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Store Setup or Rescue

Set up once, properly, so the next twelve months aren't spent fixing it.

R45,000 – R75,000 Fixed price · delivered in 3–5 weeks from R8,250/moover 6 months, hosting included · R49,500 totalDelivery is still 3–5 weeks — this only spreads the payment, it doesn't stretch the project.

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Is this you?

Every routine task in your store takes three times longer than it should

Two people buy this package. The first is launching a store and has read enough horror stories to know that a cheap setup gets expensive later. The second inherited one, from a previous developer, a departed employee or their own younger self, and now runs a shop where nothing sits where it should.

The symptoms are the same either way. Collections that don't map to how people actually shop. Shipping rates that were guessed at. A tax setting nobody is quite sure about. Fourteen apps on the bill and nobody can say what six of them do. And every routine job, adding a product, changing a price, processing a return, takes three times longer than it should.

Nobody really sells the fix. The guides teach you to do it all yourself, and the agencies want to sell you a redesign. What you need is someone to set the machine up properly once, show you how it runs, and leave.

What you
actually get

Every line below is a deliverable, not an intention. If it's on this list it's in the proposal, and if it's not on this list it isn't included.

A full audit, or a clean setup from scratch

If the store exists, I map what is actually configured before touching anything. If it doesn't, we skip the archaeology and build it right the first time.

Product and collection architecture

Products, variants, collections and tags organised around how your customers shop and how you restock. The difference between a catalogue you manage in minutes and one you dread.

Payments, shipping and tax, configured properly

A gateway chosen for your market, real shipping rates instead of guesses, and VAT set up the way your accountant expects to find it.

Order and fulfilment workflow design

From checkout to courier to customer email, mapped and configured so an order moves without you pushing it. Subscriptions included where you sell them.

Transactional emails that sound like you

Order confirmations, shipping notices and refund emails rewritten and branded. Customers read these more than anything else you will ever send.

Analytics and conversion tracking

GA4 with proper ecommerce events, wired in from day one. You'll know what sold, from where, without exporting anything into a spreadsheet.

The app audit

Every app on the bill justified or cancelled. Inherited stores usually carry subscriptions nobody remembers signing up for, and they add up.

SOP pack and handover training

Written procedures for the routine jobs, and a training session so you or your team can run the store without me. The package ends with you independent, not dependent.

How it runs

So you know what's happening and when, and so nobody has to ask for a status update.

Week 0

The call

Thirty minutes. You show me the store, or tell me about the one you're planning. I tell you where in the R45,000 - R75,000 range you land, and why, in writing.

Week 1

Audit and architecture

Everything currently configured gets mapped, then we agree the product and collection structure before anything gets built.

Weeks 2-3

The build

Catalogue, payments, shipping, tax, workflows and emails, configured and tested. You watch progress on the store itself, not in a slide deck.

Week 4

Tracking and the app cull

Analytics and conversion events wired in, then the app audit. You approve every cancellation before anything is switched off.

Week 5

SOPs and handover

Procedures written, your team trained, a final walkthrough. From here the store is yours to run.

What I need from you

The projects that run late almost always run late for one of these reasons, so they're worth reading properly before we start.

Collaborator access to the store, scoped to what the work needs, never your owner login
Your product data in whatever state it exists, spreadsheets and photo folders included
Decisions on gateways, shipping rates and returns policy within a couple of days of being asked
One decision-maker, the five-week timeline depends on this more than on anything I do
Honesty about what's broken, the embarrassing workarounds are the ones I most need to hear about

What's not included

On the public page rather than buried in the proposal, so there's no argument in week five.

Running the store day to day afterwards
Product photography
Writing every product description
Paid advertising
Marketplace setup (available as an Enterprise add-on)

Your other options

What happens if you don't do this

Do nothing. The store keeps working, roughly. But every hour of avoidable admin repeats weekly, forever, and a wrong tax or shipping setting doesn't announce itself, it quietly leaks margin until somebody audits it.

Go cheaper. A basic setup can be bought in South Africa for under R15,000, and for a simple store with a handful of products that can genuinely be enough. What it won't include is the workflow design, the tracking, the app audit or the SOPs, which is to say the parts of this package that give you your week back.

Go bigger. If what you actually want is someone to run the store after it's fixed, setup is the wrong purchase, it ends at handover by design. Fractional Ops Manager is the running of it, and a rescue is usually the first month's work inside that retainer anyway.

Straight
answers

Why the spread between R45,000 and R75,000?

Catalogue size, whether subscriptions are involved, how tangled the existing setup is, and how much history has to be preserved. A clean launch with a modest catalogue sits at the bottom. A rescue with years of accumulated apps and workarounds sits at the top. You get a fixed number in writing before we start, and it doesn't move unless the scope does.

Which payment gateway should a South African store use?

There's no Shopify Payments in South Africa, so it's a real decision between the local gateways, usually PayFast, Peach Payments or Yoco, and the right answer depends on your volumes, your bank and whether you sell internationally. Choosing and configuring it is part of the package, and I take no referral fees from any of them, so the recommendation is clean.

I'm nervous about giving an outsider access to my store.

Good, you should be. Access runs through a Shopify collaborator account with permissions scoped to the work, which you grant and can revoke in one click. I never have your owner login and never see your billing details, and every change I make is visible in the store's own activity log, so the audit trail is yours.

Can you rescue the store without rebuilding it from scratch?

Usually, yes. Most rescues are reorganisation and configuration, not demolition. If the theme itself is the problem I'll say so plainly and quote that separately, rather than smuggling a redesign into a setup project.

Do I need you after handover?

No, and the package is built so you don't. The SOP pack and the training exist precisely so the store runs without me. If you later decide you'd rather hand over the running of it, that's the Fractional Ops Manager retainer, but it's a separate decision, never a dependency.

Can I pay monthly instead of upfront?

Yes, from R8,250 a month over six months, hosting included, instead of the fixed price upfront. Same scope, same deliverables, same three to five week build, just spread out.

Want the store run for you after handover?

Fractional Ops Manager, R26,000 – R60,000

Give back the ten hours a week you're spending on admin.

See Fractional Ops Manager →

Sound like
your problem?

One call, no deck. If this isn't the right package I'll tell you which is.

Email instead