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Next.js StorefrontsHeadless ShopifyMedusa.jsStripe PaymentsConversion-First UX

Your Checkout is Losing 40% of Buyers Before They Click 'Pay'

If you're running ecommerce on a theme framework, you're watching cart abandonment metrics climb while your dev team explains 'technical debt'.

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90+

Lighthouse score

Mobile, production, real inventory

6-10 weeks

Typical timeline

MVP storefront to launch

$25K-$200K

Project range

DTC startup to enterprise catalog

5,000+

Sites shipped

Since 2012

What Actually Ships When You Build Custom -- And What Stays Broken on Themes

Your buyer lands on a product page. The hero image renders in 0.8 seconds, inventory syncs in real time from your Shopify or Medusa backend, and the Add to Cart button responds before their finger lifts. That's what custom ecommerce software development delivers -- server-rendered Next.js storefronts deployed on Vercel's edge, backed by Stripe for payments and Supabase for customer data your ops team can query without waiting on a developer. Your team owns the codebase. No $49/month apps injecting JavaScript that tanks your Lighthouse score. No theme conflicts breaking checkout during Black Friday. We've shipped headless builds handling $500K in first-month GMV and scaled them past $5M/month without re-platforming. The 18–35% conversion lifts we've measured aren't theory -- they're what happens when your storefront loads in under a second on 3G and every pixel of the buyer journey serves your margin, not a template vendor's upsell strategy.

Your Current Site May Be a Liability

Common gaps we find in nearly every audit.

Your Shopify theme scores 35 on Lighthouse and every page takes 4+ seconds on mobile.

Risk: Google penalizes slow storefronts in rankings, and you're losing 7-10% of potential revenue to bounce rates.

You're paying $2,000+/month in Shopify apps just to get basic features like wishlists, reviews, and bundles.

Risk: Each app injects its own JavaScript, compounds load time, and creates vendor lock-in you can't easily unwind.

Your dev team can't ship storefront changes without breaking the checkout or triggering theme conflicts.

Risk: Release cycles stretch from days to weeks, and you miss seasonal windows that drive 30-40% of annual revenue.

You want to sell B2B and DTC from the same catalog but your platform only supports one pricing model.

Risk: Running two separate stores doubles infrastructure cost and fragments your customer data across systems.

Offshore quotes came in at $8K but the last two builds missed deadline by three months and launched with critical bugs.

Risk: Lost opportunity cost on a delayed launch typically exceeds the original project budget within 60 days.

Your analytics stack can't connect storefront behavior to actual order data without manual CSV exports.

Risk: You're making merchandising and ad-spend decisions on incomplete data, burning budget on products that don't convert.

What Your Website Could Look Like

Custom-designed for your industry. No templates. No stock photos.

Headless ecommerce storefront and admin dashboard — Custom headless storefront on Next.js with Shopify/Medusa backend and Stripe checkout

What We Build

Purpose-built features for your industry.

Deploy server-rendered product pages and collection grids on Vercel's edge with sub-second LCP

Your mobile buyers see product images in under a second, eliminating the 7–10% bounce rate tax from slow themes

Connect Shopify's Storefront API or self-host Medusa.js to eliminate per-transaction fees

Your team stops paying $2,000/month in app fees for features that should live in your codebase

Build checkout flows on Stripe with one-click upsells, subscriptions, and multi-currency support

Your developers ship storefront updates in days, not weeks, so you hit seasonal revenue windows on schedule

Store customer profiles and order history in Supabase with SQL access for your analytics team

Your B2B and DTC catalogs run from one backend, cutting infrastructure cost and unifying customer data

Ship custom cart logic, bundle builders, and B2B pricing without third-party app dependencies

Your launch date stays fixed because your build team has shipped production storefronts, not just staging demos

Review every storefront change on preview URLs before code touches your production environment

Your merchandising decisions run on complete behavioral and transactional data, not fragmented CSV exports

Our Development Process

From discovery to launch. Quality at every step.

Commerce Audit & Architecture

Week 1

We audit your current store's performance, catalog structure, payment flow, and third-party dependencies, then spec the target architecture in a shared RFC doc.

