Custom e-commerce
A store that adapts to the product, not a catalog the product has to squeeze into. When what you sell has variants, configurations or its own way of being chosen, the ready-made theme becomes the limit.
What it looks like
It usually starts like this
- The product has variants the theme doesn’t support
- Every change needs one more plugin
- The catalog is managed in a separate spreadsheet
- Orders have to be copied into the business software
Off-the-shelf platforms work great as long as you sell what they had in mind. When the product is configured, changes from client to client or has to be calculated, the list of plugins grows faster than the store.
What I build
Catalog and variants
Categories, product pages and variants built around the real product: sizes, dimensions, options, combinations that exist and combinations that must never be possible.
Configurators
When the product is put together from options, choosing becomes a path: each step shows what changes and what it implies, all the way to a cart or a quote request.
Payments and checkout
A short, clear step that works on a phone, with payment methods handled by dedicated providers: cards never pass through the website’s servers.
Orders and admin area
Where orders arrive, how they’re tracked, what happens next. The statuses are the real ones from your logistics, not the ones a platform assumes.
Connections with everything else
Business software, inventory, shipping, email, CRM: the order is entered once and reaches where it’s needed, without being retyped by hand.
How it works
The system, not just the screen
How an e-commerce works
- Catalog
- Cart
- Payment
- Order
- Management
First, understand how people choose
The way a person reaches a decision is the project: if the product needs to be configured, explained or calculated, the store is built around that path.
Payments stay with the providers
Payments are handled by those who do it for a living. The website guides the person and records the outcome: card data never passes through it.
The catalog has a single source
Prices, availability and descriptions live in one place and are read from there. Two lists always drift apart, and the one that drifts is the one nobody rereads.
Measure what happens before the cart
What needs fixing is almost always between the product page and the cart. The store launches with the tools to see where people stop.
Use cases
- Selling a configurable product, where options change price and availability
- Replacing a catalog managed in a spreadsheet with product pages that update themselves
- Guiding a complex choice all the way to a quote, when the purchase isn’t immediate
- Connecting orders to the business software and shipping, without copying them over
- Rebuilding an existing store that only grows by adding plugins
Technologies
Next.js, TypeScript, Stripe, PostgreSQL, Supabase, Vercel
The tools I use most often on this kind of project. They aren’t affiliations: they’re choices I revisit when a project calls for something else.
Questions
- Shopify or custom e-commerce: which is better?
- If you sell simple, standard products, a ready-made platform is faster and costs less: I’m happy to say so. Custom makes sense when the product is configured, when the calculations are your own, or when the store has to live inside a larger system that already exists.
- How are payments handled?
- By dedicated providers, who take care of the payment and the security of card data. The website takes the person all the way to payment and records the outcome of the order: card data never passes through the website’s systems.
- Can I start without selling online?
- Yes. Many products first need a path that explains them and collects an inquiry or a quote request; the cart gets added later, once the way of selling is clear. It’s a planned step, not a fallback.
If yours isn’t here, see all the others.
