Every store platform handles products, a cart and a checkout. None of them handles the part that is specific to you — the delivery zones that change by season, the price that depends on quantity, the second language your customers actually shop in.
That is where store projects succeed or quietly fail. I have built a two-language fashion store on WooCommerce with accounts, payments and delivery options, a perfume store with filtering built from scratch, and a food delivery service where the owner reshapes delivery windows themselves.
In a catalogue of any size, filtering is how people actually shop. Which attributes are filterable has to be decided when the product data is structured, not bolted on after launch.
Delivery windows, regional pricing, minimum orders, bundles. Write down your three most unusual rules before choosing a platform — if its documentation cannot answer all three, that is your answer.
Product photography is the heaviest content on the web and stores carry the most of it. Serving images at the size they display is usually 60-70% off page weight, and it converts.
It is duplicated product data, routing, currency, delivery rules and QA on every template. Budget it as a phase, not as a checkbox.
Choosing the platform before writing down the unusual selling rules
Uploading photographs straight from the camera, then wondering why mobile is slow
A checkout that asks for registration before it will take an order
Filters added after launch, when the product data was never structured for them
No stock or availability honesty, so the site sells what you cannot ship
Delivery rules hard-coded, so changing a zone or a time slot needs a developer
WooCommerce and custom online stores where the catalogue, filters, payments and delivery rules match how you actually sell.
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WooCommerce if your selling is conventional — it gives you catalogue, payments, delivery and invoices out of the box. Custom when your pricing, configuration or fulfilment rules would fight a platform every day.
Yes. Product data, URLs, customer accounts and order history all have to move, and every changed address needs a redirect or you hand back your search rankings. Treat it as a real project, not a switch.
Five to eight weeks. Catalogue structure, filters, payments, delivery rules and test orders all take real time, and the catalogue content is usually the thing that runs late.
From $1,500, typically $2,500-3,500 with catalogue, filters, payments and delivery configured. A second language adds roughly a week and its cost.
September 2026One you rent and one you own. The right answer depends on your margin, how strange your rules are, and whether a monthly fee or a maintenance habit fits you better.
September 2026"Slow" is a symptom with five common causes, and they need completely different fixes. Ten minutes of measurement saves you from paying to solve the wrong one.
