Setting up an online store: Shopify, WooCommerce or headless for Adelaide small businesses

For many Adelaide small businesses, makers and not-for-profits, selling online is the obvious next step: customers expect to browse, pay and track an order on their phone, and a good online store keeps working after the shop closes. The platform is rarely the hard part. The work that decides whether an online store pays its way is in the product data, payments, shipping, GST, customer service and search visibility around it. This guide explains, in plain words, how to choose between Shopify, WooCommerce and a headless storefront, what to set up before launch, and what to ask whoever builds it. It is general guidance, not legal, tax or financial advice.

Start with how you sell, not with a platform

Write a one-page description of how orders work today and how you want them to work online. It saves weeks of rework later:

• What you sell. Simple products, products with sizes and colours, made-to-order items, bundles, subscriptions, gift cards, bookings or digital downloads.
• How many products, and who keeps them up to date. Twenty hand-made items and two thousand stock lines from a supplier feed need very different set-ups.
• Where else you sell. A shop counter, markets, a wholesale account list or marketplaces. If stock is shared, the store must stay in step with your point of sale.
• Who your customers are. Retail customers paying by card or wallet, trade customers who need accounts and invoices, or both.
• How orders leave the building. Click and collect, local delivery around Adelaide, Australia Post or a courier, or interstate and overseas shipping.
• The systems it must connect to. Accounting, inventory, point of sale, email marketing and your CRM.

Our guide to briefing a software or website project shows how to turn this page into a brief that several builders can quote against consistently.

Shopify, WooCommerce or headless: how they compare

Option	Best suited to	Trade-offs to understand
Hosted platform (for example Shopify)	Most small retailers who want a reliable store, built-in payments and checkout, and a large app ecosystem, without managing servers or updates.	Ongoing subscription and transaction or app fees, less control over checkout and some design limits. Apps add features quickly but each one is another subscription, another script and another vendor with access to your data.
WordPress with WooCommerce	Businesses that already run WordPress, publish a lot of content, or need flexible product rules, and are willing to maintain the site.	You own the hosting, plugins and updates. Plugin quality varies, and an unpatched plugin is one of the most common ways small sites are compromised, so a care plan is not optional. See our website maintenance and care plan guide.
Headless storefront (for example Next.js on top of a commerce platform)	Brands where speed, custom design or content-led selling matter, or where the store must combine product data with other systems.	More build effort and a developer for larger changes. The commerce platform still handles the catalogue, checkout and payments behind the scenes. Our WordPress vs custom vs Next.js guide explains the wider choice.
Marketplaces and social shops	Testing demand or reaching customers who already shop there.	Useful channels, but the marketplace owns the customer relationship and the rules. Most businesses treat them as extra channels that feed one central stock list, not as a replacement for their own store.

Product names are examples to start your research, not recommendations, and plans, fees and features change often. Compare total running costs over three years, including apps, themes, payment fees and maintenance, rather than the headline monthly plan. Our guide to what affects the cost of a website lists the line items to ask about.

Payments: keep card data out of your systems

Use the checkout or hosted payment fields supplied by your platform or a recognised payment provider, so card numbers never pass through your own servers, inboxes or staff. That keeps your PCI DSS obligations as small as they can be. Never take card numbers by email, phone notes or a form field.

• Offer the methods your customers use. Cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay cover most retail buyers. Buy now, pay later, PayPal and bank transfer or PayTo suit some audiences; each adds fees and reconciliation work, so add them because customers ask, not by default.
• Turn on fraud screening provided by your payment provider, and decide in advance how you will handle chargebacks and high-risk orders.
• Control scripts on checkout pages. Keep chat widgets, heatmaps and unnecessary tracking away from payment steps. Our guide to online forms and payments explains why this matters under PCI DSS 4.0.1.

GST, pricing display and consumer law

• GST. If you are registered for GST, show GST-inclusive prices to consumers, set up tax rules correctly for any GST-free products, and issue tax invoices when customers ask. Selling overseas brings its own rules. Confirm your settings with your accountant before launch.
• Australian Consumer Law. Consumer guarantees apply to online sales just as they do in a shop. Your refund, returns and warranty pages must not suggest customers have fewer rights than the law gives them. The ACCC publishes guidance for online sellers.
• Clear total prices. Show the total price, including any compulsory fees, and make delivery charges clear before checkout. Avoid pre-ticked add-ons and surprise charges at the last step.
• Marketing consent. Under the Spam Act, only email or text customers who have consented, identify your business and include a working unsubscribe. Do not pre-tick the newsletter box at checkout.
• Privacy. Publish a privacy policy that explains what customer data you collect, which apps and providers receive it and how long you keep it. Even if the small business exemption applies to you today, payment providers, marketplaces and larger customers often expect Privacy Act standards. See our Privacy Act and notifiable data breaches guide.

