Websites for
Retail Shops & Boutiques
A site that gets a shopper through the door — and, when it makes sense, lets them buy at midnight.
The job
Get the shopper downtown — or let them buy when you're closed.
How it runs
- Usual package
- Starter build
- Timeline
- Live in two to three weeks
- Your time
- About ninety minutes, total
Fixed price quoted before anything starts. You own the site and the domain outright.
What a shop website actually has to do.
There are two kinds of retail websites and most shops are sold the wrong one. The first is a storefront site: hours, location, parking, what you carry, why it's worth the trip, and a Google Business Profile that lists your products so "where to buy Vera Bradley near me" surfaces you. For a downtown shop in Bay City, Frankenmuth or Midland that is the whole job, and it's a five-page build. The second is an online store, and the honest advice is that most independent retailers should not build one until they have the time to run it — because an e-commerce site with stale inventory and a three-day dispatch time does more harm than no store at all.
When a store does make sense — a product line people order repeatedly, gift items with out-of-town demand, a Frankenmuth shop whose customers want the thing they saw in July — we build it on Shopify or Square so it talks to your point-of-sale and the inventory is right without a second system to update. Gift cards online are the exception to the caution: every shop should sell them, and December will pay for the page.
In both cases, the searches to win are local and specific. Brand names, product categories, "downtown Midland shops", "gift shop Frankenmuth", "boutique open Sunday Bay City". A site that names what you carry, keeps hours correct everywhere, and gives the district as much weight as the store picks those up. A site that says "unique gifts for every occasion" picks up nothing.
The local angle
Downtown is the product
In Bay City it's Washington Avenue and the Midland Street west side; in Frankenmuth it's Main Street and River Place; in Midland it's downtown and Ashman Circle. Shoppers search for the district as often as the shop, and a site that puts itself inside the district — the street, the neighbours, the parking, the events — picks up traffic a store-only site never sees. Frankenmuth adds the destination search: people planning the trip from another county a week out.
Searches we build for
- boutique bay city mi
- gift shop frankenmuth
- downtown midland shops
- where to buy near me
- shops open sunday saginaw
Six things every shop site should have.
Hours, parking and what's in the window
The three things a shopper checks before making the trip, on the first screen, correct on Google too.
A "what we carry" page that names brands and categories
Brand-name searches are the easiest retail traffic there is, and a page that lists them wins searches a generic description never will.
Google Business Profile products and posts
Products listed on the profile, photos current, a post for each event. It's free, it shows in the map results, and almost nobody does it.
Events and seasonal pages
Sidewalk sales, holiday hours, the festival weekend, the Christmas open house. A page per event that you can reuse every year.
Gift cards online
The one piece of e-commerce every shop should have, through Square or Shopify, with no inventory to manage.
E-commerce only when it earns its keep
Built on Shopify or Square, synced to your point-of-sale, for the products worth shipping. Not a catalogue of everything.
What most
shop sites get wrong.
None of these are exotic. They're the same four or five problems on almost every site in the trade, which is why fixing them works so reliably.
Building a full online store you don't have time to run
Stale stock, slow dispatch and unanswered orders damage the shop's reputation. Start with gift cards and a curated set, and grow it if it sells.
Never naming the brands you carry
Shoppers search brand names. A shop that lists them ranks for them; one that says "curated selection" does not.
Letting Facebook be the only place your hours live
Facebook doesn't show up for "boutique Bay City". The hours need to be on your site and your Google profile, and they need to agree.
A site slower than the marketplace you're competing with
Amazon loads in a second. A shop site that takes six on a phone loses the shopper before they see what you carry.
Most shop builds
fit the Starter package.
A five-page storefront site covers most independent shops completely, with gift cards added through Square or Shopify. A real online store with a product catalogue is a Premium build, and it should only happen when there's someone to run it.
Every package is a fixed, one-time price quoted before anything starts. Hosting and the domain run roughly $20 to $30 a month, billed to you directly. Compare all three packages.
Starter
Usual fitPerfect for new businesses just getting started online
- Professional 5-page website
- Mobile responsive design
- Contact form setup
- Google Business optimization
- Basic SEO setup
- 30 days of support
Shop sites across Mid-Michigan.
Search behaves differently in every one of these towns, and a shop site in Saginaw has a different job from one in Frankenmuth. Each town has its own page on how we'd approach it.
Do we need an online store?
Usually not at first. A storefront site that gets people through the door, plus gift cards online, covers most independent shops. An online store makes sense when you have products people reorder or want shipped, and someone with time to keep stock and dispatch right. We'll tell you honestly which you are — it costs you nothing to ask.
Which e-commerce platform do you use?
Shopify or Square, depending on your point-of-sale, so that inventory stays in one system. We don't build custom carts for small retailers — the platforms handle payments, tax and shipping better than anything bespoke, and you own the store and can take it elsewhere.
Can we keep the site up to date ourselves?
Yes. Hours, events, new arrivals and the brands page are all editable without touching code, from a phone if you like. On a maintenance plan you can also text us the change and we'll have it live the same day.
How do we show up for "shops near me"?
Mostly through the Google Business Profile — right category, products listed, photos current, posts for events, reviews flowing — backed by a site that names what you carry and where you are. Downtown shops also benefit from being findable by district, so the site talks about the street and the neighbours, not just the store.
Get your shop
phone ringing.
Twenty minutes on the phone and you'll know exactly what we'd build for your business, what it costs, and whether it's worth it. If it isn't, we'll say so.
What happens next
- 01You tell us about the business
- 02We show you what we'd build
- 03You decide, with a fixed price in hand
Joining 50+ Mid-Michigan businesses already online with us.