Building a support assistant that quotes your real policies
A support assistant is only safe when it answers from your actual policy text and refuses everything else. The refusal is the feature, not the limitation.
By Samir Kaila6 min read
Practical guides to building and running an online store
We write about the decisions that actually cost money on an ecommerce project: which platform to choose, what a migration breaks, why stores load slowly, and which parts of a store are worth automating. Every post is written by someone who does this work and carries a published review date.
Latest posts
Category and search pages: the funnel nobody audits
Between the homepage and the product page sits the part of a store most audits skip — how customers narrow a catalogue down to the thing they will buy.
By Kay Patel6 min read
Ecommerce Core Web Vitals: what actually moves the numbers
Three metrics, and on a store each has a usual culprit: the hero image for LCP, third-party scripts for INP, and everything that loads late for CLS.
By Kay Patel7 min read
- Shopify
Shopify theme or custom build: how to decide
A premade theme, a customised theme and a custom build solve different problems. The deciding factor is how much of your storefront is genuinely unusual.By Kay Patel7 min read - WooCommerce
Choosing WooCommerce hosting that actually works
WooCommerce hosting is judged on four things most plans never mention: PHP workers, object caching, database performance and who applies the patches.By Samir Kaila6 min read - Running a Store
Agency, freelancer or in-house: how to staff ecommerce work
A comparison of the three ways to resource ecommerce development, including the situations where hiring us would be the wrong decision.By Samir Kaila6 min read - Platform Selection
How to migrate ecommerce platforms without losing search traffic
The redirect map is where migrations succeed or fail. Here is how to build one, plus the two things that break on every platform migration regardless of direction.By Kay Patel6 min read - AI & Automation
AI product descriptions that don't damage accuracy
How to generate product copy from real specification data without publishing plausible fiction about physical items you then have to ship.By Samir Kaila6 min read - UX & Conversion
Reducing cart abandonment: the changes that actually work
The specific changes that reduce cart abandonment, ranked by how reliably they work, and the one cause that dwarfs every other in study after study.By Kay Patel6 min read - WooCommerce
Custom WooCommerce plugins vs stacking third-party ones
When to write your own WooCommerce plugin and when to install one, plus the test we apply before adding any third-party code to a client's store.By Samir Kaila6 min read - WooCommerce
Why your WooCommerce store is slow, and how to fix it
A diagnostic order for slow WooCommerce stores, starting with the configuration change that usually does more than any amount of frontend work.By Kay Patel6 min read - Shopify
The Shopify apps quietly slowing your store down
Most slow Shopify stores are slow because of apps, not code. Here is how to audit what each one costs you, and what to do before optimising a single line of Liquid.By Samir Kaila6 min read
How the writing is organised
Six pillar guides carry the main subjects, and each one is supported by shorter posts answering the questions that come out of it. Start at a pillar if you are deciding something; start at a cluster post if you already know the decision and need the detail.
Running a Store
What it actually costs to run an online store
Pillar guide · 2 supporting posts
AI & Automation
What to automate in an ecommerce business first
Pillar guide · 2 supporting posts
UX & Conversion
The ecommerce product page checklist
Pillar guide · 2 supporting posts
WooCommerce
Running WooCommerce properly: hosting, caching and security
Pillar guide · 3 supporting posts
Shopify
The complete guide to building a custom Shopify store
Pillar guide · 3 supporting posts
Platform Selection
Shopify vs WooCommerce: which should you actually choose?
Pillar guide · 2 supporting posts
New posts are published most weeks, and older ones are revised rather than left to age quietly.
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