Ecommerce sitesthat loadbefore they sell.
Online shops for West Midlands businesses, built on Shopify when you need its ecosystem and hand-built on Next.js and Stripe when you need speed and control. We will tell you which one you need before you pay for either.
There are two sensible ways to build a shop in 2026 and the right one depends on your operation, not on what an agency prefers selling. Shopify suits businesses that need its apps, channels and fulfilment integrations and want someone else maintaining the platform. A hand-built Next.js and Stripe store suits businesses whose margin depends on speed, whose product range is distinctive, or who need admin tooling shaped around how they actually work. We build both, and the first conversation is about which fits.
Shopify, or
hand-built?
This is the decision that determines everything afterwards, and it gets made badly more often than any other in ecommerce. Agencies that only build Shopify recommend Shopify. Developers who enjoy building things from scratch recommend building from scratch. Neither is a recommendation about your business.
The honest split is about where your complexity lives. If it is in fulfilment, channels, marketplaces and apps, Shopify has already solved those problems and rebuilding them is expensive foolishness. If your complexity is in the buying experience, the content around the products, or an operation that no off-the-shelf admin describes properly, a hand-built store will be faster, cheaper to run and better suited.
- 01 /
Choose Shopify when
You sell across channels, use fulfilment or dropship integrations, need a large app ecosystem, or want a platform someone else patches and secures.
- 02 /
Choose hand-built when
Speed is commercial, the brand needs an editorial feel, the product range is narrow and considered, or your operations need admin tooling shaped around them.
- 03 /
Either way, the front end is ours
We do not ship a bought theme with a logo dropped in. Shopify builds get a bespoke front end too, headless where it earns it.
- 04 /
The honest answer first
If Shopify with a good theme and two days of configuration is genuinely what you need, we will say so rather than quote you for a build.
What a hand-built shop
actually looks like.
Frankie & Paws is a founder-led British dog supplement brand we have worked with since February 2026. It is a custom store rather than a Shopify build, and it is a fair illustration of what that route involves, because it is more than a checkout.
The site runs on Next.js and React with a Postgres database behind it. Stripe Checkout handles payments with pricing, stock and variants validated on the server, and webhooks persist the orders. Order confirmation, dispatch and founder notification emails are automatic. Behind it sits an admin the founder actually uses daily: order status and dispatch, customer purchase history and lifetime value, promotion codes, referral tracking and read-only Stripe reconciliation covering balances, fees, refunds and payouts.
| Page | Image payload before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Homepage | 2,094 KB | 302 KB |
| Our Story | 2,620 KB | 280 KB |
| True Calm product page | 705 KB | 87 KB |
| Journal listing | 902 KB | 232 KB |
Why speed is
a margin question.
On a brochure site, slowness is an irritation. On a shop it is a direct cost, because every step between landing and paying is a place to lose someone, and each of those steps has a load time attached. A two-megabyte product page on a mid-range Android on a patchy signal is a checkout you have already partly abandoned.
This is the strongest practical argument for hand-building, and the reason we obsess over payload. It is also why performance work is not a polish phase at the end of an ecommerce project. Fonts, images, scripts and the checkout flow are performance decisions made while designing, not repairs made afterwards.
- 01 /
Images processed at build
Responsive WebP variants generated ahead of time, served through a custom loader. No plugin resizing images on request.
- 02 /
Server-validated pricing
Price, stock and variant checks happen on the server at checkout, so the basket cannot be tampered with from the browser.
- 03 /
Measured properly
Product view, add-to-basket, begin-checkout and purchase all tracked, so you can see where the drop-off actually is rather than guessing.
- 04 /
Hosted near your customers
Deployed to London regions with the database alongside it. Latency is a conversion factor, not a technical footnote.
What it costs
to sell online.
A shop costs more than a brochure site because there is more of it: product pages, a checkout, emails, an admin, and testing that all of it holds up when someone pays. A Shopify build with a bespoke front end typically starts around £6,000. A hand-built store with custom operational tooling, like the one described above, runs considerably higher and is quoted against the actual operation rather than a page count.
Every quote is fixed and written after one conversation, and it states what each page is for, who writes the words, the performance targets to be met before launch, and who owns what. If you are comparing quotes, look for what is missing rather than what is cheaper.
Local
questions.
Should I use Shopify or have something built?
If your complexity is in fulfilment, channels and apps, use Shopify: those problems are already solved and rebuilding them is expensive. If your complexity is in the buying experience, the content, or an operation no standard admin describes, hand-built will be faster and better suited. We build both and will tell you which you need before you commit.
How much does an ecommerce website cost?
A Shopify build with a bespoke front end typically starts around £6,000. A hand-built store with custom admin tooling is quoted against the operation rather than a page count and runs higher. A brochure site sits at £3,000 to £10,000 for comparison. Every quote we give is fixed and written.
Can you rebuild my existing shop without losing rankings?
Yes, and this is where most replatforming goes wrong. Every existing product and category URL is mapped and redirected, structured data is carried across, and the crawl is checked before and after. Traffic usually dips briefly around a migration; it should recover within weeks, not disappear.
Do you handle product photography?
We arrange it rather than shoot it, and we will insist on it. Stock images of someone else's product are the fastest way to look like a dropshipper, which is the one thing a founder-led brand cannot afford to look like.
What about payments, VAT and shipping rules?
Stripe handles payments and we configure tax and shipping to your rules during the build. On Shopify these are platform features. On a hand-built store they are built to match how you actually operate, which is usually the reason to hand-build in the first place.
Do you do ongoing work after launch?
Yes. Most shops want it, because a shop is never finished. That runs either as a care plan or as ongoing development, depending on how much is changing.
Selling online,
or just listed online?
Or just email
hello@stourbridgewebstudio.co.uk