Custom and Headless E-commerce Website Development

I quote custom e-commerce website development as a fixed price for each store, after a short call, rather than from a price list. The main cost drivers are the number of page templates, how complex your products are (variants, per-size stock, bundles), checkout rules such as coupons, shipping thresholds and cash on delivery, customer accounts, the admin you need, and any migration from an existing store. That quote reaches you in writing, with the scope spelled out, before any work starts.

Choose Shopify if you want to launch quickly with a standard catalog and are happy working within its themes and apps. Choose a custom or headless build when your checkout rules, product data or brand experience do not fit a theme, when app fees keep stacking up, or when you want full control over speed and SEO. I work on both, so my recommendation follows your catalog, team and budget rather than what I would prefer to build.

Headless e-commerce separates the storefront your customers see from the system that stores products, content and orders. The front end is a custom app, usually Next.js, that pulls data from a CMS such as Sanity or a commerce backend through an API. You get full design freedom and fast pages, while your team keeps a friendly dashboard. Ornovia works this way: a Next.js storefront with every product and page managed in Sanity.

A headless storefront with a CMS-managed catalog is usually the quicker build, while a full custom platform with accounts, checkout logic, payments and an admin portal takes longer. You get a specific timeline in the written plan before we start. What most often stretches a schedule is late product data, unclear shipping and returns rules, or design changes after the build begins, so we settle those early.

Most gateways with a proper server-side API, including Razorpay, Stripe, PayPal, Cashfree and PhonePe. Razorpay is the one I have shipped in production, on Maison Rivina, alongside cash on delivery. For international stores, Stripe or PayPal are the usual picks. Whatever the provider, I create orders on the server, verify each payment before marking an order paid, and handle failed or abandoned payments so your order records stay accurate.

Yes. Depending on the build, you manage products, prices, stock, collections and editorial pages in Sanity CMS or in a custom admin portal designed around your workflow. Images and video go through Cloudinary, so uploads are resized and optimized automatically. At handover I walk you through adding a product, running a sale and updating pages, and you keep full ownership of the code and every account.

Yes, when SEO is part of the build from the start rather than an afterthought. Product and category pages are server-rendered so crawlers see the full content, each page gets its own title and description, structured data describes products and breadcrumbs, and cart, checkout and account pages stay out of the index. Speed is handled at the source, with optimized images and lean JavaScript, rather than with yet another app.

Yes. I can keep your current platform as the backend and build a new Next.js storefront on top of it, or migrate your products and content to a fully custom setup. Either way, every old URL gets a redirect to its new address to protect the search traffic you already have, and test orders run end to end before any live traffic is switched over.

Yes. I am based in India and work remotely with founders, agencies and companies worldwide. Everything runs over email and video calls, I reply within 48 hours, and the written plan sets out scope, milestones and how we will communicate before any work starts. For Indian brands I handle INR pricing, Razorpay and cash on delivery; for international stores I set up the currency and gateway your market expects.