Ecommerce Development

Most slow stores were fast on launch day

We build and rebuild WooCommerce stores that stay fast as the catalogue, traffic, and plugin count grow, because that is where almost every store actually breaks. Checkout, tax, shipping, and payment flows get tested against real orders before launch, not after.

Replies within one business day. We quote from your catalogue and order volume, never a template.

“Our store got slow as we added products.”

Almost always query and index design, not hosting. The audit confirms which. Start with the audit

“Checkout abandons more than it should.”

Field-level checkout analytics locate the exact step people quit. See the process

“We’re outgrowing our current platform.”

Migration keeps orders, customers, and URLs intact. That’s the hard part. See the plans

“We need a store from scratch.”

The build track covers catalogue, payments, tax, and shipping properly. See the build

Track record

18
Years building for the web
850+
Clients served
90+
Notable brands
2,000+
Projects delivered
104%
Year-over-year growth

These figures cover every Gatilab service, not this one alone. We’d rather say that plainly than imply a per-service record we haven’t published.

Brands we’ve delivered work for

  • IBM
  • Adobe
  • HubSpot
  • Canva
  • Monday.com
  • IATA
  • FreshBooks
  • Acer
  • Asus
Three ways in

Audit an existing store, build a new one, or keep growing one

Store builds vary more than any other service here, because a 40-product store and a 40,000-product store share almost nothing. Build pricing starts at the figure below and gets quoted from your actual catalogue.

Start here

You have a store and it’s underperforming

For live stores that are slow, leaking checkouts, or becoming expensive to change.

$900 one-time

One store · 2 weeks

  • Checkout funnel and field-level abandonment analysis
  • Catalogue, query, and index performance review
  • Plugin conflict and cost audit
  • Tax, shipping, and payment configuration check
  • Prioritised fix list with revenue impact estimates
Book the audit

Credited against a build or growth retainer booked within 30 days.

Ongoing

The store is growing and needs steady work

For stores shipping changes monthly, running promotions, or scaling catalogue and traffic.

$2,400 per month

3-month minimum

  • Development hours for features and fixes
  • Performance monitoring at catalogue scale
  • Checkout and conversion improvements
  • Peak-season readiness and load testing
  • Monthly review against revenue metrics
Talk about a retainer

Hours are named and capped. We’ll right-size the plan rather than bank your budget.

How it runs

What gets delivered, stage by stage

Ecommerce failures are expensive and public, so every stage here ends in something testable.

  1. 01

    Audit and architecture

    Weeks 1 to 2

    Catalogue structure, variations, tax rules, and shipping logic get mapped before any design. Getting the data model wrong here is what makes stores slow at 10,000 products.

    You leave with: A catalogue and data architecture you can review and challenge.

  2. 02

    Build against a budget

    Weeks 3 to 8

    Development happens with a performance budget attached, so a page that exceeds it fails review. Checkout gets built early rather than last, because it is the part that must not break.

    You leave with: A staging store you can place real test orders through.

  3. 03

    Test the money paths

    Weeks 8 to 10

    Payments, tax calculation, shipping rates, refunds, and order emails get tested against real transactions in sandbox and live modes. Then load testing at expected peak.

    You leave with: A test log covering every payment, tax, and shipping path.

  4. 04

    Launch and watch

    Weeks 10 to 12

    Launch with URL mapping and redirects verified, then monitored closely through the first order cycle. Replatforming without redirect testing loses rankings permanently.

    You leave with: A launched store, a redirect map, and first-week monitoring.

Honest fit

Worth booking, or worth looking elsewhere

Ecommerce quotes vary wildly for good reasons and bad ones. Two of these are why we decline.

Worth booking

  • You can describe your catalogue size and order volume.
  • You have someone who owns product data and inventory.
  • You want performance treated as a requirement, not a nice-to-have.
  • You accept that migration testing takes real time.
  • You want to own the store, the data, and the hosting account.

Look elsewhere

  • Your budget is under $900. The audit is the floor, and a build below several thousand is a template with your logo on it.
  • You want a full store live in two weeks. Payments, tax, and shipping testing alone take longer than that to do responsibly.
  • You want us to also run your ads, warehouse, and customer support. We build and maintain the store, and we’ll refer the rest.
  • You need a marketplace with many independent sellers. That’s a different discipline and we’d be learning on your money.
  • Your product catalogue data doesn’t exist yet in any usable form. Get it into a spreadsheet first, then talk to us.
Before you ask

The questions that decide it

Something not covered? Ask directly and you’ll get a straight answer, not a calendar link.

Why does a build start at $8,500?

Because below that you’re buying a theme with your logo dropped in, which is a legitimate purchase but not this one. That figure covers catalogue architecture, tested payment and tax configuration, a performance budget, and migration where relevant. A 40,000-product store with complex variations costs considerably more, and we quote from your actual catalogue rather than a package.

Will you move us off WooCommerce if that’s better?

We’ll say so if it is. WooCommerce suits most stores and gives you ownership of your data, which hosted platforms don’t. But if your requirements point at a hosted platform or a headless setup, we’d rather tell you than sell you a build we think is wrong. We have nothing riding on the platform choice.

What happens to our rankings if we replatform?

This is the risk that gets underestimated most. Every existing URL gets mapped to its new equivalent and the redirects get tested before launch, not discovered afterwards. Stores that skip this lose rankings that take many months to recover, and some never do.

Can you keep our existing orders and customers?

Yes, and migrating them is usually the most delicate part of the project. Orders, customers, and subscription state come across with verification counts on both sides. We reconcile totals before switching over, because discovering a shortfall after launch is a different kind of problem.

Do you handle peak season load?

Load testing at expected peak is part of the build, and peak readiness is part of the retainer. If your business is concentrated into a few high-traffic days, tell us early, because it changes caching and hosting decisions from the start rather than in a panic in week eleven.

Is hosting included?

No. We don’t resell hosting, so you keep the account in your name and can leave us without moving your store. We’ll recommend and configure hosting appropriate to your catalogue and traffic, and if your current host is the bottleneck we’ll show you the numbers.

Next step

Tell us what your store needs to do

Send your catalogue size, rough monthly orders, and what’s breaking or missing. We’ll tell you whether the audit, a rebuild, or nothing at all is the right next step.

Replies within one business day. Store audits start within a week.