Slow pages on mobile
Heavy themes, stacked apps and oversized images push Core Web Vitals into the red on the phones your shoppers actually use — and send them back to the search results.
Retail & eCommerce
AI & Software Development for UK Retail & eCommerce
We help retailers, direct-to-consumer brands and B2B sellers build fast storefronts, keep stock and orders in step across every channel, and use AI for search, product content and customer service — without replatforming for the sake of it.
- Grocery, pharmacy and B2B stores delivered
- Core Web Vitals checked before every release
- Load-tested before peak trading, not during it
Industry challenges
Where online retail quietly loses margin.
Traffic is expensive, so every slow page, oversold item and messy return costs twice: once in lost sales, and again in staff time.
Where to start
- Faster product and category pages on mobile
- One stock figure shared by every channel
- Self-service returns with courier labels and quicker refunds
- Trade accounts with their own prices and terms
Stock that does not match
Your web shop, marketplaces and tills each keep their own count, so items oversell on one channel while sitting unsold in the stockroom.
Peak trading nerves
Black Friday and the run-up to Christmas test checkout, stock sync, courier labels and the support inbox all at once — the worst possible time to find a weak spot.
Returns handled by hand
Shoppers can cancel most online orders within 14 days of delivery. Manual returns, vague reasons and slow refunds turn that legal right into lost margin and a busy inbox.
Plugin and app sprawl
An app for every problem means slower pages, growing monthly fees and platform upgrades nobody dares to run before peak.
Trade buyers stuck in email
B2B customers still order by email and spreadsheet because the shop cannot show their prices, VAT treatment, quantity breaks or account terms.
Solutions
What we build for retail and eCommerce.
Storefronts, integrations and the operational tools behind them — on Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento or a custom stack, depending on your catalogue, channels and team.
Headless storefronts
Next.js front ends on top of Shopify, WooCommerce or Magento, so pages load quickly while your team keeps the admin it already knows.
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Stock and order sync
Stock, orders and prices kept in step across your shop, marketplaces, tills and warehouse or ERP, with conflicts flagged rather than silently overwritten.
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Delivery and returns
Royal Mail, DPD and Evri labels and tracking, click-and-collect, delivery slots and self-service returns that feed straight back into stock and refunds.
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B2B and trade ordering
Customer-specific price lists, prices shown with or without VAT, quantity breaks, credit terms and quick reorder, so trade buyers stop ordering by email.
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Replatforming and upgrades
Moves between platforms or major versions with products, customers and order history migrated, and every old URL redirected to protect search traffic.
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Shopping and loyalty apps
iOS and Android apps for repeat customers — reordering, loyalty points, delivery slots and offers — sharing the same stock and customer data as your shop.
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AI use cases
Where AI helps shoppers and staff.
Useful retail AI is mostly about finding, describing and answering — with a person checking anything customers will read.
Search that understands intent
Semantic search that copes with typos, synonyms and queries like “a warm coat for dog walks”, with your own merchandising rules on top.
Recommendations
Related products, bundles and “complete the look” suggestions from browsing and order history, with rules that keep out-of-stock lines away from the top spots.
Product content drafts
Draft titles, descriptions and attributes from supplier data and photos in your tone of voice. A person checks every page before it goes live.
Order and returns assistant
Answer “where is my order?”, delivery and returns questions from live order and courier data, and hand refunds, complaints and anything unusual to your team.
Demand forecasting
Forecast demand by product and channel from sales history, promotions and seasonality, so buyers plan stock for peak with better information.
Review and return-reason themes
Group genuine reviews and return reasons into themes — sizing, quality, delivery — so teams can see what to fix. AI summarises reviews; it never writes them.
Technology & integration
Platforms and integrations we work with.
We work with the platform you have while it still fits, and recommend a move only when it clearly pays back. Integrations go through published APIs and feeds.
Commerce platforms
Shopify (headless)WooCommerceMagentoCustom builds on Node.js or Laravel
Storefront
Next.js and ReactImage optimisation and CDNCore Web Vitals monitoringStructured data for search
Delivery and fulfilment
Royal Mail, DPD and EvriClick-and-collectWarehouse and 3PL feedsReturns portals
Payments
StripeDigital wallet paymentsBuy now, pay later optionsSubscriptions and pre-orders
Stock, orders and finance
ERP and stock systemsMarketplace feedsXero, Sage and QuickBooksPostgreSQL and MySQL
AI and search
Semantic and vector searchLLM product contentRecommendation modelsDemand forecasting
Security & data
How we protect shoppers and checkout.
The practices we build into every store: payments, personal data, marketing consent and staying up when traffic peaks.
Checkout without card data
Your payment provider’s hosted fields handle card details and 3-D Secure, so your store never stores or sees a card number.
Consent that holds up
Cookie banners that genuinely wait for consent before any tracking that needs it, and email and SMS opt-ins recorded properly under PECR and UK GDPR.
Account and bot protection
Rate limiting, bot protection, multi-factor login for admin users and alerts on unusual activity, against credential stuffing and card-testing attacks.
