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02Digital experiences

We design and engineer custom digital commerce experiences for businesses that sell products online — from the storefront people browse, through the product catalogue and the cart and checkout flows, to the commerce system and integrations underneath.

  • 10Services
  • 4Disciplines
  • 1Method
  • 5Languages
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  • Storefront development
  • Headless commerce
  • Product catalogues
  • Product pages
  • Cart & checkout flows
  • Customer accounts
  • Commerce integrations
  • Iteration

[ DEFINITION ]

What e-commerce development means here.

E-commerce development is the design and engineering of the experience a business sells through online and the commerce system behind it. For us, that means a storefront built around how people browse and choose, a product catalogue structured so products can be found and compared, cart and checkout flows that take someone from choice to order, and integrations with the services a store depends on. At ELIXIR it covers four capabilities: commerce experience & storefront development, product catalogue & product experience, cart, checkout & commerce flows, and commerce integrations & iteration.

  • A store or a website?

    A website presents a business, its content and its offer. A store lets people browse products, choose and order. When there's nothing to buy — a brand site, a content platform, a landing page — the work belongs to Web Development.

  • A store or a business system?

    E-commerce covers the experience customers buy through and the commerce system behind it. When the work is a broader internal system — operations, back-office tools, processes across the business — it belongs to Custom Software Development.

[ IN SHORT ]

  • Storefront to system — the experience customers see and the commerce system behind it are designed together.
  • The catalogue is the foundation — how products and their options are structured shapes browsing, product pages and the cart.
  • Flows, not just pages — cart, checkout and account flows are designed step by step, from choice to order.
  • Providers chosen per project — payment, shipping and tax services are selected per store and connected to it — we don't process payments.
  • Separate, connected services — web, software, SEO and AI stay their own services, linked when a store needs them.

[ WHERE STORES STRUGGLE ]

Most stores don't struggle with the storefront — they struggle with what sits behind it.

Where they struggle

  • A theme, not an experience — a generic template that doesn't fit how the products are chosen.
  • An unstructured catalogue — products, options and categories that grew without a model.
  • Product pages as an afterthought — every product shown the same way, whatever it needs to explain.
  • Checkout left to defaults — cart and checkout steps nobody designed for this store.
  • Disconnected systems — the store and the services it relies on kept in sync by hand.
  • The wrong frame — a content site, an internal system or a subscription product treated as a store.

How we approach it

  • Commerce experience — a storefront designed around how people browse, compare and choose these products.
  • Product catalogue — a catalogue model for products, options and categories, decided before the pages.
  • Product experience — product pages designed around what each kind of product needs to show.
  • Cart & checkout flows — each step from cart to order designed and engineered for the store.
  • Commerce integrations — the store connected to the services it depends on, chosen per project.
  • The right frame — content sites point to Web Development; internal systems to Custom Software; subscriptions to SaaS.

[ SCOPE ]

Commerce experiences — designed, structured and engineered to sell online.

E-commerce Development at ELIXIR covers four capabilities: commerce experience & storefront development, product catalogue & product experience, cart, checkout & commerce flows, and commerce integrations & iteration — custom commerce built around the products and the business behind them.

  • 01

    Commerce experience & storefront

    The storefront people browse — navigation, collections and search designed around how these products are chosen.

  • 02

    Product catalogue & product experience

    A structured catalogue of products, options and categories, and product pages built on it.

  • 03

    Cart, checkout & commerce flows

    The steps from cart to order, and the account flows around them, designed as one experience.

  • 04

    Commerce integrations & iteration

    Connections to the services the store relies on, and continued improvement after launch.

  • 05

    Headless commerce

    A custom storefront on top of a commerce back end, when the experience needs more than a template allows.

  • 06

    Customer accounts

    Sign-in, order history and saved details, designed as part of the store.

[ WHAT IT CAN BE ]

Kinds of commerce we build — examples, not client work.

  • 01

    Custom storefronts

    A storefront designed for these products and this brand, rather than adapted from a template.

  • 02

    Headless commerce experiences

    A custom front end connected to a commerce back end through its APIs.

  • 03

    Product catalogue systems

    Catalogues structured for many products, options and categories.

  • 04

    Direct-to-consumer commerce

    A brand selling its own products directly to its customers.

  • 05

    B2B commerce

    Ordering experiences for business customers, with their own accounts and ways of buying.

  • 06

    Custom commerce workflows

    Commerce flows shaped around how a particular business sells.

[ FOUR CAPABILITIES ]

Four capabilities behind every commerce experience.

The commerce experience shapes how people browse. The product catalogue structures what they browse, the cart and checkout flows take them to an order, and integrations connect the store to everything it relies on.

01Commerce experience

A storefront built around how people choose.

  • Navigation and collections
  • Search and filtering
  • A storefront designed for the brand

[ IN EVERY STORE ]

What every commerce project includes.

  • Commerce experience design

    The storefront, navigation and product discovery, designed around how these products are chosen.

  • Catalogue model

    How products, options and categories are structured, decided before the pages.

  • Cart & checkout flows

    Each step from cart to order designed as one flow, with the account steps around it.

  • Integration plan

    The services the store connects to — payment, shipping or others — mapped and chosen per project.

  • Production-ready storefront

    A store engineered to serve real customers, on accessible, responsive foundations.

  • Iteration

    Improvements guided by how customers use the store, as part of the ELIXIR Method.

[ RANGE ]

What commerce looks like from the outside.

A custom storefront, a product catalogue, a commerce experience and a B2B ordering experience each show a different side of e-commerce development. These layouts illustrate the kinds of stores the work involves — they are archetypes, not client work.

