Online shops coded from your design
WooCommerce and PrestaShop built to the artwork rather than bent out of a bought store theme, including the views a platform does not hand you.
The same terms on every job
NDA signed first
Before designs, file access or a client’s name reach me.
No contact with your client
Questions, staging links and notes come to you, and stop there.
A fixed price, not an hourly rate
One figure for the build, confirmed before you quote.
Why a shop is the build that goes wrong quietly
The design stops at the product page
Artwork covers the home page, a listing and a product. Then the build reaches the cart, the checkout, the account area, the order confirmation and eight email templates that nobody drew, and somebody has to decide how they look.
A bought store theme decides for you
Off the shelf, a shop theme already has opinions about filters, variants and checkout steps. Bending it towards the design costs more than writing the views, and every update threatens to undo the bending.
The catalogue is more complicated than it looks
Made-to-order items with no fixed price, products split by material rather than by type, three hundred variants that have to filter without a plugin. The structure decides the templates, and it usually surfaces after the quote.
A slow shop loses money, not just points
A brochure site with a poor load time is an embarrassment. A shop with a poor load time is a line in your client’s monthly report, and it comes back to the studio that built it.
How a shop build runs
What a WooCommerce or PrestaShop build involves, from platform choice to handover.
Which platforms I build on
WooCommerce when the shop lives alongside content, and PrestaShop when the catalogue and the order flow carry more weight than the pages around them.
The choice belongs in the brief rather than in the build. If your client has already picked one, that is the one, and I say plainly when it is going to fight the design.
WooCommerce on a hand-coded theme
PrestaShop, classic theme or a custom one on top of the default
migrations off Wix, Squarespace and Shopify
no store theme bought from a marketplace
The views nobody draws
Cart, checkout, account, order confirmation, empty states and transactional emails. A shop has roughly twice the templates of the brochure site it looks like.
I list them against your artwork at the start and tell you which ones have no design. You either draw them or I follow the system already in the file, and either way it is decided before the quote rather than in week four.
a written list of templates with no artwork, in week one
undrawn views follow the type scale and spacing from your file
transactional emails counted as templates, because they are
empty cart, failed payment and out of stock treated as real states
How the catalogue shapes the build
Doors And Worktops sells made to order, so the catalogue had to quote items that do not exist yet. Drzwi Portal had a configurator that has to resolve into a real, correctly priced product in the cart, and over 350 handles that filter without a plugin.
Patrizia Aryton splits coats by fabric rather than by style, which is a navigation problem before it is a template problem.
product structure agreed before a template is written
filtering built into the theme rather than bought
quote requests where a price cannot exist yet
feeds and structured data for Google Shopping
What the agency gets at handover
The theme, the repository and notes in plain English, the same as any other build here.
Nothing licensed, nothing keyed and no subscription in your client’s name that renews through me.
the theme and the repository
notes for whoever maintains the shop next
no premium plugin licences bought in my name
nothing in the theme header points back to me
What happens instead
The same four points, answered in the order they were raised.
Every template is counted, including the undrawn ones
Before the quote you get a list of what the shop actually needs against what the file contains. The gap is priced as an assumption rather than absorbed quietly and rushed at the end.
The theme is written for this shop
No marketplace store theme underneath, so filters, variants and checkout steps behave the way the design says rather than the way somebody else decided two years ago.
The catalogue structure is agreed first
Product types, taxonomies and how they filter get settled in week one, because that decision writes the templates. It has carried a configurator, a made-to-order catalogue and a range split by fabric.
Load time is part of the build
A shop coded to the design ships what the design uses, so nothing loads to support a section the client never bought. On Drzwi Portal the configurator plugin alone was sending roughly 200KB of styles and scripts to every page, including pages with no configurator on them; in the theme those files load on the product card, cart and checkout and nowhere else.
Three shops, three different catalogues
Doors And Worktops quotes made-to-order items that do not exist yet. Drzwi Portal turns a configurator into a real, correctly priced product in the cart. Patrizia Aryton is a premium clothing catalogue split by fabric, coded from the Figma file the brand drew itself.
About shops in particular
What comes up once a studio realises a shop is not a brochure site with a basket.
WooCommerce when the shop sits alongside content and the catalogue is modest. PrestaShop when the catalogue, the order flow and multi-language carry more weight than the pages around them. If your client has already chosen, that is the answer, and I will tell you plainly if it is going to fight the design.
You, if you want them drawn. In week one you get a written list of every template the shop needs against what the file contains, so you can decide whether to draw the rest or let me follow the spacing and type scale already in the design. Both are normal; deciding in week four is not.
Yes, and it is its own line in the quote rather than a footnote. Products, categories, customers and orders come across, and the old addresses get redirected so the rankings your client already has survive the move. Doors And Worktops came off Wix this way and has been running since 2023.
Yes, provided the licence is in your client’s name or yours. I do not buy licences in mine, because that leaves your client renewing through a developer they were never introduced to.
Keep reading
Figma to WordPress, coded by hand
Send a finished Figma file and get back a WordPress theme built to match it, with no page-builder kit underneath it.
How I work with a design studio
NDA first, no contact with your client, and a fixed price before you quote. This is what a build with me looks like end to end.
Work I am allowed to show
These are the case studies I am free to show. Most of my work goes out under a studio’s own name, so the full count runs higher than this page. Each one below follows the same structure: what came in, what I built, and what it changed.
Have a shop design and a platform already chosen?
Send the file and the platform. You get back a template count, one figure for the build and a delivery date before you quote your client.