Ready for peak
Checkout, search and stock sync load-tested ahead of Black Friday and Christmas, with scaling, caching and fallbacks planned for the busiest hours.
Customer data minimised
Collect only what orders need, set retention periods, and make subject access and deletion requests straightforward for your team to handle.
Backups and safe releases
Automated backups, a staging copy of the store, and code freezes and rollback plans around your busiest trading weeks.
We are a software development company, not a legal adviser or PCI assessor. We build to the requirements set by your team, payment provider and advisers — PCI DSS scope, PECR and UK GDPR consent, consumer rules on cancellations and pricing — and document what we built. Compliance sign-off stays with your business.
Relevant work
Products we have designed and built.
Commerce projects from our case studies — grocery delivery, B2B export ordering and an online pharmacy.
All case studiesRetail · eCommerce
Grocery Store
Grocery eCommerce with delivery slots, loyalty and a multi-supplier vendor portal.
Next.jsNode.jsMySQLStripe
Read the case studyManufacturing · B2B
Teflon Bone
B2B catalogue, bulk ordering and export platform for a manufacturer.
Next.jsNode.jsStripePostgreSQL
Read the case studyHealthcare · eCommerce
Cyber Medic
Online pharmacy and lab-test booking app with prescriptions and delivery.
React NativeNode.jsStripeFirebase
Read the case studyHow we work
How we plan around your trading calendar.
Seven stages, the same on every project. The length of each one changes with the work; skipping one never saves time for long.
- 01
Discovery
We start with your analytics, trading calendar and current stack: where shoppers drop out, which integrations are fragile, and which weeks we must not touch.
Priorities and a release calendar that avoids peak
- 02
Strategy
We agree what to build first and what to leave out, pick the engagement model, and set milestones with a budget range in pounds.
Scoped first release and estimate
- 03
UX & architecture
Mobile-first product, basket and checkout journeys tested with real shoppers, alongside a map of the data flowing between shop, stock, couriers and finance.
Tested journeys and an integration map
- 04
Development
Two-week sprints with a demo at the end of each, code review on every change, and a staging environment your team can use.
Working software every sprint
- 05
Testing
Core Web Vitals, accessibility, payment and stock-sync testing, then load tests against the traffic you expect in your busiest hour.
Performance and load-test results
- 06
Launch
Go-live scheduled away from peak, with a redirect map for any changed URLs, search monitoring after launch and a rollback plan ready.
A live store and a redirect map
- 07
Optimisation & support
After launch we fix, measure and improve — a support retainer, a roadmap of next features, or a clean handover to your own team.
Support plan or handover
FAQs
Questions we get asked.
Straight answers on scope, cost, timelines and how we work. If yours is not here, ask us directly.
Should we move off Shopify, WooCommerce or Magento?
Not necessarily. Often the better answer is a faster front end, fewer plugins or a cleaner integration rather than a new platform. We compare the options during discovery — including running costs over several years — and recommend replatforming only when it clearly pays back.
What is headless commerce, and do we need it?
Headless means a custom front end, which we build in Next.js, running on your commerce platform’s admin, checkout and APIs. It suits brands that need speed, content-rich pages or several storefronts. For a simple catalogue, a well-built theme is often enough, and we will tell you which applies.
Can you keep stock in sync across our shop, marketplaces and stores?
Yes. We connect your shop, marketplaces, tills and ERP or warehouse system through their APIs and feeds, agree one source of truth for each figure, and flag conflicts instead of overwriting them. How often each channel updates depends on its API limits, which we confirm in discovery.
Will a rebuild or migration hurt our search rankings?
It can if URLs change without a plan. We map every old URL to its new home, carry over metadata and structured data, keep pages fast, and monitor Search Console after launch so any problems are caught early rather than months later.
How do you get a store ready for Black Friday and Christmas?
We agree a code freeze date, load-test checkout, search and stock sync against the traffic you expect, check that courier and payment integrations fail gracefully, and agree support cover for your busiest days well in advance.
Can you integrate Royal Mail, DPD or Evri?
Yes, directly through their APIs or through a shipping platform you already use. We generate labels, send tracking updates to customers, support click-and-collect, and connect returns back into stock and refunds so nothing is re-keyed.
Can AI write our product descriptions?
It can draft them from supplier data, attributes and photos, in your tone of voice, which helps with large catalogues. We add a review step before anything goes live, because AI can get sizes, materials and product claims wrong — and the listing is still your responsibility.
How much does eCommerce development cost?
It depends on the platform, integrations and catalogue. A discovery sprint starts from £2,000; after that, a storefront, integration or trade portal is quoted as a fixed price with milestone billing. Platform fees, apps and payment charges are separate running costs we estimate up front.
Start a project
Planning a store build, migration or integration?
Tell us your platform, sales channels and trading calendar. We will come back with the questions that matter and a first step that stays clear of your peak.
What happens next
- 1A senior engineer reads your brief within one working day, and replies with questions or a first view.
- 2A 30-minute call to understand the goal, constraints and what good looks like — no sales script.
- 3A written proposal with scope, milestones, team and a GBP estimate you can take to your board.
Techsleight Labs is a trading name of Krapton IT Consultancy.
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