Online Stores

Your own sales channel instead of platform commission: catalog, product card, cart, payments, delivery and panel on your side.

• individuallyScope
• Sites and brandingArea
• individual quoteLaunch

Who this is for

Product brands, local stores and B2B e-commerce.

Problem

Sales work only offline or through a marketplace with commissions. The platform takes its percentage from every order, sets rules, and keeps the buyer's data — after a year there are revenues but no customer database or a single address to send news about new stock. Position in the platform's search and rule changes are not your decisions, and the brand you're building belongs to someone else.

What we do

We build a store that is your property — from catalog structure to payments, delivery and a panel where you can run it without us.

• Catalog and product cards described so that a purchase doesn't require a phone call to ask for details
• Checkout shortened to fields really needed — each extra is an abandoned cart
• Management panel: products, prices, availability, orders and content on your side

What's included

A store is not a company website with a cart added, so the scope is wider and there's a separate stage for integrations.

• Assortment analysis and store architecture: categories, filters, path to purchase
• Product cards: photos, variants, availability, sales copy
• Cart and checkout with payment gateway
• Integrations: shipping, warehouse stock, invoices, customer messages
• E-commerce analytics and SEO foundation: addresses, structured product data, indexing

How long it takes

We give the deadline individually, together with the estimate and before work starts. The store is the only item in this group that can't be covered by one common deadline: it's not the store itself that decides the time, but the number of products to upload and integrations for payments, warehouse and logistics — and for some of them you wait on the supplier's side. That's why we split the schedule into stages: analysis, architecture, design, implementation, integrations. Each stage has its own date so there's not one deadline "at the end".

How much it costs

Building a store is work closed in time, and what weighs in it is the number of products, the scope of integrations, the payment method and the logistics handling — with a large catalogue and several integrations it is those, not the store itself, that make up the larger part of the job.

A store is the one thing in this group you cannot leave to itself: products are added, prices change, the platform updates itself. That ongoing work carries on together with the rest of the system, because the store is where AURA reads what actually sells. We take no commission on sales — that is what a marketplace is for. The code, the data and the customer base belong to you, and if you change contractors nothing stays on our side.

What you get

Your own sales channel and your own customer database: an order placed with you doesn't give anyone a commission, and the buyer's contact stays on your side so you can return with another offer. You set prices, promotions and shipping rules yourself. And you have a place where it's worth running ads, because all the traffic works for your brand, not someone else's.

How to work out the store's break-even point

Monthly break-even point (in orders) = the store's fixed costs ÷ average margin per order. Fixed costs are technical support, the payment gateway fee, and warehouse or delivery costs you carry regardless of how many orders come in. You know the average margin from your own price lists and purchase costs — that figure is yours, not ours. The result tells you how many orders a month the store needs just to cover itself before it starts earning. The number of visits needed for that many orders is something you work out only after launch, together with the store's real conversion rate.

Returns, delivery and stock levels — whose job is it

A customer's right to return goods bought at a distance follows directly from the Consumer Rights Act of 30 May 2014 (Journal of Laws 2014, item 827, Article 27) — 14 days to withdraw from the contract without giving a reason. The store has to support this regardless of who built it: it is the seller's legal duty, not a feature of the website. Delivery — choosing a courier, a parcel locker, the shipping cost and timing — is an operational decision you make, because you are the one who knows your range and scale. Stock levels need watching day to day: a store that sells goods it does not actually have loses trust faster than it wins new customers.

We build the panel where these three things can be set up and run — we do not run them for you after launch, because that is daily work that needs access to your warehouse and decisions we will not make in your place.

Your own store vs selling through a marketplace

Both routes lead to online sales, but they differ in what is left with you after the transaction.

• Marketplace: ready-made traffic from day one, but a commission on every order and terms you do not negotiate
• Your own store: you have to bring the traffic yourself — through ads or SEO — but zero commission on sales
• Marketplace: the buyer's data stays with the platform, not in your database
• Your own store: the customer's contact stays with you, and you can reach them again with the next offer
• Marketplace: the price, promotions and product page layout are limited by the platform's rules
• Your own store: you set the rules yourself, including how the brand looks

Combining both can also make sense: a marketplace to get initial traffic, your own store to build the brand and the customer base no platform ever reaches.

When an online store does not pay off

There are situations where we talk you out of building a store instead of selling you one.

• The range is a handful of items and rarely changes — it is simpler and cheaper to sell it through social media or a single page with a form
• Sales are purely local, with pick-up only and no shipping — the whole cart and delivery logic becomes an unnecessary layer
• There is nobody in the company to keep stock levels updated and handle returns — without that, the store starts selling goods it does not have
• The product needs a conversation and fitting before purchase — a made-to-order service rarely fits a checkout that assumes a fixed price and a ready product

What you prepare before the store launches

The store is the only item in this group of services without a shared deadline, because the timing depends on how much of the list below is already in place.

• A full catalogue: photos, descriptions, prices and variants for every product
• A delivery decision: courier company, parcel lockers, shipping cost and timing
• A chosen payment gateway and the terms you use it under
• A returns policy consistent with the Consumer Rights Act, written in your own words
• Someone responsible for the warehouse, orders and customer contact after launch

The most common mistake when launching a store

The most common mistake is a checkout with fields nobody actually needs to fill in to place an order — every extra field is another abandoned cart. The second is launching without integrating stock levels: the store accepts orders for a product that physically is not there, and the customer only finds out from an apologetic email. The third is having no clearly written returns policy before launch — return disputes without agreed rules end up taking longer and costing more than handling the return itself. The fourth is a catalogue thrown together in a rush, with poor-quality photos and descriptions copied straight from the supplier — customers do not buy what they cannot see clearly.

How to check after a month that the store works

Measures you can work out yourselves from the store panel, without us.

• Cart abandonment rate — high usually means a checkout that is too long or no trusted payment method
• Time from order placed to order shipped — the longer it is, the more “where is my parcel” questions you get
• Number of returns and their reason — returns for “different from the photo” point at the product page, not the product
• Share of customers coming back for another order — that, not the number of visits, shows whether the store is building a base or just selling once

The code, data and customer base stay yours

We build the store on your domain, with a management panel and a payment account set up for your company. When we end the collaboration we take nothing away: the store code stays, the product catalogue stays, the order history and customer base with their contact details stay. We never take a commission on sales — not during the collaboration and not after it — because the store's whole turnover, like its customer data, belongs to you.

What you get

• Catalogue, product page, cart and checkout architecture
• Responsive store with a management panel
• Payment, delivery and essential sales-system integrations

When the problem lies elsewhere

If your problem sounds different, neighbouring areas of the same system stand right next to it — AURA connects them to each other rather than selling them separately:

• Copywriting — Texts that speak the client's language and sell: headlines, offer, service descriptions and calls to action.
• Branding — Logo, colors and style — visual identification that makes a company look like one company, not several random ones.
• UI/UX design — Interface design for website, app or panel: first flows and clickable prototype, only then graphics.
• 3D Animations — 3D objects, scroll animations and interactive scenes on the website — for brands that don't want to look like everyone else.