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Ahmedabad has long been a trading city. Its textile and garment businesses, food brands, pharmaceutical distributors and manufacturers sell across India and abroad, much of it through dealers and wholesalers. More of them now want to sell directly as well, or to let trade buyers order without a phone call.
That is a different job from building a brochure website. An online store has to take money, keep stock right, and get parcels to the door, every day. This guide covers what to decide before you ask anyone for a quote, so the quotes you get are comparable. If you are choosing between developers more generally, our guide to choosing a website developer in Ahmedabad covers that.
Decision 1: who is buying?
Write this down first, because it changes almost everything else.
- Retail customers (B2C) expect a fast phone checkout, UPI and card payments, clear delivery dates and easy returns.
- Trade buyers (B2B) expect their own prices, minimum order quantities, GST invoices with their GSTIN, credit terms and a way to reorder what they bought last time.
- Both is common for Ahmedabad brands that sell through dealers and also directly. It can work in one store, but the trade side usually needs more than a discount code.
A garment brand selling ready sizes to consumers and a chemicals distributor taking repeat orders from factories are both "e-commerce", but they need very different systems.
Decision 2: which platform?
| Option | Fits | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Hosted (for example Shopify) | Most retail brands, small teams, quick launch | Monthly fee, app costs adding up, transaction fees on some setups |
| Self-hosted (for example WooCommerce) | Businesses on WordPress, those wanting control over hosting | Updates, security and backups are your job |
| Custom build | Trade pricing per customer, unusual catalogues, deep integration | Higher build cost, and you need someone to maintain it |
We set out real running costs in Shopify vs WooCommerce for Indian businesses. Our default advice is to start hosted, because it is usually the cheaper route, and move only when a specific limitation costs you money.
Decision 3: how does stock stay right?
This is the part most often missing from a quote, and the one that hurts most when it goes wrong.
Most established Ahmedabad businesses already run billing or ERP software. If the store keeps its own stock count, the two drift apart within days. The store sells something the godown no longer has, or hides something it does.
There are three ways to handle it:
- Manual updates once a day from a spreadsheet export. Fine for a small catalogue that changes slowly.
- Scheduled sync, where stock levels are pulled from your system into the store every hour or so, and orders are pushed back.
- Live integration through your ERP's API, for high volume or fast-moving stock.
Whichever you choose, ask how a failed sync is noticed. A sync that fails silently is worse than none. This is the kind of API integration work we do, and it is often worth more than a redesign.
Decision 4: payments, delivery and policies
Payments
Indian buyers expect UPI, and most also want cards, net banking and wallets. Payment gateways such as Razorpay handle all of these and charge a fee on each payment. Shopify's own payments product is not available in India, so Shopify stores here use a third-party gateway; check the supported countries list for the current position. Decide whether to offer cash on delivery, and on which products, because refused deliveries cost shipping both ways.
Delivery
Courier aggregators let you book several courier companies from one dashboard, and compare rates by pin code. For trade orders in bulk, your existing transporter may be cheaper than any courier. Test real parcels to a few cities before launch.
Policies and seller details
The Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020 expect an online seller to show clear information to buyers, including the seller's name and address, customer care contact, return, refund, exchange and warranty terms, delivery details, the total price with all charges, and a grievance officer for complaints. Have these pages written properly and checked by someone qualified. The rules have been amended since 2020, so check the current text.
If your store collects names, phone numbers and addresses, India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 is also relevant. Ask your developer what the store collects and where it goes, and take legal advice on what applies.
What to prepare before you ask for quotes
Developers can only price what they can see. These make quotes faster, closer and easier to compare:
- A product spreadsheet with names, SKUs, prices, GST rates, HSN codes, weights, sizes and variants.
- Real photographs, or a plan and budget for a product shoot.
- Your policies, even in draft: delivery areas and times, returns, cash on delivery.
- The name of your billing or ERP software, and whether it can export or has an API.
- A list of what is not needed at launch, which keeps the first version affordable.
Our free project brief builder turns this into a short document, and the website launch checklist covers what to test before you open. For invoices on early orders, the free GST invoice generator is there until your store produces its own.
Being found once you are live
A store with no visitors sells nothing. Marketplaces, social media and ads all bring traffic, but search is the channel you keep building on. Each category and product page needs its own useful title, description and real details, not text copied from the manufacturer. For trade buyers, a clear page on who you supply and how to open an account often ranks for exactly the searches that matter. Our SEO and digital growth service works on that basis, without promising positions we do not control.
Where Criza Labs fits
We are two founders who build every project ourselves, for companies in Ahmedabad and elsewhere, at a fixed price agreed in writing. We are a good fit for a store on a hosted platform set up properly, a custom B2B ordering portal, or the integration between your store and the systems you already run. For a large retail operation that needs a team on call for years, an agency may suit you better, and we will say so.
See our e-commerce development service, or tell us what you sell and we will suggest the simplest setup that works.
Sources
All pages were accessed on 11 November 2026.
- Shopify pricing in India, Shopify
- Shopify Payments supported countries, Shopify Help Center
- Razorpay pricing, Razorpay
- WooCommerce pricing, WooCommerce
- The Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020, Department of Consumer Affairs, Government of India
- The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, Government of India
Frequently asked questions
How much does an e-commerce website cost in Ahmedabad?
The city does not set the price; the scope does. A store on a hosted platform with a standard theme and a modest catalogue costs far less than a custom B2B portal connected to your ERP. Compare quotes on what they include: product upload, payment and courier setup, stock sync, policies and support after launch.
Should we use Shopify, WooCommerce or a custom store?
Shopify suits most retail brands that want low maintenance. WooCommerce suits a business that already runs WordPress and wants control over hosting. A custom build makes sense for trade pricing by customer, complex catalogues or tight integration with existing systems. Ask each developer to justify their recommendation for your case.
Can our online store connect to the billing or ERP software we already use?
Usually, if that software can import and export data or has an API. The common jobs are sending orders into the ERP and bringing stock levels back to the store. Ask how failures are logged, because a silent failure means overselling.
How long does it take to build an online store?
A hosted store with a ready theme can launch in a few weeks once products, photos and policies are ready. Integrations and custom trade features add more time. Product data is the most common delay, so start preparing it first.
Do we need a separate store for trade buyers?
Not always. Some platforms can show different prices to logged-in trade customers within one store. If dealers need credit limits, minimum order quantities and order history tied to your accounts, a separate B2B portal is often cleaner.
