Designing a small commerce site

Most small commerce sites do not need Shopify. They need a clearer answer to four questions.

The default move, when a small business wants to sell something online, is to set up Shopify. Shopify is fine. It is also more software than most small businesses need, more cost than most small businesses can comfortably absorb, and more flexibility than most small businesses know what to do with. The result is the familiar Shopify-shaped site: section-based homepage, generic product grid, the same checkout as a thousand other small businesses. It works. It is rarely distinctive.

Before recommending a platform to a small commerce client, I now spend the first conversation working through four questions. The platform decision falls out of the answers.

How many products?

If the answer is fewer than fifty, and stable, almost any platform works. A static site with a Stripe Payment Links checkout can handle this for almost no cost. Shopify is overkill. So is most of the alternative ecosystem.

If the answer is a few hundred, with regular changes, a lightweight CMS with commerce attached starts to make sense. Shopify, Squarespace, or Cloudflare’s commerce options all work.

If the answer is thousands, with a real ops team, this is a different conversation and probably not the right post for it.

Are the products physical, digital, or services?

Physical products with shipping, returns, and inventory have one answer. Digital products with no fulfilment have another. Services that are billed against a calendar have a third. Most platforms claim to handle all three. Most do one well and the other two badly.

For digital products: Lemon Squeezy or Gumroad handle the tax and licensing complexity better than Shopify does, at lower cost.

For services with a calendar: Cal.com or SavvyCal plus a Stripe checkout is, more often than not, the right setup.

Does the brand depend on the product page being distinctive?

If yes, the platform that lets you write the most custom HTML wins. Shopify Hydrogen for serious customisation. A static-site-plus-Stripe setup for almost-total control. The off-the-shelf themes on most platforms are, almost without exception, not distinctive enough for brands that need to stand out in their category.

What is the team going to maintain it?

This is the question that gets asked least and matters most. A custom static site is cheaper to run and harder to update without a developer. A Shopify store is more expensive to run and easier to update without a developer. Pick the one that matches the team. Most small businesses without a developer should default to Shopify even when it is the technically wrong answer, because the design has to survive being maintained by the people who are actually going to maintain it.

The honest version of the post is that the platform decision matters less than the four questions. Run the questions. The answer is usually obvious by the end of the conversation. The site that follows tends to be calmer and cheaper than the default Shopify build, even when Shopify turns out to be the right platform.