E-commerce
WooCommerce for UK shops: setup, Stripe, VAT and what it costs to build
A practical guide to building a WooCommerce shop in the UK: payments, VAT, delivery, consumer law, speed, and what it really costs to build…
· 11 min read
An online shop has one job: put the right product in front of a buyer and take their money with as little friction as possible. Everything else, from the product photography to the delivery information page, either helps that or gets in the way. E-commerce development is building the shop, the checkout and the connections to your stock, accounts and couriers, so orders flow through without anyone retyping them at 7am.
We build shops for UK retailers on WooCommerce, Magento (Adobe Commerce) and PrestaShop, and fully custom shops in PHP or Laravel when the platforms can’t handle how you sell. Our team is based in London; our shop clients sell from all over the country.
Who we build shops for
- Independent brands moving from Etsy, Instagram or a market stall to their own site, so they stop paying marketplace fees on every sale.
- Established retailers on an ageing platform that is slow, expensive to host, or that no developer wants to touch.
- Businesses with awkward catalogues: made-to-order products, trade and retail pricing, bundles, subscriptions or thousands of variants.
- Charities selling merchandise alongside donations. We built a custom CMS and e-commerce donation platform for UNICEF, so we know a donation journey needs different care from a product checkout.
What you get
- A shop on the platform that fits your size and budget, with a theme we build ourselves rather than a 4 MB marketplace template full of features you’ll never switch on.
- A short checkout with Stripe (cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay), plus PayPal or Klarna if your customers expect them.
- UK VAT set up correctly, including zero-rated and reduced-rate products, and VAT-exclusive pricing for logged-in trade customers.
- Shipping rules that match how you really post things: weight bands, Highlands and Islands surcharges, Northern Ireland, click-and-collect and next-day cut-off times.
- Products, customers and order history imported from your old platform, with every old URL redirected so you keep your Google rankings.
- Connections to accounting, stock or ERP systems. For LAV we delivered a redesign with ERP integration.
- Product schema, fast category pages and properly sized images, so the shop performs in search and on a 4G connection.
Which platform should you use?
| Platform | Best for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| WooCommerce | Most small and medium UK shops; no platform fee and you own everything | Needs decent hosting and disciplined plug-in choices |
| Shopify | Simple catalogues where speed to launch matters more than control | Monthly plan plus app subscriptions; extra transaction fees unless you use Shopify Payments |
| Magento (Adobe Commerce) | Large catalogues, complex B2B pricing, several storefronts | Higher hosting and development costs; needs a specialist |
| PrestaShop | Shops already on it that work well | Smaller UK developer pool |
| Custom PHP or Laravel | Configurators, unusual pricing, marketplace models | Everything is built for you, so scope carefully |
Our honest default for UK shops turning over less than £1m a year is WooCommerce. You own the code and the customer data, there’s no percentage taken by the platform, and any competent WordPress developer can work on it. We compare the options in more depth in WooCommerce vs Magento vs PrestaShop and Shopify vs WooCommerce for UK businesses.
How we build a shop
Start with orders, not the homepage
We look at how you sell and fulfil today: where orders come from, who packs them, what gets retyped, and where customers drop out. A Leeds homeware shop and an Edinburgh supplement brand need very different shipping and stock logic, and that’s where most of the real work is.
Agree platform, integrations and scope
You get a written scope with the platform, payment methods, shipping rules and integrations listed, so there are no surprises.
Build on staging with real products
You see the shop on a staging site with your actual products and prices. We place test orders through every payment method and shipping route, including refunds and failed payments.
Launch with redirects in place
We go live with a redirect map from every old URL, Search Console checked, and analytics and conversion tracking working from the first order.
Payment fees you should budget for
Card fees are separate from what you pay us. According to Stripe’s published UK pricing, standard UK cards cost around 1.5 % plus 20p per transaction, with higher rates for European and international cards. On a £60 order that’s roughly £1.10. PayPal’s standard rates are usually higher. Check current figures on each provider’s site before you budget; our guide to Stripe vs PayPal vs GoCardless sets out the differences.
What an online shop costs
Our Business / E-commerce package is £2,650 excluding VAT (regularly £5,200), £3,180 including VAT. It covers a custom WordPress or PHP shop with payments, booking and ordering, multi-language, search, CMS, premium design with unlimited revisions, SEO set-up, a free domain for five years and a personal account manager.
For changes to an existing shop, or work outside the package, you can hire e-commerce development hours at £65 an hour excluding VAT:
| Hours | List price | Discount | Price excl. VAT |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | £650 | 5 % | £617.50 |
| 20 | £1,300 | 15 % | £1,105 |
| 50 | £3,250 | 20 % | £2,600 |
| 100 | £6,500 | 25 % | £4,875 |
A typical WooCommerce speed and checkout clean-up is 10 to 20 hours. Migrating a 500-product shop from another platform with redirects is often 30 to 50. Larger Magento or custom builds are quoted as a fixed project after a short scoping session.
Ongoing costs, so you’re not surprised
- Hosting: £20 to £60 a month for good managed WooCommerce hosting at small-shop scale.
- Premium plug-ins (subscriptions, advanced shipping, accounting sync): often £50 to £300 a year in total.
- Maintenance: updates and checks, typically 1 to 3 hours a month from a block of hours.
Start your shop project
Send us your product count, your current platform (if any) and what isn’t working. We’ll tell you which platform fits and what it will cost. Contact us or call 020 3918 3814.
