E-Commerce Setup Explained | Internet Crafters

What E-Commerce Setup Involves

Setting up an online store involves more than uploading product photos and adding a buy button. A complete e-commerce setup includes choosing a platform, configuring payment processing, organizing products into categories, setting up shipping calculations, implementing tax collection, and ensuring the entire checkout experience is smooth enough that customers actually complete their purchases.

The complexity depends on what you are selling. A bakery selling gift boxes has different needs than a clothing store with multiple sizes and colors. A service business selling packages has different needs than a retailer with hundreds of physical products. Understanding your specific requirements before choosing a platform prevents costly mistakes down the road.

Popular E-Commerce Platforms

Several platforms dominate the e-commerce market, each with distinct strengths:

Shopify: The most popular hosted platform. Easy to set up, reliable, and handles hosting, security, and updates for you. Best for businesses that want to focus on selling rather than managing technology. Monthly subscription fees apply.
WooCommerce: A free plugin for WordPress that turns any WordPress site into an online store. More flexible than Shopify but requires more technical management. Good for businesses that already have a WordPress website.
Square Online: Ideal for businesses that already use Square for in-person payments. The online store syncs with your point-of-sale system automatically.
Custom solutions: For businesses with unique requirements, a custom e-commerce solution built on modern frameworks gives complete control over the shopping experience.

Essential Features Every Online Store Needs

Secure checkout: SSL encryption and PCI-compliant payment processing are non-negotiable
Mobile-friendly design: A large percentage of online purchases happen on phones
Clear product pages: Good photos, detailed descriptions, pricing, and availability
Search and filtering: If you have more than a handful of products, customers need to find what they want quickly
Shipping options: Real-time shipping calculations or flat-rate options with clear delivery estimates
Tax collection: Automatic sales tax calculation based on the customer's location
Order management: A system for processing, tracking, and fulfilling orders
Inventory tracking: Preventing overselling and knowing when to restock

Costs to Expect

E-commerce costs break down into several categories:

Platform fees: Monthly subscription costs ranging from free to several hundred dollars depending on the platform and plan
Transaction fees: A percentage of each sale, typically between 2.5 and 3.5 percent, charged by the payment processor
Design and setup: The cost of designing and configuring your store, which varies by complexity
Plugins and extensions: Additional functionality often requires paid add-ons
Ongoing maintenance: Updates, security patches, and technical support

A common mistake is focusing only on the upfront setup cost and ignoring the ongoing monthly expenses. Make sure you understand the total cost of ownership before committing to a platform.

Common E-Commerce Mistakes

Choosing a platform that is too complex for your actual needs
Skipping product photography -- low-quality images kill sales
Making the checkout process too long or requiring account creation
Not testing the buying process from start to finish on mobile
Ignoring shipping costs until after launch
Forgetting about sales tax compliance
Not having a clear return and refund policy visible on the site

Internet Crafters does e-commerce setup

This is a la carte work, billed hourly rather than bundled into a package. You get an estimate and a confirmed scope before anything starts, so the number you approve is the number you pay.

Custom Development

$90/hr

1-hour minimum. We estimate the hours and confirm scope before starting.

What that covers here

Setting your store up on Shopify, Square Online, or WooCommerce, and configuring it properly rather than leaving you with the defaults

Connecting a payment processor so money reaches your account, and testing a real transaction end to end before launch

Product setup, categories, variants, and the shipping and tax rules that decide what a customer is actually charged

Fixing a checkout that loses people partway through, which is usually the cheapest e-commerce work there is

Maintaining the store afterwards, and performance work once the catalog has grown

The first hour is scoping, not building. How many products, how many variants each, whether you are shipping or collecting locally, and which processor you already use. Those four answers usually decide the platform for you, and it is worth knowing before anyone spends money.

What we would suggest instead, once

We would put you on a platform built for selling rather than construct a cart from scratch. Shopify and Square have spent years on checkout, tax, and fraud, and rebuilding that is a large-budget project that leaves you with something more fragile than what you could have rented. So the recommendation is usually a hosted store we set up and look after, with your existing site pointing at it. If you genuinely need a custom cart, that is a real project and we would rather scope it honestly with you than start it as an add-on.

How to get on the hourly rate

Ask. Hourly work is open to anyone, with no setup fee and nothing you have to buy first. We confirm the scope and the hours with you before any of them get spent.

Bigger pieces of work get scoped and quoted as a project rather than billed by the hour. Tell us what you need.

Where to go next

If you are still working out whether you need a store at all, the honest answer for a lot of Tucson businesses is not yet. A clear website that gets the phone ringing costs less and breaks less often than a catalog nobody buys from.

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