Data Model & API Wiring

Week 2-3

Stand up the Shopify Storefront API or Medusa instance, define product schemas in Supabase, and configure Stripe webhooks for order lifecycle events.

Storefront Build & Cart Logic

Week 4-7

Build product pages, collection views, search, filtering, and the full cart-to-checkout flow in Next.js with server components and edge caching.

QA, Load Testing & Migration

Week 8-9

Run Lighthouse audits against every template, load-test checkout at 10x expected traffic, and migrate existing product/customer data with zero downtime.

Launch & Post-Launch Tuning

Week 10

Cut DNS, monitor real-user metrics for 72 hours, fix any edge cases, and hand off runbooks with conversion tracking dashboards already configured.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Most projects land between $25K and $90K for a DTC storefront with 50-500 SKUs, custom cart logic, and Stripe checkout. Enterprise catalogs with B2B pricing, multi-region shipping, and ERP integrations push into the $120K-$200K range. The variable isn't page count — it's checkout complexity and integration depth. We scope every project in a paid discovery phase (usually $3K-$5K) so you get a fixed quote before committing to the full build. You'll walk away from discovery with an architecture doc and line-item estimate either way.

A typical DTC storefront with under 200 SKUs ships in 6-8 weeks from kickoff. Larger catalogs with custom filtering, B2B pricing tiers, or third-party integrations (ERPs, 3PLs, loyalty platforms) take 10-14 weeks. We've never missed a Black Friday deadline — we plan launches with a two-week buffer and run load tests at 10x projected traffic before cutting over.

Shopify Liquid themes are server-rendered by Shopify's infrastructure, which means you don't control caching, you can't use server components, and every app you install adds its own JavaScript bundle. A headless Next.js storefront on Vercel gives you edge rendering in 70+ regions, sub-second LCP on mobile, and a React codebase your team actually wants to work in. We've measured 18-35% conversion rate lifts when migrating brands from Liquid themes to headless — most of that comes from speed alone.

If your team already uses Shopify for inventory management, fulfillment, or POS, we'll keep Shopify as the backend and build headless against the Storefront API. You keep your ops workflow and ditch the slow theme. If you're starting fresh or want to avoid Shopify's transaction fees and app ecosystem costs, Medusa.js gives you a fully open-source commerce engine you self-host. We deploy Medusa on Railway or Fly.io with Supabase as the data layer. Either way, the storefront code is identical — Next.js doesn't care what's behind the API.

A typical project runs with a lead engineer (senior full-stack, Next.js + commerce APIs), a frontend engineer focused on storefront UI and animations, and a project lead who handles timelines, client communication, and QA. For larger builds we'll add a backend engineer for ERP/3PL integrations and a dedicated QA engineer. You'll have a shared Slack channel and weekly async video updates — we don't do status meetings that could've been a Loom.

Yes. Every storefront we ship hits 90+ on Lighthouse for Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, and SEO — measured on mobile, in production, with real product data and images. We test against your actual catalog, not placeholder content. If scores drop below 90 within 30 days of launch due to our code, we fix it at no cost. We also hand off a performance monitoring dashboard so your team can catch regressions before customers do.

We've migrated stores with 50K+ SKUs and active order volumes without a single minute of downtime. The process involves running the new storefront in parallel on a staging domain, syncing product and customer data via background jobs, then cutting DNS during a low-traffic window. Existing orders, customer accounts, and subscription data carry over. We typically run both systems in parallel for 48-72 hours post-launch as a safety net.

We offer monthly retainer plans starting at $3K/month for ongoing feature development, performance monitoring, and infrastructure management. Most ecommerce clients use 15-25 hours/month for things like new landing pages, A/B test implementations, seasonal promo logic, and Stripe billing changes. You'll also get a full handoff package at launch: codebase docs, environment setup guides, deployment runbooks, and recorded walkthroughs so your internal team can ship changes independently if you prefer.

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Need enterprise scale?

200+ employee company? Complex multi-tenant, auction, or multi-location requirement? We have a dedicated enterprise capability track.

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