Website or e-commerce — where to start?

With whatever serves your objective: presence and contacts (website) or direct selling (e-commerce). You can prototype one then extend to the other — the reverse is more expensive.

Will a new site help me be found on Google?

Yes if SEO is built in from the design stage — structure, content, performance. A site rebuilt without structural work can even lose ground, by breaking URLs that were already indexed.

How long does a site take?

A few weeks for a website prototyped with you; longer for e-commerce, depending on catalogue and connections. What stretches timelines is almost always content production, not development.

Should we start from an existing CMS or build bespoke?

A standard CMS suits a standard need, and is often the right call. Bespoke becomes justified when the site must integrate with your business tools, or when performance and journey are commercial arguments.

How do I know if my current site is slow?

By measuring rather than sensing: Google’s Core Web Vitals give three numbers, including the time to display the main content. A diagnosis takes minutes and costs nothing.

Who writes the content?

You hold the material, we shape it. A site whose copy is written by a supplier with no access to the trade is recognisable from the first paragraph — and prospects see it too.

Sales & presence · E-commerce

Website & e-commerce

Your online presence and your sales channel, prototyped bespoke and connected to your data.

What is it?

A website presents your company and your offer; e-commerce adds online selling. Well designed, they are the number one point of contact with your customers and an acquisition engine.

The distinction between the two is less technical than economic. A website has a contact objective: it must convince and make someone want to write or call. An e-commerce has a transaction objective: it must clear objections one by one, all the way to payment. The two are not designed the same way, and a failed e-commerce is often a website with a basket bolted on.

Technically, a modern site is judged on three measurable things: display speed, readability on mobile, and how clean its structure is for search engines. None of them is a finishing touch: together they determine how many visitors stay, and how many pages Google agrees to index.

The fourth criterion is invisible: the connection to your data. A site where stock, prices and catalogue are updated by hand is a site that displays wrong information part of the time.

Signs you need it

Your site shows products in stock that you no longer have.
Changing a price or a page requires going through a supplier.
The site is slow on mobile — and you know it without ever having measured.
Prospects call you for information that should be on the site.
You cannot say how many contacts or sales the site actually generates.

What is it for?

To exist in your prospects’ eyes, to inspire trust and to sell — around the clock. A good site turns a visit into a contact or an order.

A site is the only salesperson that works without interruption, and the only one whose failure rate can be measured precisely. That is what makes it a rational investment: every point of friction removed shows up in the numbers.

For a smaller company, the site also serves as proof. A prospect hesitating between two suppliers looks at both sites, and draws conclusions about the seriousness, size and modernity of each — right or wrong. That inference is not something you control, but it is something you can steer.

Not to be confused with

A website: Contact objective. It is judged on how clear the offer is and how easy you are to reach. A few well-written pages are enough; volume is not a criterion.
An e-commerce: Transaction objective. On top, you must handle catalogue, stock, payment, delivery and after-sales. The gap in complexity with a website is considerable, and often underestimated.
A marketplace: Selling on a marketplace brings immediate traffic, in exchange for a commission and a customer relationship you do not own. The two are complementary: marketplace for volume, your own site for margin and relationship.

How it works

01We prototype the key pages and the journey, with your teams, before writing final code.
02We get image, speed and mobile right from the start — not at the end of the project.
03We build SEO structure in from the design stage: titles, canonicals, structured data, sitemap.
04We connect the site to your data — stock, PIM, CRM — so it stays accurate without intervention.

The mistakes that cost the most

Treating performance as a finishing touch

Speed is decided at design time: image weight, number of scripts, fonts. It is hard to claw back afterwards, and a single 700 kB image on a homepage is enough to lose a share of mobile visitors.
Postponing SEO until after launch

URL structure, canonical tags and the sitemap are architectural choices. Fixing them after indexing costs weeks of rework — and sometimes the loss of accumulated standing.
Leaving the site disconnected from the other tools

A site fed by hand shows wrong information from the first busy week. Connecting to data is not a convenience: it is what separates a shop window from a sales channel.
Confusing a visual redesign with a journey redesign

A prettier site with the same journey generally converts the same. What moves the numbers is the order in which you answer objections, not the colour palette.

What it costs, how long it takes

For a website, cost concentrates on design and copy: it is the pages written, not the pages displayed, that take work. A thoughtful five-page site often costs more than a generic twenty-page one, and earns more.

For e-commerce, the dominant items are the catalogue, the connections — payment, shipping, stock — and conversion work. Building the site itself is rarely the main line.

The most frequently ignored cost factor is maintenance: a site lives, gets updated and needs watching. A build budget with no evolution budget produces a site that degrades within twelve months.

When you don’t need it

If your business runs entirely on referral and you are already turning clients away, a new site will not change your revenue — at best it will protect your image. The useful question is not “do I need a site” but “which existing demand am I failing to capture”.

With Meridian

We prototype a site with fluid motion and SEO built in, connected to your tools — not a generic shop window disconnected from everything else.

Frequently asked questions