Ecommerce Website Development
Custom online stores and headless storefronts where speed is revenue. Every 100ms of load time costs roughly 1% in conversions. We build stores that load in under a second.
Speed Is Revenue. The Math Is Simple.
Most ecommerce sites run on WooCommerce or a bloated Shopify theme. They load in 3 to 6 seconds. On mobile, it is worse. Every second of that load time is money walking out the door.
Google and Deloitte research puts the number at roughly 1% conversion loss per 100ms of additional load time. For a store doing $1M in annual revenue, a 3-second improvement in page speed translates to roughly $30,000 in recovered sales. Per year. Just from speed.
Then there is ad spend. Google Ads Quality Score factors in landing page experience, which is heavily weighted by load time and Core Web Vitals. A faster landing page means a higher Quality Score, which means lower cost per click. For ecommerce stores spending $10K or more monthly on ads, the savings from a sub-second landing page can hit $2,000 to $5,000 per month.
We build ecommerce sites on Astro with headless commerce backends. Static HTML served from edge CDNs. Sub-second load times on 3G connections. No PHP rendering on every page request. No plugin chains. No WooCommerce bloat.
What We Build for Ecommerce
Headless Storefronts
- Shopify Storefront API and custom frontend builds
- Static product pages served from CDN edge nodes
- Sub-second load times on mobile and desktop
- Full design control without theme limitations
Product Catalog Systems
- Faceted search and filtering without page reloads
- Dynamic inventory displays with real-time stock data
- Product variant handling with proper canonical tags
- Structured data for rich results in search
Checkout & Payment Flows
- Stripe, PayPal, and Apple Pay integration
- Cart abandonment reduction through speed and UX
- Multi-step checkout with progress indication
- Guest checkout and saved payment methods
Inventory & Fulfillment APIs
- Real-time inventory sync across sales channels
- Multi-warehouse fulfillment routing
- Backorder and pre-order workflow automation
- Third-party logistics (3PL) integrations
PPC Landing Pages
- Campaign-specific landing pages with sub-second loads
- A/B testing infrastructure built in
- Quality Score optimization through Core Web Vitals
- Conversion tracking with server-side tagging
Mobile Shopping Experience
- Touch-optimized product galleries and navigation
- Progressive Web App (PWA) capabilities
- Offline browsing for product catalogs
- Mobile checkout optimized for thumb reach
Why Not WooCommerce
WooCommerce powers 28% of online stores. It also accounts for a disproportionate share of slow, insecure, and underperforming ecommerce sites. Here is why.
Plugin Bloat Kills Speed
A typical WooCommerce store runs 30 to 50 plugins. Each one adds database queries, JavaScript, and CSS that load on every page request. The result is 4 to 8 second load times that tank conversions and inflate ad costs. You cannot optimize your way out of a fundamentally slow architecture.
Security Holes in Production
WooCommerce stores are the most targeted ecommerce platforms on the web. Payment skimming attacks, SQL injection through plugins, and brute force login attempts are constant. A static-first architecture eliminates the server-side attack surface entirely because there is no PHP execution, no database on the frontend, and no admin panel to breach.
Flash Sales Break Everything
Run a flash sale on WooCommerce and watch your server buckle. WordPress generates every page dynamically, hitting the database on every request. A traffic spike from a successful promotion turns into 503 errors and lost sales. Static sites on CDNs handle traffic spikes without breaking because there is no server to overload.
Mobile Core Web Vitals Fail
Google reports that 70% of ecommerce traffic comes from mobile. WooCommerce themes consistently fail Core Web Vitals on mobile devices: bloated JavaScript bundles, render-blocking CSS, layout shifts from lazy-loaded images. These failures hurt both organic rankings and paid ad Quality Scores. Our builds pass CWV on day one.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I use Shopify or build a custom ecommerce site?
Shopify works well for straightforward stores with standard checkout flows and fewer than 10,000 SKUs. Once you need custom pricing logic, complex inventory rules, multi-warehouse fulfillment, or a checkout experience that matches your brand exactly, you hit Shopify's walls fast. Custom builds using headless commerce (Shopify as a backend, custom frontend) give you Shopify's payment infrastructure without its template constraints. For stores doing over $500K annually, the conversion gains from a faster, fully-custom frontend typically pay for the build within 6 to 12 months.
What are the benefits of headless commerce over traditional ecommerce platforms?
Headless commerce separates your storefront from your commerce engine. The frontend loads as static HTML from a CDN instead of being generated by a server on every request. This cuts page load times from 3 to 5 seconds down to under 1 second. You get full design control without theme limitations, can deploy frontend changes without touching your product catalog, and serve pages from edge locations globally. The tradeoff is higher initial build cost and the need for developers who understand both commerce logic and frontend performance. For stores with significant ad spend, the improvement in landing page speed directly lowers cost per acquisition through better Quality Scores.
How does page speed affect ecommerce conversion rates?
Google and Deloitte research consistently shows that every 100 milliseconds of additional load time costs roughly 1% in conversions. For a store doing $1M annually, a site that loads in 4 seconds instead of 1 second is leaving approximately $30,000 per year on the table from speed alone. Mobile is worse because connection quality varies. A WooCommerce store on shared hosting typically loads in 3 to 6 seconds. Our custom Astro builds load in under 1 second on 3G connections. The math is straightforward: faster pages mean more completed checkouts, lower bounce rates, and better ad performance.
What does ecommerce SEO require beyond standard website SEO?
Ecommerce SEO has unique technical requirements that general SEO practices miss. Product pages need structured data (Product schema with price, availability, reviews, and SKU data) to qualify for rich results in search. Category pages need proper faceted navigation handling so filter combinations do not create duplicate content or crawl budget waste. You need canonical tags across product variants, proper handling of out-of-stock pages, and internal linking structures that distribute authority to your money pages. Site speed matters more for ecommerce because Google factors Core Web Vitals into rankings, and slow product pages get outranked by faster competitors regardless of content quality.
Building or Rebuilding an Online Store?
Tell us about your products, traffic, and current pain points. We will scope a build with projected speed improvements, conversion impact estimates, and a realistic timeline.
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