E-commerce website development.

An online store needs a reliable flow from checkout to payment confirmation, inventory update, fulfilment, and customer notification. For Kenyan stores, this can include M-Pesa through the Safaricom Daraja API alongside card payments through Pesapal, Flutterwave, or Stripe where required. The appropriate payment mix depends on the customer base and the business model.

Payment confirmation is handled through the provider's server-side callbacks or webhooks rather than the checkout page. A payment can succeed while the customer's browser closes, their phone dies, or the connection drops, so an order confirmed only in the browser can be recorded as unpaid. Pending and delayed payments are reconciled against open orders according to the order workflow, with a defined timeout and a route for payments that arrive late.

Inventory rules are defined around the business's sales channels and its source of record. Stock can be updated at order creation, at payment confirmation, at fulfilment, or through integration with an existing POS or ERP, depending on the workflow. Each choice has a different failure mode, and which one is acceptable is a business decision rather than a technical one.

Where a business sells both online and in a physical shop, the two need a single source of truth for stock and a rule for which system holds it. That decision is made during scoping, because introducing it later means reworking the order flow.

The catalogue covers products, variants such as size and colour, pricing, images, and the categories customers browse by. It is editable through an admin interface, with handover and training for the people who will maintain it.

Checkout is designed for phones on mobile data: short, with guest checkout available, and with delivery cost and timing shown before the customer commits. Customer accounts, order history, and saved addresses can be included where repeat purchasing is part of the business.

Delivery workflows can include zones, delivery fees, pickup options, customer address capture, status updates, and integration with a delivery provider or an internal fulfilment process. Delivery design affects checkout conversion, operating cost, fulfilment, and customer experience, so it is scoped alongside the store.

Order status is part of the order record and visible to the customer, which reduces the volume of enquiries asking where an order is. Who bears the cost of a failed delivery is a policy decision worth settling before launch rather than per incident.

Reporting covers sales by product and channel, order and fulfilment status, stock levels, and the points at which customers leave the checkout. What gets measured is agreed during scoping, so the reports answer the questions the business actually asks.