We walk one real order end to end with you, from the click to the money in the bank and the box on the doorstep. Every point where a human retypes something gets written down.
Bring in the business
An online shop where the order does not stop at the payment
Taking the money is the easy part.
The cost sits in what comes after: the packing slip, the stock count, the courier waybill, the tracking message and the entry in your accounts. Every one of those is somebody retyping an address that was already typed correctly by the customer. When the slip is already printed at 06:30, the box goes on the same day's courier run instead of tomorrow's. That is a day off every delivery and a day earlier on the money, on every order, all year. Your packer's morning does not change. Same table, same printer, same tape gun. From R28,000.
01
The pieces we connect
- The shop itselfProduct pages, sizes and variants, discount codes, and a checkout that works with one thumb on a phone.
- PaymentThe provider you already use, or one we compare for you on card fees and payout timing before you commit.
- StockOne count that drops when an order comes in, whether that count lives in the shop, in a spreadsheet, or in the till at the front of the shop.
- CourierThe waybill built from the order, the tracking number sent to the customer on its own, and the delivery status visible without phoning a call centre.
- AccountsSales and fees landing in your accounts package instead of being captured again at month end.
- The follow upThe abandoned basket nudge, the review request a week later, and the name of the customer who ordered every month and has gone quiet.
02
What it costs
| What you are building | Typical range |
|---|---|
| Up to 50 products, one payment provider, one courier, stock in one place | R28,000 to R45,000 |
| 50 to 500 products with variants, stock in two places, accounts connected | R45,000 to R90,000 |
| Wholesale price lists, subscriptions, or over 500 products with variants | From R90,000 |
| We load and photograph the catalogue for you | About R120 a product up to 200 products, R80 a product from 200 to 1,000, and above 1,000 we price the catalogue as one job instead of per product |
| Keeping a shop alive after go live | From R24,000 a year, set out under care plans |
What pushes you up the range: how many variants each product has, whether your courier allows a real connection or only a file upload, and whether the online count and the till count have to agree at all times.
What we check before quoting rather than after: your courier and your accounts package. Some allow a proper connection, some allow a file upload once a day, and some only have a website a human logs into. Which one yours is changes the number, so we look first.
03
How the build runs
We agree what the shop must do at launch, and what waits for version two. Version two is real. It is just not now.
We load products properly
Names, photos, variants, weights and dimensions. Weights matter more than people expect, because that is what the courier prices on and what turns a R95 delivery into a R240 one.
We build and connect it, then place fifty test orders ourselves, including the awkward ones: a refund, a partial delivery, an out of stock item, and a card that fails halfway.
We train whoever packs the boxes, not only the owner
If the packer cannot use it at seven in the morning, it is not finished.
We watch the first month
Real customers find edges that fifty test orders do not. Fixing those is included.
What we get access to, and what we never touch
A shop needs more reach than a normal site, so here is the list in full.
- Your shop admin, as a user you create and can remove.
- Your payment provider account, on the lowest permission that lets us connect it. We never need the ability to move money out.
- Your courier portal, so waybills can be created from orders.
- Your accounts package, usually on an invited-user login your bookkeeper approves.
Every one is granted by you inside your own account, and switched off by you in one click. We do not handle card numbers and we do not store your customers' payment details anywhere. Those sit with your payment provider, which is where they belong.
The shop, the code and the accounts are yours. Two of us work on it, and if neither of us were here next month another developer logs into your own hosting and carries on from the written handover we leave at go live.
05
Where AI genuinely helps here
Not everywhere. In two places it pays for itself quickly.
Product descriptions. Two hundred products described in your tone from your own specs, drafted in an afternoon and edited by you in a morning. For a lot of shops this is the difference between launching this quarter and launching next year.
The customer at 22:00. Someone asking whether you deliver to Hermanus and how long the beans stay fresh gets a correct answer from your own content, and if it does not know, it says so and leaves the question for you instead of inventing something.
06
When a full shop is not the answer
- You ship four orders a month. A payment link and an invoice does the same job for roughly nothing, and you can send it from your phone today.
- Everything you sell is made to order and quoted. You need a fast enquiry form and a same-day quote, not a checkout button.
- You already sell well on a marketplace. Building your own customer list so you own the relationship often comes first, with the shop after it.
The numbers, in one place
- From R28,000 for a shop with up to fifty products, one payment provider and one courier connected.
- Bigger catalogues and stock in two places move it up.
- Full bands below.
Straight answers
Questions owners ask us
It depends on your card fees, how fast you need the payout, and whether you sell outside South Africa. We compare the two or three that fit your case and show you the real cost per R1,000 of sales before you sign anything.
Often yes, and we check yours by name before quoting. Some allow an automatic connection, some allow a daily file upload, and some only have a portal a human logs into. We tell you which one yours is at quote stage instead of discovering it in build week.
Xero and Sage are the common ones here and both connect. What matters is agreeing what gets sent: every order, or one summary a day. Most small shops sleep better with the daily summary, and so do their bookkeepers.
That is the question worth settling before we build. If the same jar can sell online and over the counter, the two counts have to agree, and how we do that depends on your till. We work it out in the walkthrough, before there is a number on a quote.
You do, or your team does. We build around the way your packing table already works. Sometimes a shelf label and a second printer fix more of the morning than software would, and we will say so.
Six to ten weeks for most shops. The catalogue is the long pole. If your product photos and weights are ready, it is at the short end.
The next step
Send us one order exactly as it exists today: the confirmation email and the waybill that went with it.
WhatsApp or call +27 73 932 6852, or email [email protected]. We map what happens between the click and the doorstep, mark every point where somebody retypes something, and quote the version worth building first. If you would rather talk it through, ask for twenty minutes.
Or email [email protected]. No slides, and no invoice for the conversation.