E-commerce & Online Ordering

Sell online without the platform bloat

Not every business needs Shopify with 47 apps bolted on just to sell a product. If you run a small business in Michigan and you want to sell online, you deserve a clean catalog, a simple checkout, and reliable payments - without monthly platform fees, transaction surcharges, and design limitations.

I build custom e-commerce websites for small businesses that want to sell online without handing control to a third-party platform. Everything runs on your own website, on your own domain, with your own design. No templates. No theme lock-in. No middleman taking a cut of every sale.

Whether you sell physical products, digital downloads, or service packages, I build a storefront that fits your business instead of forcing your business to fit a storefront. If you are ready to sell online on your own terms, get in touch and I will map out what your store needs.

What is included

Every e-commerce site I build is a complete selling platform. I handle design, development, payment integration, and admin setup so you launch with a store ready to take orders from day one.

• Custom product catalog - Products displayed with high-quality images, descriptions, variants like size and color, and pricing. The catalog is designed around your inventory, not crammed into a generic grid.
• Shopping cart and checkout - A clean checkout flow built for conversion. No account creation required. Customers enter their information, choose shipping, pay, and get a confirmation - all on your site.
• Stripe payment integration - Secure credit card processing through Stripe with no monthly gateway fees. You pay a flat per-transaction rate and nothing else. Payments flow directly into your Stripe account.
• Inventory management - Track stock levels, get low-inventory alerts, and manage availability from your admin panel. When something sells out, it updates automatically.
• Order management - View and manage incoming orders from a single dashboard. Mark orders as processed, shipped, or complete. Every order includes customer details, items purchased, and payment confirmation.
• Shipping and tax configuration - Set shipping rates by weight, price, or location. Configure Michigan sales tax and applicable local rates. Customers see accurate totals before checkout.

Everything is managed through the same intuitive ProcessWire admin panel that powers the rest of your site. Adding a product is as simple as filling out a form.

Online ordering for restaurants

If you run a restaurant in Livingston County or SE Michigan, you already know what third-party delivery platforms cost you. DoorDash, UberEats, and Grubhub charge commission fees that eat 15% to 30% of every order. On a busy Friday night, that adds up to hundreds of dollars walking out the door to a platform that also controls your customer relationships.

I build online ordering systems directly into your restaurant website. Your customers order from your menu, on your site, and the money goes to you - not to a platform that profits from listing your business next to every competitor in town.

• Full menu with modifiers - Customers customize orders with toppings, sides, preparation preferences, and special instructions. Your menu displays exactly the way you want it, organized by category.
• Pickup and delivery options - Customers choose how they get their food. Set delivery zones, minimum order amounts, and pickup windows that match your kitchen capacity.
• Scheduled orders - Customers place orders in advance for a specific date and time. Valuable for catering, large party pickups, and lunch pre-orders from nearby offices.
• No commission fees - You pay for the website build and hosting. That is it. No per-order commission, no monthly platform fee, and no pressure to run margin-cutting promotions.

The math is simple. If your restaurant does $5,000 a month in delivery orders through a third-party app at 25% commission, you are paying $1,250 a month for the privilege. A custom ordering system pays for itself within months. For restaurants in Howell, Brighton, and the surrounding communities, owning your ordering platform is one of the smartest investments you can make.

Why not Shopify or WooCommerce?

Shopify and WooCommerce are the defaults most people hear about. They work for certain use cases, but for many small businesses they come with trade-offs that add up quickly.

Transaction fees and monthly platform costs. Shopify charges a monthly subscription plus transaction fees on every sale. WooCommerce is technically free, but you will spend money on hosting, a premium theme, payment extensions, and paid plugins before your store is functional. I build your store with Stripe integration and flat processing rates. No platform subscription. No hidden fees.

Plugin and app dependency. WooCommerce relies on plugins for nearly everything - shipping calculators, tax automation, inventory sync, email notifications. A typical store runs 20 to 30 plugins, each a potential conflict or security vulnerability. Shopify's app store follows the same model with monthly fees that stack up. My builds include that functionality in the core code. Fewer moving parts means fewer things that break.

Design limitations and template lock-in. Shopify gives you themes where the layout structure is largely fixed. WooCommerce themes offer more flexibility but come with bloated code. With a custom-built store, your design is yours - every page, every product layout, every checkout step matches the rest of your website because it is all built together.

Data ownership and portability. With Shopify, your store lives on their servers running their proprietary platform. Leaving means a significant migration project. The stores I build run on ProcessWire on your own hosting. You own the code, you own the data, and you can take it anywhere. I do not build platforms that hold your business hostage.

If you are a small business in Michigan that wants to sell online without the overhead or the ongoing platform costs, send me a message with what you sell and how you want to sell it. I will put together a plan that fits. You can also explore my website packages for bundled options that include e-commerce from the start.