E-commerce
AntCrow designs and builds online stores where the design serves the sale. That means product pages that answer objections before they are raised, a checkout with as little friction as the payment provider allows, and the measurement to see precisely where people abandon so it can be fixed rather than guessed at.
What is custom e-commerce development?
Custom e-commerce development means building an online store's storefront specifically for one retailer rather than using a stock theme. The commerce engine handling products, payments, and orders is usually an established platform such as Shopify or a headless commerce provider, while the customer-facing design and experience are built from scratch. This separates the parts worth customising, which is the buying experience, from the parts that are safer to leave to specialists, which is payment handling and security compliance.
Every step between interest and payment loses people
Published industry research consistently puts average online shopping cart abandonment around 70 percent, with the most cited causes being unexpected extra costs, forced account creation, and checkouts that are long or confusing. Most of that is a design and information problem rather than a technical one. We work on being clear about total cost early, keeping the path short, and removing every step that exists for the retailer's convenience rather than the customer's.
Product pages have to do the selling
In a physical shop a customer can pick something up. Online, the product page carries that entire burden. It needs photography that shows the thing honestly, specifications that answer the practical question, delivery and returns information visible before the decision rather than after, and social proof where it genuinely exists. We design product pages as the most important pages on the site, because commercially they are.
Speed matters more here than anywhere else
E-commerce is where slow loading converts directly into lost revenue, and the effect compounds on mobile data. We build storefronts as pre-rendered pages where possible, keep image payloads tight without visibly degrading product photography, and load only the code a given page requires. The commerce logic still runs on a proven platform; what we change is the speed at which the customer experiences it.
Payments and compliance handled properly
We integrate established payment providers rather than handling card data ourselves, which is both safer and how PCI DSS compliance is realistically achieved by a business of any normal size. For New Zealand retailers that typically means Stripe, Windcave, or your platform's native payments, plus buy-now-pay-later options such as Afterpay or Laybuy where they suit your customers. We will walk through the fee structures honestly, because they differ more than most retailers realise.
- Storefront design and build
- Product and category page architecture
- Checkout experience optimisation
- Payment gateway integration
- Shipping and tax configuration
- Inventory and order management setup
- Product schema and search visibility
- Conversion tracking and analytics
- You have products that deserve better presentation than a stock theme
- Your current store converts worse than your traffic suggests it should
- You are moving from marketplace selling to your own storefront
- You need the store to match a considered brand
E-commerce: questions, answered
The New Zealand market for online stores generally runs from about $5,000 for a straightforward custom storefront to $18,000 or more for larger catalogues, custom integrations, or complex fulfilment. Those are published market ranges rather than AntCrow's prices. Platform subscription and payment processing fees sit on top of the build cost in every case.
Thinking about e-commerce?
Tell us what you are trying to achieve. We will tell you honestly whether this is the right thing to spend money on.
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