Web developer in Salt Lake City: shop pages that promise what your warehouse can do
Web developer in Salt Lake City, for brands that ship across the country. I build the shop, the product pages, and the dispatch, stock and returns pages around them. My team does the build in Kolkata, India, and I lead it from the first scope to the handover.
Overview
Product pages for a customer buying unseen
Someone buying from you without seeing the product judges the business on whether it arrives as described.
So I plan the shop around your catalogue as it's really organised: the product lines first, then the sizes, colours and weights under each, with room on every page for the photographs you've got.
For a software or services firm, none of this applies, and I plan that kind of site around other questions.
Side by side
Four policy pages, and where a customer finds each
You'll approve the wording of all four pages before launch. Each one is linked from the places a customer looks when an order is on its way.
| Page | What it says | Where a customer sees it |
|---|---|---|
| Dispatch | The day an order leaves, depending on when it was placed | Beside the button on every product page |
| Stock | Items on the shelf now, and items on back order | On the product page, next to each size or colour |
| Returns | What can come back, and who pays the postage | Linked from checkout and the confirmation email |
| Damage | What happens when something arrives broken | On the help page, with a named contact |
Where this runs over
Three facts only your business has
These three come from you. Have your figures for the first one with you at a meeting, and I'll sketch your dispatch line while we talk.
- Your real dispatch times, including your busiest stretch of the year.
- Your returns rules, word for word, as your staff apply them.
- Who answers when an order goes wrong, by name or by role.
What moves the number
What goes into an ecommerce website build
A live link to your inventory system is the biggest single item, when you need one. The others depend on your catalogue and on what already exists, and each one gets its own line in the scope.
- 01Customer accounts and order history, if buyers come back to reorder
- 02The number of product lines, and the variants under each
- 03Dispatch and returns policies that exist in writing, or still need drafting
- 04Product photographs you have, and the ones still to be shot
- 05Gift cards, bundles or subscriptions, if you sell them
- 06Shipping rules that differ by product, such as heavy or fragile items
What a scope from me looks like
What a shop's first scope holds
Included
- A written scope: every page and feature as its own line, agreed before work starts
- Design to build, reviewed on a staging URL that stays open the whole project
- Mobile first — checked on a real phone
- Domain, hosting and every account created in your name from day one
- Dispatch, stock, returns and damage pages, each approved by you
- Basic on-page SEO: titles, descriptions, headings, sitemap, Search Console connected
- A runbook at handover: how to edit it, what renews and when
Phase two
- A live connection to your inventory system, scoped once its limits are known
- More product lines once the first set is selling
- Ongoing SEO once the site has traffic to read
- A maintenance plan once the site is live
- Logo and brand design, quoted separately from the build
Not doing
- Guaranteed rankings
Where this comes from
The record, and a test order
Across 900+ projects completed since 2017, I've handed over 600+ projects for US clients.
Before launch, you place a test order on the staging copy and follow it all the way to the confirmation email in your own inbox.
The team works on your schedule, in your time zone.
Nearby
Boulder and Denver pages for brands and branches
Shops from small brands get more room on the Boulder page, and branch-by-branch location pages are worked through on the Denver one.
FAQ
When the shop meets the stockroom
Stock counts come from whichever system you keep them in now.
How much detail does a product page need?
- A product page needs enough detail that the parcel holds no surprises: size, weight, material, what's in the box and what isn't. I'd add a photo of the item next to something familiar for scale, and the care or storage notes a buyer asks about after delivery. Where a product comes in several sizes, each size gets its own measurements. For food, the ingredients, allergens and storage notes go on the page in full, worded as they are on the packet.
Can the shop connect to an inventory system?
- An inventory or stock system can feed the shop, so a product shows as sold out when the shelf is empty. I'll read that system's documentation before quoting, because each one limits what it shares and how often. If your system can't share stock at all, a stock sheet your team uploads can stand in. Either way, the product page shows the same count your team sees.
Who works on the shop?
- I lead the build myself. Three developers, a designer and three SEO specialists in the Kolkata, India office, plus around six people working remotely, put the shop together with me. The designer among them lays out each product page around your own photographs.
Can the confirmation email carry tracking?
- The confirmation email can carry the carrier's tracking link once your shipping software passes it to the shop. Whether yours does is something I'll check before quoting.
Which platform runs the shop?
- The shop runs on WordPress or on Next.js, both part of the stack my team works in every day. I recommend one once I've seen your catalogue and the systems it has to talk to, and the recommendation goes into the written scope with its reason. Both let your team add a product, change a price or mark an item sold out from a dashboard.
Next step
Your returns policy, as it stands
Your current returns policy, in whatever state it's in, is the most useful thing you could share ahead of our meeting. I'll mark the lines a customer is likely to query, and suggest plainer wording for each.
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