An online shop is not a website with products inside it. It is an operation: someone has to load the items, edit the photographs, answer whoever asks about sizing, pack, ship and sort out next week's return. Almost every problem that reaches us from this sector is an operations problem wearing a website's clothes — the shop is slow because the photographs come straight off the camera, the basket gets abandoned because delivery charges only turn up at the end, stock stops matching because the shop floor and the website are two different lists.
We work both ends: the shop itself — catalogue, buying journey, payments and delivery charges — and what feeds it, which is the brand and the campaigns. A well-built shop with nobody driving traffic to it doesn't sell; traffic to a confusing shop doesn't either. When the business is both, a shop floor and a website at once, we make sure the two tell the same story and, whenever the system allows it, share the stock.
Requests from this sector almost always reach us for one of these reasons.
The campaigns bring people in and the shop doesn't close the sale. It's usually not traffic that's missing: it's the price with delivery charges, the delivery time, and what happens if the item doesn't fit, that aren't clear.
Delivery charges, the timeframe or having to create an account only turn up after the person has picked everything. Whoever gives up at that point had already decided to buy — it's the most expensive kind of giving up there is.
Most of a shop's visits arrive on a phone, and product photographs are the heaviest images on a website. Left untreated, the gallery opens after the person has already left.
Something gets sold in the shop that had already sold online, or the other way round. Two separate lists always end up in the same place: an apology and a refund.
When every product page is written from scratch, with photographs edited by hand and variants copied one by one, the catalogue stops growing. The shop stays stuck with the items that were already there.
The scope changes depending on whether it's a new shop, a growing shop, or a shop-floor business that wants to start selling online, but these are the jobs asked for most.
A catalogue with categories, filters and variants, a short buying journey, payments, delivery charges by weight or by zone, and a customer account with order history. That was the case with XIPA STORE, built around menus that make sense and a quick checkout.
Name, logo, palette and typography, plus what the shop uses every day: labels, packaging, bags, tape, thank-you cards and social post templates. In an online shop, the packaging is the only physical part of the brand the customer ever touches.
Photographs edited to load fast without losing their colour, and a product page template that states measurements, materials, delivery times and care instructions — which is what heads off half the questions and a good deal of the returns.
Ads and content split by objective: getting known, bringing back people who've already visited, and recovering baskets left half-full. Three different audiences, three different messages.
When there's an invoicing program, a stock system or something running the shop floor, the online shop can talk to it: items come in from there and orders go back to it, with nobody copying anything by hand.
Shop window, vinyl graphics, signage and print, so whoever walks past the door finds the same brand they see on their phone.
Each page explains the process, what you get at the end, and the questions asked most often.
XIPA STORE is a website and online shop with menus that make sense and a buying journey built to be quick. Lokahi – Eco Store, Natural Choices and WAKER bring brand and shop together in the same job; MagicBooks and AsNew started at the name. The rest is in the portfolio.
XIPA STORE
MagicBooks
AsNew
WAKER
Lokahi – Eco Store
Natural Choices
The questions that reach us most often before starting a project in this area.
Tell us what you sell, how many items you have and where you ship to. You'll get a proposal with scope, phases and price, whether it's for the shop, the brand or the campaigns.
Tell us when suits you and we will come back with a confirmation. It is not an automatic booking: a person always confirms the meeting.