Most Shopify designers in Charlotte build the store, send the invoice, and never log in again. I run several Shopify stores every day — a $2M-a-year manufacturer's store as my day job (1,000+ SKUs, wholesale and retail on one store, custom tools I wrote myself), plus the Fort Mill retail store I co-own. Your store gets that playbook, one build at a time.
If you're searching for a Shopify web designer in Charlotte, you've probably noticed two things: everyone says "ecommerce expert," and nobody says what it costs. Here's what I actually do, and the number.
Charlotte-area businesses that sell products — boutiques, specialty retail, manufacturers who want a direct-to-consumer channel, wholesalers who are tired of taking orders by email. Two kinds of people call me: the ones starting a store from nothing, and the ones with a store on Wix, Squarespace, WooCommerce, or an ancient Shopify theme that's quietly losing them sales.
It's not for you if you want a $500 template with your logo dropped in. Those exist, and if that's the right call for your business, the $450 audit will tell you so instead of selling you a build.
I'm not a Shopify agency. I'm one person who builds Shopify stores and operates several of them at real volume. That matters more than it sounds. An agency's designer has never watched an abandoned-cart flow fail on a Friday night, never fixed a tax setting the morning it broke, never had a wholesale customer call because the B2B price didn't apply at checkout. I have. So the store I build for you is shaped by the problems I've already had, not the ones a project manager imagines you'll have.
The other difference is the invoice. No account managers, no junior designers, no "strategy phase." You hire me, you get me, and the price is on this page.
Every build includes the things a store needs to actually function on day one. The custom tools are where I earn the difference between me and a template.
Products, variants, collections, payments, shipping rules, taxes, checkout. Live and taking orders — not a theme demo with placeholder text.
Built on Shopify's current theme architecture so it stays fast and updatable. Designed to look like your business, not the same theme as everyone else in your category.
Clean titles, descriptions, images with alt text, structured product schema — so Google Shopping, and AI assistants, can read what you sell.
Merchant Center connected and configured correctly the first time, so your products show up where people are searching to buy.
Abandoned cart, post-purchase, win-back. The automated emails that quietly do 20–30% of a store's revenue, wired up before launch, not "phase two."
Moving from another platform? Products, customers, order history where it can be exported — and a 301 redirect from every old URL, so your rankings don't reset on launch day.
Wholesale pricing and retail checkout coexisting cleanly. I run this exact setup for a 300-person manufacturer today.
Product finders, store locators, AI chat trained on your catalog, rental booking. I've built all of these for stores doing real volume, and I'll tell you honestly when an off-the-shelf app is the smarter buy.
Shopify account in your name. Domain in your registrar. Theme code, products, customers — yours. The contract says so, and the exit terms are published like the prices.
A short call, then a written scope: pages, products, integrations, custom tools, and a launch date. That document is the line in the sand for "done." No surprise invoices because the scope was a vibe.
Free · 20 minutes50% to start (thirds on larger builds). I open your Shopify account in your name, connect your domain from your registrar, and start building while you gather product content — I'll hand you a checklist of exactly what I need.
You see the real store on a real Shopify URL, not a mockup. Two rounds of revisions are included — consolidated lists, refinement, not new features. Most people use one.
Products loaded, payments live, shipping and tax rules tested with real orders, email flows firing, redirects in place. I place test orders from my own phone until nothing surprises me.
Final payment clears, the store goes live, and you get a walkthrough of how to add products and run the day-to-day yourself. Then the keep-alive starts, and I'm a phone call away.
Published Charlotte cost guides put a comparable Shopify build at $6,000–$10,000+. Mine starts at $6,000, and the monthly is itemized so you can see what you're paying for.
Ecommerce build
$6,000+ one-time
The "+" is catalog size and custom tooling. A 40-product boutique is $6,000. A 1,000-SKU wholesale-and-retail store with a product finder is more, and you'll know the exact number before you pay a dollar.
50% deposit / 50% before launch. Thirds available on larger builds. Deposit non-refundable once work starts — in writing, like everything else.
$375/month
The build price is what it costs to make the store. The keep-alive is what it costs for the store to not go down. Here's what that buys, itemized, so it's never compared to a $49 hosting plan:
Your Shopify subscription is billed by Shopify to you directly — I don't mark it up. New features, new integrations and new pages are a new project, quoted up front. Month to month, 30 days' notice, no exit fee.
I run it end to end as Director of Marketing: the AI chatbot, the product finder, and the store locator are tools I built. Wholesale dealers and retail customers check out on the same store with different pricing. It's the setup I'll build for you if you need it.
See the store →Started as a booking app on a basic store for scooter rentals. Grew into online sales, then a full Shopify store with in-store point of sale — one inventory across all three, so a scooter rented on the website isn't sold at the counter an hour later.
See the store →Selling a specific kind of product? The ecommerce & retail page walks through a demo build. Everything else I do for Charlotte businesses is on the industries page.
From me: $6,000 for the build, plus $375/month to keep it running — both published above, both itemized. Charlotte agencies typically quote $6,000–$10,000+ for a comparable store and most won't tell you that until you've booked a call. The Shopify subscription itself is separate and you pay Shopify directly; I don't mark it up.
Shopify, almost every time. WooCommerce is cheaper on paper and more expensive in practice — you're the one patching plugins and babysitting hosting. I run $2M a year through Shopify because it's boring and reliable, and your store shouldn't be an experiment. If your situation is one of the rare exceptions, I'll say so in the audit.
Yes. The Shopify account is opened in your name with your email and your billing — I'm a staff member you can remove in two clicks. Your domain lives in your registrar account. Your theme code, product data and customer list are yours, and it says so in the contract, not just on this page.
Yes — Wix, Squarespace, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, or a spreadsheet and a prayer. Products, customers, order history where the platform allows an export, and 301 redirects from every old URL so the rankings you've built don't reset to zero on launch day. The redirects are the part most migrations skip.
Yes, and I run exactly that setup today: B2B wholesale pricing and direct-to-consumer checkout on one Shopify store, one inventory, one set of products. It's the reason a 300-person manufacturer doesn't need two websites.
It depends on catalog size and how much custom tooling you want, so you get a date in writing before the deposit, not a shrug. The honest bottleneck is almost always product content from your side — photos, descriptions, prices. I tell you exactly what I need on day one.
Theme and app updates, checkout and payment monitoring, shipping and tax configuration when the rules change, backups of your theme, small changes (products, banners, collections, hours — just call me), and a monthly look at your Google Shopping feed. It's the cost of the store not going down. New features and new integrations are a new project, quoted up front.
The keep-alive keeps it healthy; it doesn't add products for you every week or run your marketing. If you want the store worked — email flows, Get Found for organic traffic, social — those are separate monthly plans and they stack. Plenty of clients start with the build and add one thing at a time.
Either is fine. Start the build if you've read enough. Book a call if your store is bigger or weirder than the page covers. Or run the $450 audit first and get a plain-English read on where you stand.
Lucas