Ecommerce development for Australian stores

Platform choice for an Australian store

The right platform depends on your range, your team and how you sell. A store with a few hundred products and a small team is usually well served by Shopify. A content-heavy business that already runs WordPress may prefer WooCommerce. A store with unusual pricing, B2B accounts or deep integrations may need a custom front end on a commerce API.

Our ecommerce solutions service explains the build options, and the ecommerce website cost guide shows typical effort.

How Australians pay

Cards and wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay cover most orders, and eftpos is the domestic card network behind many debit cards. Pay-later services such as Afterpay and Zip are widely recognised, and some customers expect to see them on a product page. Bank transfer through PayID is also familiar. Which of these you offer depends on your payment provider and account approval, so we implement only what you have been approved for, and show the pay-later message in a way that does not obscure the real price.

Surcharges deserve care. If you add a card surcharge, the ACCC expects it to reflect the cost of acceptance and to be shown clearly before the final step. We build the checkout so the full amount appears before payment is taken.

Shipping and returns

Australia is large, and delivery cost varies a lot between a Sydney suburb and a remote community. We build shipping rules by postcode group, weight or cart value, and display an estimate on the product page, not only at checkout. Click-and-collect, local delivery and parcel lockers can be added where you use them. For returns, we set up a return request flow and a policy page that distinguishes change-of-mind returns, which you may set by policy, from faulty goods, where the Australian Consumer Law gives customers rights regardless of your policy.

Tax, invoices and accounting

• Prices include GST for consumers, and the cart shows the GST portion.
• Tax invoices show your ABN and GST amounts where the ATO requires them.
• Orders sync to Xero or MYOB through a maintained connector, with a clear mapping of sales, shipping and fees.
• Sales to customers overseas are handled as export sales with separate tax rules, which your accountant should confirm.

Keep a record of every setting we change in a one-page handover sheet, so your accountant can review how GST and shipping tax are treated without opening the admin.

Timeline and remote delivery

1. DiscoveryCatalog, shipping, payments and integrations mapped on one call and one shared sheet.
2. Design and buildTheme or custom front end, product import, checkout and tax configuration.
3. Test ordersTest purchases with real cards and shipping addresses across states, including a remote postcode.
4. LaunchRedirects, analytics, Search Console, and monitoring over the first weeks.

We avoid launching in the weeks before Click Frenzy, Black Friday or Boxing Day and prefer a quieter period such as early in a new financial year in July. Calls fit your hours, with the time written in both zones.

Product data and search readiness

A store is only as good as its catalog. Before launch we clean the product data: consistent titles, size and colour options, weights for shipping, GTIN or barcode fields where you have them, and image sizes that load quickly on phones. Australian shoppers compare on Google Shopping and marketplaces, so a tidy feed with accurate prices, GST included, stock status and delivery estimates is worth as much as the theme.

We also build the structure for search from day one: category pages that match how people look for products, readable URLs, product schema and a sitemap. If SEO is a priority, our ecommerce SEO service picks up where the build ends.

Pricing

Projects start at $1,500 and our rate is $30 an hour. Catalog size, custom features, subscriptions, wholesale pricing and migration move the price. Our Shopify-specific route is covered on the Shopify development page for Australia.