Florists, makers, distributors, hire companies and one acting school — the online shops we've built cover a fair range. Some sell a handful of handmade pieces, some carry hundreds of lines, and one sells places in a class rather than anything you can post.
Below are some of those sites, along with a few things we've picked up about ecommerce website design in New Zealand that don't come up on a brochure site.
Click a screenshot for a closer look, or the business name to visit the live site. Shots were taken at launch — every client can update their own site, so some will have moved on since.
Corazon Ramos is a children's author who curates the whole range herself. The shop is browsable by feeling, age or moment rather than genre, with bundles for gifting and a section for educators.
A Westgate florist with around twenty product categories, from wedding and sympathy work through to gift hampers and dried flowers. Delivery across most of Auckland is included, or collect from the shop.
Handmade outdoor furniture built in Papakura — bar leaners, picnic tables, planter boxes, gates and bird houses. Stained or painted is chosen as a product option, and Chelsea Sugar is among the customers.
The New Zealand BlackVue distributor since 2012, carrying the full camera range plus hardwire kits, coaxial cables and mounting spares. Mike ships nationwide, with free delivery over $100.
David McKibbin turns segmented bowls from walnut, maple and other hardwoods, and does custom picture framing and mounting from his Taupō workshop. Bowls sell online; framing is quoted job by job.
Eurotech Industries sell and rent 85-litre commercial dehumidifiers and air movers for flood restoration, timber drying and paint work. Bundles are set up as products, with delivery, setup and pickup included.
A family business in the heart of Kamo, with Interflora-qualified florists. Same-day delivery within Whangārei city on orders in before 1pm, and rural delivery across the district.
Lloyd Altham's patented fence batten fastener, sold in packs from a plus pack for a single run up to a ranch pack for a whole property. Ships nationwide, with two stockists north of Auckland.
A Birkdale studio selling chakra and crystal candles, meditation mats and reiki accessories alongside its treatment rooms. Candles can be customised, and shipping is free over $100.
Handcrafted ceramic wall plaques made from locally sourced stoneware clay and fired several times over. Designs draw on photography, antique imagery, native birds and Rangitoto, sold direct from the artist.
Precision fittings for model boats, manufactured in New Zealand and sold alongside imported components. Fourteen categories covering propellers, shafts, couplings, rudder assemblies, reduction boxes and motor mounts.
Peter Feeney's acting school, running since 2005. Term enrolments are sold as stock-controlled products, so the site shows places remaining and closes a class off the moment it fills.
That's a dozen of them. There are a lot more sites in the full portfolio — shops alongside trades, clinics, cafés, transport and everything else we've built over the years.
See the full portfolio →A shop is a different animal to a brochure site. It keeps running after launch, it has to handle money, and most of the work that decides whether it earns anything happens in places the customer never sees.
Almost nobody abandons a cart over the product price. They abandon it when a $12 courier charge appears at step three, or when rural delivery quietly doubles it. Get the zones and the thresholds set up properly, say what delivery costs before checkout, and if free shipping over a certain spend makes sense, put it in the header where Blackvue and SoulRise both have it.
Card fees, Afterpay's cut, the admin time on bank transfers — they are all real, and they are not the same. Worth working out what you actually keep on a $60 order before deciding which methods to offer. We can add a card surcharge if that suits your margins, but on low-value orders it puts people off more than it recovers.
People buying something they cannot pick up want scale, detail and context — the whole thing, the finish up close, and it in use. One beautiful hero image leaves them guessing, and guessing turns into a return. It is the single cheapest thing you can do to lift conversion on a handmade or custom product.
Variations, stock counts, seasonal categories and order emails all need someone tending them. A hundred lines is a part-time job; twenty done well often sells more. We will build whatever suits, but it is worth being honest at the start about how much time the back end is going to want each week.
Including GST, your first year of New Zealand hosting and your domain name. An online shop costs more than a standard site because of the product setup, payment and shipping configuration — tell us roughly how many lines you carry and we'll give you a number. Everything's set out on the pricing page.
See the pricing →