Ecommerce Development
Stores built for how India actually sells
An Indian store has requirements a template does not anticipate. GST on the invoice, a gateway that clears domestic cards, COD that does not wreck your margins, and a catalogue big enough that structure matters more than styling.
The problem, as we usually find it
What is actually going wrong on most of the sites we are called into — before anything about what we would charge.
An Indian store has requirements that a template built for the US market simply does not anticipate. GST on the invoice. A gateway that reliably clears domestic cards and UPI. Cash on delivery that does not quietly destroy your margin. Shipping rules that account for a country where the next state is a different logistics problem.
None of that is exotic. All of it is the difference between a store that looks finished and a store that can actually take an order on Tuesday morning.
We have built and migrated more than thirty stores in India, which mostly means we have made these mistakes already and would rather not make them again on your budget.
What the work covers
Everything below is included. If something is not on this list, we quote it separately rather than leaving you to find out later.
The right platform for you
WooCommerce or Shopify, chosen against catalogue size, who maintains it and what it integrates with. We will argue for the one that suits you, including when it is the cheaper one.
Indian payments and tax
Razorpay, PayU or CCAvenue set up in your own account, with GST configured so the invoice is correct the first time.
A catalogue that can rank
Category structure, variant handling and URLs decided at build, because retrofitting them across 3,000 products is a different job entirely.
Feed-ready product data
Titles, GTINs, brand and availability set up so Google Merchant Center works when you switch it on rather than rejecting half the catalogue.
Orders that actually notify
Transactional email that arrives, PDF invoices, order tracking and abandoned cart recovery.
Shipping and delivery rules
Zones, weights, free-shipping thresholds and COD handling configured for how you actually ship.
Abandoned cart recovery
Set up and tested, because it is usually the highest-return automation a new store has.
Order and inventory workflow
How stock moves, who fulfils, and what happens when something is out — decided at build, not after the first oversell.
Launch-day checks
A real transaction, a real email, a verified feed and working redirects before anyone announces anything.
What we have actually found
Real numbers from real accounts. We never publish client names, so the businesses are described rather than identified — the figures are exactly as we found them.
3,222
SKUs in the largest catalogue we have taken through end to end
56
feed problems found across five Merchant Center accounts, four of which reported zero issues
30+
Indian stores migrated between platforms without losing rankings
10 weeks
an order table had silently stopped syncing on a store whose row count looked entirely healthy
The detail that decides it
The part most quotes leave out, because it takes experience rather than a price list.
WooCommerce or Shopify, argued honestly
WooCommerce gives you complete control and hands you the maintenance. It suits a larger or unusual catalogue, and a business with someone technical to call. It is also where most of the performance problems we get called about live.
Shopify takes the server away entirely for a monthly fee. It suits a business that would rather never think about updates. Its constraints are real — checkout customisation and URL structure chiefly — and worth knowing before you commit, not after.
We will argue for whichever fits you, including when that is the cheaper one and the smaller project for us.
Payments, tax and the things that go wrong at checkout
Razorpay, PayU or CCAvenue, set up in your own account so settlements go to you directly. GST configured with prices set inclusive or exclusive as your accounting requires, so the invoice is right the first time rather than being corrected by hand.
The failure we see most is a store that takes payment but never sends a confirmation, because transactional email was never configured beyond the server's default. Customers assume the order failed and order again, or call you.
So email gets tested with a real transaction before launch. Every time.
Catalogue structure is decided at build or regretted later
Category structure, variant handling and URL patterns are architectural. Changing them at 3,000 products means a redirect map, a re-crawl and a nervous month.
The largest catalogue we have taken end to end is 3,222 SKUs. Above a few hundred products the job stops being design and becomes data, and it should be priced and planned that way.
We also set product data up feed-ready from the start — real identifiers, correct brand fields, availability that reflects reality — so Google Shopping works when you switch it on instead of rejecting half the catalogue.
The store-data check nobody runs before flipping a switch
WooCommerce can keep orders in two places, and moving fully to the newer one is a single setting. On a store we inherited that table held 4,828 rows against 4,917 orders — close enough that any sensible person would call it synced and switch over.
