Most agencies can deliver a standard shop. The ones that get turned down are the briefs where pricing, products or checkout work in a way the platform did not anticipate.
A catalogue, a basket and a card payment is well-trodden ground and most agencies handle it. The briefs that cause trouble are the ones where the business does something specific: prices that differ per customer, products configured rather than picked, ordering against account terms, or a checkout that has to ask something unusual before it can take money.
Those are not bigger versions of a standard shop. They are development projects wearing an ecommerce label, and quoting them as though they were the former is how agencies lose money on the ones they do accept.
We take those on behind you. You keep the client, the design and the relationship; the awkward parts get built properly rather than approximated with plugins that half fit.
Prices following the account or group, including volume breaks and contract terms, rather than one price for everyone.
Ordering against agreed terms with no public checkout, which is how a great many trade businesses actually sell.
Made-to-measure and built-to-order, where the price is calculated from what the customer specifies.
Extra steps, unusual validation, split delivery, or anything the standard flow cannot express.
Recurring orders, renewals and the awkward middle cases — pausing, changing tier, failed payments.
Stock, pricing and orders connected to the accounting or ERP system that already holds them.
The scale you set, not approximated. If a typeface cannot be licensed for web we tell you before the build rather than substituting it.
A layout that breaks at 900px, an interaction that will be painful on a phone. You hear about it while it is still cheap to change.
Designs rarely cover every width. Rather than invent the in-between states we agree them with you.
So your client can update content without the design falling apart, which is what protects your work after handover.
No credit in the footer, nothing in the code, nothing in the documentation. Your client sees your agency.
Not the design. If they are undocumented, writing them down is the first task and it often reveals inconsistencies.
A brief that fights the platform costs more every year. We will tell you when the one specified is the wrong tool.
Not through features. What happens to a part-shipped order, a cancelled subscription, a trade customer over their limit. Worth pinning down early.
Some effects cost ten times what they look like they should. We will tell you the price rather than absorb it or drop it silently.
Contrast below AA, or an interaction that cannot be used by keyboard. We will say so, and propose an alternative that keeps the intent.
We will tell you whether it is a standard build or a development project, roughly what it would cost, and what to pin down with the client before you quote.