An email lands in my inbox a few times a year. A local shop owner wants a new website, and they want a shop page on it. Sell the stock online. Reach more people. It sounds obvious.
Most of the time, I talk them out of it.
That might seem an odd thing for a web designer to admit. I build WooCommerce sites. I am a certified Automattic developer, so an online shop is work I am qualified to do and happy to take on. But only when it makes sense. And for a lot of Harrogate businesses, it does not.
The problem nobody mentions
If you run a shop on the high street, your website has one job. Getting people through your door.
An online shop can work against that. Someone finds your site, browses your products from their sofa, then searches for the same item and buys it cheaper from a giant retailer with free next-day delivery. Your website just did the selling for someone else.
You did the photography. You wrote the descriptions. You paid for the shop page. Amazon got the sale.
A shop in Harrogate does not win by competing with the internet on price. It wins on the things the internet cannot do. Picking something up. Talking to a person who knows their stock. Walking out with it today. Your website should sell that experience, not your products.
What running an online shop actually involves
The other thing first-timers rarely see coming is the work. A shop page is not a page. It is a second job.
Every product needs photographing. Every product needs a written description. Stock levels need to match what is on your shelves, or you end up refunding orders for things you sold in person an hour earlier. Then there is postage, packaging, returns, card processing fees, and keeping prices up to date in two places instead of one.
That is hours every week. And for a small local shop, it is often hours every week for very little return. A handful of orders a month does not pay for the time it takes to run the thing.
None of this means ecommerce is bad. It means it is a commitment, and you should know the size of it before you spend money on it.
A simple test
Here is the rough rule I give people who ask.
If you have a shop front, your best bet is almost always footfall. Build a website that shows what you sell, where you are, when you are open, and why you are worth the trip. Add a phone number people can actually call. Let the till do the selling.
If you do not have a shop front, the maths changes. A mail order business, a maker selling nationwide, someone whose customers already buy that sort of thing online. For them, an online shop is not a bolt-on. It is the business. That is when WooCommerce earns its keep.
And there is a middle ground people forget. An enquiry form. If what you sell needs a conversation first, whether that is a quote, a measurement or a bit of advice, then a good form or a booking link will outperform a checkout every time. It is also far cheaper to build and nothing to maintain.
The questions to ask before you invest
Before you pay anyone for an ecommerce website, mine included, sit down with these.
Do my customers actually buy this online, or do they want to see it first? Can I compete on price with the big retailers, and if not, why would someone order from my site? Who is going to photograph the products, write the descriptions and keep the stock in sync? Who deals with returns? And honestly, would that time be better spent getting more people through the door?
If the answers point towards the shop floor, you do not need a checkout. You need a website that makes people want to visit.
What I would do
If you are a Harrogate or North Yorkshire business weighing this up, talk it through with someone before you commit. I am happy to be that someone. I will tell you straight if I think an online shop is the wrong spend, because a website that gets you the wrong result is not a website I want my name on.