It had stopped syncing ten weeks earlier. The newest row was from June while orders were arriving that morning. Flipping the setting would have made 196 recent orders disappear from the admin, and the row count would have shown nothing wrong. A count proves a table was filled once; only the newest date proves it is still being written to.
The same shape of mistake hides in the small automations a store accumulates over years. One had a snippet that deleted a product's photos whenever the product was deleted — force-deleted, bypassing the trash — and never asked whether anything else used them. On a catalogue full of variants and open-box duplicates, photos are shared. Seven live products were left with no usable image, three with entire galleries pointing at deleted files. Nothing errored. The pages just rendered a placeholder, and it surfaced through a Shopping feed complaint months later.
Untracked inventory and other quiet traps
A specific one worth knowing: on Shopify, a product with inventory tracking switched off will sell indefinitely regardless of what its inventory policy says. Merchants set the policy to deny backorders, see it ignored, and conclude the platform is broken.
Another: migrated catalogues frequently carry timestamp junk in the barcode field. It looks filled in on screen and it destroys both your GTIN and the brand-plus-MPN fallback in Merchant Center.
These are the things that separate a store that works from a store that looks like it works, and none of them are visible in a design review.
What we need from you
Short, and worth reading before you start. What delays this work is almost never the work — it is waiting on access or a decision.
Product data in a spreadsheet
Titles, prices, stock, variants and categories. This is the longest lead-time item on almost every store build.
Product images
The single most common delay. Consistent, reasonably lit photos matter more than expensive ones.
Payment gateway account
Razorpay, PayU or CCAvenue in your business name, with KYC completed. Approval can take days, so start it early.
GST details and invoice requirements
Whether prices are inclusive or exclusive, and what your accountant needs on the invoice.
Your shipping reality
Who you ship with, where, at what cost, and how you handle COD. Guessing this produces a store that cannot fulfil.
Whether this is right for you
We would rather lose the enquiry than take work we would do badly, so the right-hand column is as honest as the left.
This is for you if
- You are launching or replatforming a store that sells in India
- You need Razorpay, PayU or CCAvenue and GST handled correctly
- You have a catalogue large enough that structure matters
- You want the product feed working from launch rather than fixed later
This is not for you if
- You have fewer than about ten products and no plans to grow
- You want a marketplace or multi-vendor platform; that is a different build
- You are not ready to supply real product data and images
- You want the cheapest possible store and will accept whatever a template does
How it runs
Four steps, in this order, every time.
- We scope the catalogue first — product count, variants, and how the data will be maintained.
- Platform and gateway decided together, in writing, before any build starts.
- Build on staging with real product data, not placeholders, so the structure is tested against reality.
- Launch with redirects, analytics and the product feed already verified.
Looking for hosting? This is what we would put you on
We do not sell hosting and we do not resell it, so there is no plan of ours to push you onto. When a client asks where to host, this is the honest answer for most small Indian sites.
Indian data centre
Mumbai is on the list. A site served from India to Indian visitors starts a long way ahead of one served from Singapore.
LiteSpeed, not plain Apache
It ships with LiteSpeed and LSCache, which is most of the WordPress speed problem solved before anyone installs a plugin.
Free SSL and daily backups
Included on the plans we would actually put a client on, rather than sold back to you at renewal.
Priced for a small business
The long term is where it is cheap. Renewal rates are higher than the first-term price, so buy the longest term you are comfortable with.
That is a referral link. Hostinger pays us a small commission if you sign up through it, at no extra cost to you. We recommend it because we run client sites on it, not because of the commission.
The Stack We
Work In Every Day
Every platform below is one we build on, maintain, rank and report from — not a logo wall.
Questions
WooCommerce if you want full control and have someone to maintain it; Shopify if you would rather pay a monthly fee and never think about the server. We recommend on your situation, not our preference.
Yes. The largest we have worked end to end is 3,222 SKUs. Above a few hundred products the job stops being design and becomes data, and we price it that way.
Yes, and we would rather do it at build than fix it later. See our Merchant Center work at truefeed.flyingstar.in.
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