Shipping, click and collect and returns

• Keep shipping rules simple to start: a few clear options by zone or weight, with click and collect if you have a shopfront. Complicated rules confuse customers and staff alike.
• Connect your carrier. Most platforms integrate with Australia Post and common couriers to print labels, send tracking and update the order automatically.
• Write the returns process down before the first return arrives: who approves it, how refunds are issued and how stock is put back.
• Measure the cost of delivery by order, not just the postage line, including packaging and the time it takes to pick and pack.

Connect the store to your other systems

An online store that does not talk to your accounting and stock systems becomes a second set of books. Decide which system owns each piece of information: usually the store or point of sale owns orders and stock, and the accounting package owns invoices, payments, GST and payouts.

• Accounting. Use a proper connector to post daily sales summaries and payment provider payouts to Xero or MYOB, so fees, refunds and GST reconcile without re-keying. Our CRM and Xero or MYOB integration architecture shows the design.
• Stock and point of sale. If you sell in store and online, sync stock levels in near real time so you do not sell the last item twice.
• Customers and marketing. Send consented customers to your email platform or CRM, with the consent recorded.

Our guide to connecting business systems with APIs and integrations explains field mapping, error handling and what to do when a sync fails. For larger retailers, the retail order integration architecture shows how orders, stock and fulfilment fit together across channels.

Get found: SEO for online stores

• Write your own product descriptions. Copying the manufacturer’s text gives Google no reason to rank your page over every other stockist. Answer the questions customers ask in store: sizing, materials, care, compatibility and delivery times.
• Structure categories the way people search, with a short, useful introduction on each category page rather than a bare grid of products.
• Add product structured data (price, availability and reviews only where they are genuine) so search results can show rich details, and connect a product feed to Google Merchant Center so products can appear in free shopping listings.
• Handle out-of-stock and discontinued products carefully. Keep the page live with alternatives when an item is coming back, and redirect it to the closest category when it is gone for good.
• Keep the store fast on mobile. Compress images, limit apps and scripts, and check Core Web Vitals regularly. See our website speed and Core Web Vitals guide.
• Support local searches. If customers can collect or visit, keep your Google Business Profile consistent with the store and mention click and collect and delivery areas. Our local SEO guide for Adelaide small businesses covers the detail.

Security and ownership

• Own the accounts. Register the store, domain, payment provider and app accounts in the business’s name with a shared admin mailbox, not a staff member’s or developer’s personal account. Our domain, DNS and admin account ownership checklist explains why.
• Use multi-factor authentication on every admin, payment and email account, and give staff only the access they need.
• Review apps and plugins every few months, remove the ones you no longer use, and check what customer data each one can see.
• Keep an exit path. Make sure you can export products, customers and orders in a usable format if you ever change platform or builder.

A launch checklist

1. Place real test orders for each payment method, shipping option and discount code, then refund them.
2. Check that GST, tax invoices and order emails show the right business name, ABN and totals.
3. Confirm a test order and payout reconcile correctly in your accounting system.
4. Test the full journey on a phone, with a keyboard and with a screen reader, against WCAG 2.2 AA.
5. Publish clear delivery, returns, privacy and terms pages, and link them from the footer and checkout.
6. Set up order, revenue and enquiry tracking in Google Analytics 4 and Search Console. Our enquiry and conversion tracking guide shows what to measure.
7. If you are moving from an old store, map every old product and category address to its new one with permanent redirects before launch day.

Questions to ask before you engage a builder

1. Which platform do you recommend for our products and volumes, and why not the alternatives?
2. What will it cost to run each year, including apps, themes, payment fees and maintenance?
3. Will card data ever touch our systems, and who looks after PCI DSS obligations?
4. How will orders, stock, payouts and GST reach our accounting and point of sale systems?
5. Who owns the store, domain, theme and app accounts, and can we export everything if we leave?
6. How will you handle SEO, redirects and product structured data at launch?
7. Who keeps the platform, apps and plugins updated after launch, and how quickly are security issues fixed?

This article reflects common practice as at late 2026. Platforms, payment rules, tax settings and consumer law guidance change, so confirm current requirements with your accountant, payment provider, the ATO, the ACCC and your advisers before committing.

Talk to an Adelaide team

If you are planning a new online store or want an existing one to load faster, sell more and connect properly to your accounts, ask us for a quote or call 0402 401 584. We can review your current site or plans and give you a short written summary of what to fix first, whichever platform you choose. You can also read about our website design and development, application development and managed IT and cyber security services.