Ecommerce development Dublin: what a Loco store includes
Most ecommerce websites in Dublin are a theme with a logo on it. They look fine on launch day; then the business needs a second currency, a trade price list or an accounts integration, and each becomes a plugin, then a workaround, then a rebuild.
We do e-commerce development the other way round: start with how you actually sell, pick the platform that fits, and engineer the parts nothing off the shelf gives you. Every store we build includes:
- A platform chosen for your catalogue, margins and team: Shopify, WooCommerce or headless.
- Payments through Stripe or the provider that suits you.
- EU VAT handled properly, including the One Stop Shop if you sell across the EU.
- Integrations with Xero, Sage, your ERP, couriers and CRM.
- Performance measured against Core Web Vitals.
- Accessibility built in, so the store works for everyone.
- Ownership: the store, the data, the domain and the accounts are yours from day one.
- A migration plan built to protect the traffic and revenue you already have, mapped URL by URL.
You work directly with the people who design and build it. Loco is a digital product studio in Dublin 8; see the wider Websites & Ecommerce service. We build stores for retailers and wholesalers in Cork, Galway, Limerick and across Ireland.
Shopify, WooCommerce or headless: which fits your store?
There is no right platform, only the right one for how you sell.
Shopify
Shopify fits a store selling physical products to consumers that wants a checkout that just works and would rather pay monthly than manage hosting. We will tell you plainly when a theme with light customisation is all you need. Where Shopify strains is complex B2B pricing, unusual checkout flows and deep integration with in-house systems.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce runs on WordPress, so it is the natural fit when the store is part of a content-led site, when you need full control of the checkout, or when a booking, registration or membership flow sits alongside products. A badly built WooCommerce store is slow; a well built one is not: ERP HEADtoHEAD below is a WooCommerce build where the checkout is custom and the cart is never shown to the user.
Headless
Headless separates the storefront from the commerce engine: Shopify handles products, orders and payments through its API, and the storefront is a fast custom front end. It fits stores where speed and brand experience are the competitive edge, or where one catalogue feeds a website and an app. It costs more to build and maintain, so we only recommend it when that is worth paying for.
The rule we apply: use the most established tool that fits, and write custom code only where nothing off the shelf does. That is the difference between renting a store and owning one. We compare the three in detail in Shopify, WooCommerce or custom.
Payments: Stripe, and what sits around it
Stripe is our default for card and wallet payments: dependable, well documented, easy to reconcile. What goes wrong sits around the provider: multiple entities or currencies routing to the right merchant account, invoices carrying the correct identity and VAT treatment, refunds landing correctly in your accounts, and deposits or trade accounts where a card at checkout is not how the customer pays. We design the order flow first, then wire in the provider.
How do EU VAT and the One Stop Shop affect an Irish online store?
If you only sell in Ireland, the platform handles VAT. If you sell to consumers elsewhere in the EU, the rules change once your total cross-border sales pass EUR 10,000 a year: above that you charge the VAT rate of the customer’s country, and the One Stop Shop lets you declare and pay it through a single quarterly return in Ireland instead of registering in every member state (see Revenue’s VAT eCommerce guidance and europa.eu on cross-border VAT).
For the build, the store must apply the right rate per destination, show it on invoices and report it by country. Shopify and WooCommerce support this when configured properly; headless builds need it engineered in. We set it up alongside your accountant.
Integrations: Xero, Sage and your ERP
A store that does not talk to your accounts package creates a second job for someone every week. The integrations we build most often:
- Xero and Sage: orders, refunds and payouts posted as invoices and payments, reconciled against Stripe payouts.
- ERP and stock: live stock on the storefront, orders pushed to the warehouse.
- CRM and email: customers, orders and consent flowing to the tools your marketing team already uses.
- Couriers: labels, tracking and delivery updates without re-keying addresses.
We confirm every integration is possible through a documented API before it is quoted. Where systems are unusual, a small piece of custom software often replaces hours of weekly admin.
Performance and Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are Google’s page-experience measurements: how fast the main content loads (LCP), how quickly the page responds to an interaction (INP) and whether the layout shifts while loading (CLS). Google uses them as a ranking signal where it has real-user data for your pages (Google Search Central). On a phone, a slow product page costs you the sale before it costs you the ranking. We build for the measured numbers: correctly sized images, no bloated theme bundles, fonts that do not block rendering, hosting matched to the platform, and a check on real mobile devices before launch. More on the method in high-performance website.
Accessibility is part of the build, not a bolt-on
Customers using a screen reader, a keyboard or a magnifier must be able to browse, add to basket and pay. It is also the law for most sellers: the European Accessibility Act has applied to ecommerce services in Ireland since 28 June 2025, with WCAG 2.1 AA as the working standard (CCPC guidance). Microenterprises, under ten staff and under EUR 2m turnover, are exempt on services; we build to the standard either way, because the customers it locks out are customers. We verify contrast, keyboard paths, form labelling and error handling, and document it so you can answer an audit with evidence. The detail is in EU website accessibility requirements.
You own the store, the data and the domain
Too often the store sits under the developer’s Shopify partner account and the domain is in the developer’s name, so when the relationship ends the business finds it does not own its own shop. With Loco, from day one:
- The platform account is yours; we work in it as staff you can remove.
- The domain is registered to your business, at a registrar you control.
- The payment and tax accounts are in your name.
- Custom code is delivered with source and documentation, under your ownership.
- Customer and order data live in systems you control.
The same commitment runs through everything we build; see about us.
How do you migrate an existing store without losing rankings?
Replatforming is where good stores lose years of search traffic in a week, so we scope it as carefully as the new store. Three things matter beyond the usual redesign work:
- Product and category URLs mapped one by one, with a 301 on everything that moves.
- Customers and order history carried across, so returning buyers do not start again.
- Reviews and product structured data preserved, so rich results do not disappear with them.
Then we launch, resubmit the sitemap and watch Search Console daily for the first fortnight. That is the process we run. Rankings themselves are an outcome nobody can honestly promise. The full checklist is on website redesign Dublin.
Proof: a custom booking engine on Stripe and WooCommerce
The clearest example of our e-commerce development is ERP HEADtoHEAD, the event site we rebuilt for Lumenia Consulting. It runs in Dublin and Birmingham under two legal entities, two currencies and two VAT regimes, which no off-the-shelf ticketing tool handled cleanly, so we engineered the booking engine as a dedicated WordPress plugin:
- A four-step booking flow in plain JavaScript, with no shop cart exposed to the delegate.
- Per-entity Stripe Checkout: euro to the Irish account, sterling to the UK account.
- Every booking creates a full WooCommerce order, so refunds and reporting live in a familiar admin.
- Invoices that switch company identity and VAT treatment per entity, with separate gapless numbering.
- A unique QR code per delegate for check-in at the door.
One site now runs two international events with no ticketing fees and no lock-in, and the client manages pricing, content and orders themselves.
The rest of our work, and the systems behind each build, is in the work archive.
What does ecommerce development cost in Dublin?
Cost follows complexity rather than page count: a Shopify store with a well chosen theme and standard integrations at one end, a custom checkout, multi-entity payments or a headless storefront at the other. At Loco, ecommerce projects start from €10,000, and every one begins with a short consult that ends in a scoped, costed plan, so you know the price and the timeline before anything is built. What moves the number most: catalogue size, integrations, a standard or custom checkout, and B2B features such as trade pricing.
The Local Enterprise Office’s Grow Digital Voucher does not fund bespoke website or store development, but it can co-fund new off-the-shelf software subscriptions, configuration and training. We explain the rules plainly on our Grow Digital Voucher page.
