Showcase site or online shop: the real difference and how to choose

People who write to me for a new website almost always start with the same sentence: "I want to sell online." Then, once we talk, it often turns out that isn't quite true: what they actually need is to be found and to receive requests, not to take a payment on the site. They're two different products, with a different cost and different ongoing work after launch, and mixing them up is the fastest way to pay for something you'll never actually use.

What a showcase site does

A showcase site presents the business: who you are, what you do, finished work, how to get in touch. It has no cart, no payment. The goal isn't to sell on the site, it's to get someone to take the next step, a call, a message, a quote request. The sale, when it happens, closes somewhere else: on the phone, in the shop, over a back-and-forth of emails.

It works well anywhere the price or the product isn't fixed from the start: a professional practice, an artisan who works to order, a business offering a service that needs to be assessed case by case. I've written about this in more detail, for people who work on commission, in website for artisans.

What an online shop does

An online shop closes the sale on the site itself. The visitor picks a product from a catalogue, adds it to the cart, pays, and from that moment the shop has to handle it: confirm the order, prepare it, ship it, deal with any return. There's no one assessing the request before the payment goes through: the site does the work for you, twenty-four hours a day.

That's why an online shop needs conditions a showcase site doesn't: an up-to-date catalogue, prices that are fixed or at least calculable automatically, logistics able to keep up with the orders that come in.

The real test, not the number of products

The right question isn't "do I have enough products for an online shop", it's where does a sale close today. If there's always a step before selling that only a person can do, working out a measurement, checking availability, assessing a customisation, an online shop doesn't remove that step: it moves it after payment, where it causes more problems than it solves. A catalogue with fixed prices on products that actually need to be agreed on stays empty, or worse, generates orders that then have to be corrected by hand, one at a time.

If instead the product is ready, has a stable price, and whoever wants it can buy it without needing to talk to you first, the online shop takes work off your plate instead of adding to it: every sale the site closes on its own is a phone call or an email you don't have to handle.

The weight an online shop carries with it

The site is only the first item. Anyone selling at a distance has to guarantee consumers the right of withdrawal: fourteen days to change their mind without having to give a reason, set out in article 52 of Italy's Codice del Consumo (consumer code). The period runs from delivery for a physical product, and the law provides exceptions, for instance perishable goods or ones made to that customer's specifications. It's an obligation tied to distance selling itself, not to the tool you use for it: on an online shop it applies, by definition, to every order, because every order closes online without you and the customer ever having spoken first.

On top of that comes work that continues every week: updating the catalogue when a product runs out or changes price, handling payments and refunds, dealing with shipments that don't always arrive as planned. It isn't a cost that ends once the site is built: it's an activity that has to be kept alive, and it needs to be budgeted for before you start, not discovered afterwards.

How much they cost

On the Italian market a showcase site of 5-8 pages runs from 800 to 3,500 €, an online shop with a simple catalogue from 3,000 to 7,000 €, a structured one from 7,000 to 20,000 €. The range widens most for the online shop because the work doesn't end at launch: there's still the catalogue, payments, and shipping described above to manage. The full breakdown, including the items that don't show up in the build quote, is in how much does a website cost and how much does an e-commerce cost.

The middle case

There's also a middle path: a showcase with a visible price list and a request form instead of a cart. It works when sales are few and you'd rather close every deal yourself, maybe because there's still something to agree on with each order, or because the volume doesn't justify the work of a real catalogue. It stops working once requests grow and handling them one by one by hand becomes the point where work piles up: that's the signal it's time to consider an online shop, not before.

If you're not sure which of the two applies to you, get in touch and tell me how one of your sales closes today: I'll give you an answer, even if it's that you're better off staying as you are.