberdeen orders a cake.
Do the product pages need to be in Welsh?
For a farm shop in Ceredigion or a bookshop in Caernarfon, the ones customers read do. For most shops, the category pages, the checkout and the emails in Welsh are enough to start, with products following where the sales are. Translation is paid by the word, so we translate what is read.
What about VAT, food labelling and the hygiene rating?
The checkout handles VAT rates per product, which matters for food where some items are zero-rated and some are not. Allergen information sits on the product page where the law expects it. Your Food Hygiene Rating goes on the site; in Wales displaying it at the premises is a legal requirement, and showing it online answers the question before it is asked.
Send us your product list and your delivery rules
Even on the back of an envelope. You get a recommendation of platform, a fixed price for the shop, and a review of your current site if you have one.