  • 01Custom storefront

  • 02Product catalogue

  • 03Commerce experience

  • 04B2B commerce

Case studies are published here only with our clients' permission.

[ STACK ]

The building blocks of a commerce experience.

Commerce platforms, payment, shipping and tax providers are chosen per project, so none are listed here. These are the building blocks we design and engineer commerce experiences with most often.

  • Headless commerce
  • Product catalogue model
  • Cart & checkout flows
  • Commerce APIs
  • Product structured data
  • Next.js
  • TypeScript

[ WHY ELIXIR ]

Commerce from a studio that also builds the web and software around it.

E-commerce Development is one of ten ELIXIR services. Next to it sit Web Development, Digital Products and Custom Software Development — separate services, each with its own scope — so a store can draw on them when it needs to, without blurring what each one does.

  • Structure first

    The catalogue and the flows are decided before the pages are designed on top of them.

  • Clear boundaries

    Commerce, web, products and custom software are each scoped as their own service.

  • One method

    The ELIXIR Method guides every commerce project, from the first look at the products to each improvement.

  • Multilingual by design

    Our own site runs in five languages, right-to-left included.

[ THE METHOD ]

The ELIXIR Method, applied to e-commerce development.

Every commerce project moves through the same five phases — the method behind all of our work.

Explore the ELIXIR Method
  1. 01

    DISCERN

    We look at the products, the people who buy them and how the business sells today.

  2. 02

    DEFINE

    We define the store: its catalogue model, its flows, the services it connects to and what the first release must do.

  3. 03

    DESIGN

    We design the commerce experience: the storefront, the product pages and each step from cart to order.

  4. 04

    DEVELOP

    We engineer a production-ready store and connect it to the services chosen for it.

  5. 05

    DISTILL

    We learn from how customers use the store, refine what doesn't serve and plan the next improvements.

[ WHERE WE WORK ]

US roots. Working internationally.

ELIXIR Creative is a digital innovation and technology studio operating internationally. Our work began with clients in the USA and Canada; today we are expanding into Morocco, the UAE, Germany and other international markets — and this site is itself built in five languages, right-to-left included.

  • casablancamorexpansion
  • new yorkusapresence
  • torontocanpresence

Languages

[ ENGAGEMENT ]

Scoped to the store, not to a package.

Every project starts with the audit: we look at what you sell, how you sell it and what you have today, and come back with a scoped plan. Most commerce work takes one of three shapes.

  • 01

    A new store

    A commerce experience designed and engineered from the catalogue up.

  • 02

    An existing store

    A storefront rebuilt, a catalogue restructured, or new flows and integrations added.

  • 03

    Ongoing improvement

    Continued design and engineering as the products and the business grow.

E-commerce development at ELIXIR

ELIXIR Creative is a digital innovation and technology studio. Our E-commerce Development service covers custom digital commerce experiences for businesses that sell products online, through four capabilities: commerce experience & storefront development, product catalogue & product experience, cart, checkout & commerce flows, and commerce integrations & iteration.

A store is more than its storefront: the catalogue decides what can be shown and compared, and the flows decide how someone gets from a choice to an order. Designing them together, before the pages, is what lets the store grow without being rebuilt.

Where E-commerce Development meets ELIXIR's other services

A marketing or content website with nothing to buy is Web Development; a broader internal system built around how a business runs is Custom Software Development; a standalone product without commerce belongs to Digital Products; and subscription software with accounts and plans is SaaS Development.

When a store needs an AI feature built in, that is AI Development — or AI Agent Development when it needs agents that take action across tools; fixed, repetitive operational workflows belong to Automation, business-wide change to Digital Transformation, and ongoing search visibility to SEO & GEO.

[ FAQ ]

What people ask before building a store.

01

What does E-commerce Development cover?

Custom digital commerce experiences for businesses that sell products online, from the storefront through the commerce system behind it. At ELIXIR it covers commerce experience & storefront development, product catalogue & product experience, cart, checkout & commerce flows, and commerce integrations & iteration.

02

Which e-commerce platform do you use?

It depends on the project. The commerce platform or back end is chosen from what the store needs — its catalogue, its flows and the services it connects to — so we don't lead with one platform.

03

Do you process payments?

No. Cart and checkout flows are part of what we design and build; payments are processed by a payment provider chosen per project, which the store connects to. The same goes for shipping and tax services where they apply.

04

What is headless commerce?

A setup in which a custom storefront is built separately from the commerce back end and connected to it through its APIs. It suits stores whose experience needs more than a template allows.

05

How is E-commerce Development different from Web Development?

Web Development covers websites and web applications that present a business and its content. E-commerce Development covers the experience people buy through — the catalogue, the cart, the checkout — and the commerce system behind it.

06

Do you build B2B commerce?

Yes. B2B commerce covers ordering experiences for business customers, with their own accounts and ways of buying, designed around how that business sells.

07

Can you work on an existing store?

Yes. The audit looks at what you have today; the work can be a rebuilt storefront, a restructured catalogue, or new flows and integrations.

08

Does e-commerce development include SEO?

A store is engineered with the technical foundations search depends on — structured product data, clean URLs, performance. Ongoing search visibility is its own service, SEO & GEO.

09

How much does a store cost, and how long does it take?

It depends on scope: the catalogue, the flows, the integrations and what the first release must do. We don't sell fixed packages — the audit comes first, and it leads to a scoped plan with cost and timeline.

[ RELATED SERVICES ]

Often paired with e-commerce development.

[ START A CONVERSATION ]

Have a store to build — or one that needs to do more?

Tell us what you sell and how you sell it. We'll map where to start.

Start the audithello@elixircreative.pro