SOLUTION · ECOMMERCE OPERATIONS LIVE

Ecommerce Operations

Stock, shipping and VAT handled. Running on a real store today.

This is the whole shop plus the operations layer over it: the same thing running on my own store today. Every claim on this page is drawn from that shop: VAT registered, importing from two continents, shipping to twenty countries, real money moving through it daily. Your products will be different. The shape of the problem rarely is.

HOW IT'S PUT TOGETHER

Three layers, in a shop.

The same structure behind everything I build. Each layer only works because the one below it is boring and dependable.

LAYER 3

HUMAN CONTROL

Your call.

You. Approving what goes out, deciding what to buy, keeping your own voice.

APPROVAL
WHAT TO BUY
YOUR VOICE

DRAFTS ON STANDBY ↑ YOUR GO ↓

LAYER 2

INTELLIGENT OPERATIONS

The watching.

Reads across every system, notices what changed, then prepares the work.

CHECKS
FLAGS
DRAFTS
RECONCILES

SIGNALS ↑ APPROVED ACTIONS ↓

LAYER 1

RELIABLE SYSTEMS

The plumbing.

Payments, post, stock, books. Each doing one job, the same way, every time.

PAYMENTS
POST
STOCK
BOOKS

LAYER ONE

Reliable Systems.

A shop runs on roughly twenty systems, not one. Most of the pain lives in the gaps between them. My job is keeping them agreeing with each other. Here's what that feels like when it works.

A customer pays and everything follows. Confirmation, label, customs form, despatch email, stock count.
The books agree with the bank. Every figure traces back to a document.
One product feed serves every shopping channel at once.
If the checkout breaks in the night, you hear it from me, not from a customer.

SEE THE PARTS, JOB BY JOB

Each part is named by the job it does. The named product next to it is what the live shop uses. Yours can be different. The job is the same.

SELLING

Commerce engine

Products, variants, stock levels, orders, regions, pricing. The system of record for what you sell.

REFERENCE BUILDMedusa v2

Storefront

What the customer sees. Product pages, cart, checkout.

REFERENCE BUILDNext.js

Content

Long descriptions, FAQs, editorial. Kept apart from the commerce data so writing doesn't need a deploy.

REFERENCE BUILDSanity

MONEY

Payments

Taking the money, handling 3DS, refunds and payouts.

REFERENCE BUILDStripe

Tax and duty

Working out what's owed where, so the customer is never surprised at their door.

REFERENCE BUILDCustom, per market

Purchase ledger

What stock cost to land, what's reclaimable, what the margin actually is.

REFERENCE BUILDGoogle Sheets

Accounting

Sales, fees and payouts posted into the books.

REFERENCE BUILDXero

GETTING IT THERE

Carrier

Rates, labels, customs declarations and tracking numbers.

REFERENCE BUILDRoyal Mail Click & Drop

Despatch paperwork

The note in the box, generated per order.

REFERENCE BUILDGenerated PDF

TALKING TO CUSTOMERS

Transactional email

Order confirmed, order preparing, order despatched. Sent at the right moment, not all at once.

REFERENCE BUILDResend

Broadcast email

The list, the newsletter, the drop announcement.

REFERENCE BUILDResend

BEING FOUND

Product feed

One feed, generated from live stock, feeding every shopping channel at once. Add a product properly in one place and they all pick it up.

REFERENCE BUILDGenerated XML

Shopping channels

Free product listings on the big marketplaces and pin boards.

REFERENCE BUILDGoogle Merchant, Pinterest, Meta

Search reporting

What you rank for, what moved, what got indexed.

REFERENCE BUILDSearch Console

Analytics

Where people came from and what they did.

REFERENCE BUILDGA4

Social scheduling

Posts queued as drafts across channels.

REFERENCE BUILDBuffer

Conversion tracking

Server-side event reporting that an ad blocker can't silently break.

REFERENCE BUILDMeta CAPI

KEEPING IT UP

Database

Managed, backed up, in the right jurisdiction.

REFERENCE BUILDPostgres

Queue

So a restart between an event and its email doesn't lose the email.

REFERENCE BUILDRedis

Images and files

Served from the edge, independent of any redeploy.

REFERENCE BUILDObject storage plus CDN

Error monitoring

You hear about a broken checkout from me, not from a customer.

REFERENCE BUILDSentry

LAYER TWO

Intelligent Operations.

This is the part you're actually buying. It sits across all those systems and holds the whole picture. Then it turns what it sees into work that's ready when you get to it.

WHAT IT KEEPS AN EYE ON

Stock cover against how fast a line is actually moving
Margin per unit after tax, postage, packaging and card fees
Orders that are paid but not yet despatched
Search rankings that moved, up or down
Feed rejections on any shopping channel
Anything that broke overnight

Three sequences that run every week.

Told the same way each time: what happened, what got prepared, where you come in, what followed.

An order arrives and goes out of the door

Three emails at three moments. A tracking number doesn't exist until the label is bought. Wire the despatch email to the wrong moment and every customer gets an empty one.

01 · SIGNAL

A customer pays. The order lands.

02 · DRAFT

Confirmation goes out. A carrier order is prepared with the right service, weight and customs data.

03 · YOUR GO

You fulfil, buy the label, put it in the post.

04 · DONE

Tracking is pulled back in, the despatch email sends itself, stock comes down.

The period gets closed

Importing means paying tax at the border and claiming it back later, against one certificate that arrives weeks after the goods. Lose the paper trail and that money can't be claimed back.

01 · SIGNAL

The month ends. Import certificates, carrier invoices and payout statements arrive.

02 · DRAFT

Reclaimable tax is split from unreclaimable, landed costs are recalculated per line, claim rows are filled in.

03 · YOUR GO

You read the reconciliation and approve it.

04 · DONE

The period is closed with every figure traceable to a document.

New stock goes on sale

One feed serves every shopping channel at once. Do the listing properly in one place and they all pick it up without anyone touching them.

01 · SIGNAL

New stock arrives.

02 · DRAFT

Images processed and hosted, listing built, description and FAQ written, social and newsletter queued as drafts.

03 · YOUR GO

You read the copy in your own voice and release what you like.

04 · DONE

Live on the shop, in every channel feed, indexed within a day.

LAYER THREE

Human Control.

"Human controlled" is only worth saying if you can point at the gate. Here are the three, running on the live shop today.

Email to customers

Written as a draft. It never sends itself.

Social posts

Queued as a draft. It never publishes itself.

Shop content

Held back until you release it.

NEVER AUTOMATED, AT ALL

Talking to customers as youSetting pricesSupplier relationshipsCuratorial tasteBrand voiceMoney and legalThe decision to buy

This list is fixed. It isn't a setting, it isn't a phase one, it doesn't shorten as trust grows. Work that carries your judgement stays yours.

See it running on a real shop.

The audit is free. I map how your business runs today and the map is yours to keep. If you go ahead, what you get is your own version of this: the whole shop plus the operations layer over it, built and handed over as one project.

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