eCommerce and Marketplace Development — Built for Agentic Shopping
A storefront now has two audiences: people, and the AI agents shopping on their behalf. Those agents do not read your landing pages. They consume structured catalogue data and execute against APIs, which means product data quality has become an acquisition channel in its own right rather than a back-office concern.
We build storefronts and multi-vendor marketplaces that perform for both, and we treat the catalogue as a first-class product surface rather than an export nobody owns.
What we build
- Custom storefronts — headless or conventional, built around your merchandising rather than fought against a template.
- Multi-vendor marketplaces — seller onboarding, catalogue moderation, split payments, payouts and dispute handling, which is where marketplace projects actually get hard.
- Catalogue and feed infrastructure — clean, complete, machine-readable product data with real-time availability and pricing.
- Checkout and payments — multiple providers, local payment methods, and the failure handling that decides whether a customer retries or leaves.
- Integration — ERP, PIM, fulfilment, tax and logistics, so stock and price mean the same thing in every system.
Agentic commerce, concretely
Open protocols now let AI agents browse and transact against merchant catalogues. OpenAI and Stripe's Agentic Commerce Protocol has been live in ChatGPT since September 2025, and Google introduced a Universal Commerce Protocol at NRF in January 2026 with the same intent of giving agents one standard way to reach merchant catalogues and complete purchases. Adoption on the merchant side has run well ahead of most retailers' internal planning, with large platform populations already reachable through ChatGPT Shopping.
The practical consequence is unglamorous. An agent comparing products cannot infer what your rendered HTML implies; it needs accurate attributes, real stock, real prices and a reliable API. Retailers with a neglected feed become invisible in that channel regardless of how good their site looks to a human.
Performance still decides conversion
For human buyers the fundamentals have not moved: interaction responsiveness, image discipline, and a checkout that does not lose state when a payment provider hiccups. We measure against Core Web Vitals on real traffic rather than lab scores, because a synthetic pass on a developer laptop says very little about a mid-range phone on mobile data.
Accessibility is now a legal requirement
Consumer-facing commerce sold into the European Union falls within the scope of the European Accessibility Act, which has applied since June 2025. Penalty regimes are set nationally and vary considerably, so exposure depends on where you trade. Beyond compliance, the same work — keyboard operability, sane focus order, real form labels — tends to improve conversion for everyone.
Where we would push back
If you are selling a few dozen products through conventional channels, a hosted platform on a decent theme will serve you better than anything custom, and we will say so. Custom commerce earns its cost at catalogue scale, with unusual merchandising or pricing logic, with marketplace mechanics, or where an existing platform's checkout genuinely cannot express how you sell.
Our commerce expertise
- Storefront engineering
- Catalogue and feeds
- Agent-ready commerce APIs
- Checkout and payments
- Performance and Core Web Vitals
- ERP and fulfilment integration
Frequently asked questions
What is agentic commerce and does it affect us yet?
It is shopping where an AI agent performs the search, comparison and sometimes the purchase on a customer's behalf. Open protocols for it are already live — OpenAI and Stripe's Agentic Commerce Protocol in ChatGPT since September 2025, and Google's Universal Commerce Protocol introduced in January 2026. Whether it affects you depends on your category, but the preparation is worth doing regardless because it is the same work as having accurate product data.
What do we actually need to do to be visible to AI shopping agents?
Get the catalogue right. Agents evaluate structured feeds and APIs rather than marketing copy, so complete and accurate attributes, real-time stock and pricing, and a stable API matter far more than another content page. This is unglamorous data work rather than a new marketing channel to buy into.
Should we build custom or use a hosted platform?
If you sell a modest catalogue through conventional channels, a hosted platform with a good theme will beat anything custom on both cost and time. Custom earns its place at catalogue scale, with unusual pricing or merchandising logic, with marketplace mechanics, or when a platform's checkout cannot express how you actually sell.
What makes a marketplace harder than a shop?
Everything that is not the storefront. Seller onboarding and verification, catalogue quality moderation, split payments and payouts, tax handling across sellers, and dispute resolution are where marketplace projects consume their budget. The buyer-facing part is usually the straightforward half.
Does accessibility law apply to our online shop?
For consumer-facing commerce sold into the European Union, the European Accessibility Act has applied since June 2025. Penalties are set nationally and vary sharply between member states, so exposure depends on where you trade. The underlying work also tends to help conversion generally, since keyboard operability and clear form labelling benefit every buyer.
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