Opening an e-commerce website in Pau, in south west France, is not a matter of putting a catalog on the internet. It means adding a sales channel with constraints of its own: logistics, payment, after-sales service, product SEO. This page runs through the decisions to take before you begin, the ones that cost dearly when they are taken too late, and the way Aloha Pixel builds a WooCommerce store.
What e-commerce changes for a business in the 64
The first effect is arithmetic: your catchment area stops being a twenty-kilometer circle. A producer, a craftsperson or a brand based in Pau can sell to Bordeaux, to Toulouse or into Spain without opening a second point of sale.
The second effect is less obvious and often more profitable: the online store also serves your local customers. They check what is in stock, reserve, pay, and drop in to collect. The site does not replace the shop, it extends it, and it removes the friction that makes a buyer give up.
The third effect is measurement. Unlike a physical shop window, everything can be counted: the pages viewed, the baskets abandoned, the exact step at which the buyer stops. Those figures tell you where your store is losing money, and they let you put it right.
WooCommerce, and why we choose it
WooCommerce is the e-commerce extension for WordPress. It powers a considerable share of the world’s online stores, and it has three decisive advantages for an independent business.
You remain the owner. The files, the database, the product pages and the customer list are yours, and can be exported at any time. No platform can change its terms and hold you hostage.
No commission is taken on sales. You pay for hosting and the card processing fees, and that is all. As volume grows, the difference against a platform that takes a percentage becomes considerable.
The SEO stays entirely in your hands. Page addresses, titles, descriptions, product structured data and editorial content are all under your control. That is what lets a store rank for product searches rather than depending exclusively on advertising.
The trade-off has to be stated: WooCommerce demands real maintenance. A store is a site that handles money and personal data, and it cannot be left to age. That is why maintenance is included rather than sold separately.
Payment and delivery, where orders are lost
The checkout is where the work turns into revenue, or does not. Three causes account for most abandoned orders.
Delivery charges discovered too late. A buyer who sees eight euros of postage appear at the final step closes the page. The answer is not to remove them but to announce them on the product page itself.
Compulsory account creation. It loses a significant share of passing buyers. Guest checkout must always remain possible.
Doubt about security. A checkout with no visible certificate, no recognized payment methods and no clear returns policy makes people hesitate. Card payment through a recognized provider, with strong customer authentication, lifts that doubt at once.
On the delivery side, a Pau store holds a card the big platforms do not: collection in person. It costs nothing to set up, takes the question of transport off the table, and brings the customer back into the shop, where the average basket is almost always higher.
Product pages that rank
This is the most neglected piece of work, and the most profitable. Most stores copy across the description supplied by the manufacturer, the very same one that three hundred other sites are already using. Google has no reason to pick your page over another.
A page that ranks has a title that uses the wording buyers actually type, a written description that answers the practical questions (material, dimensions, care, lead time), photographs that are compressed and properly named, and structured data markup that exposes price and availability to the search engines.
That last point deserves a word more: this markup makes the page eligible for rich results in the search listings, with price and availability shown directly beneath the link. It is a gain in visibility that costs nothing but technical rigor.
To that you add the category pages, forgotten as a matter of routine even though they catch the broadest searches, and editorial content that answers the questions people ask before they buy. The general principles are set out in our guide to launching an online store, step by step.
What to plan before you begin
Four points settled in advance head off most of the unpleasant surprises.
Who prepares the orders, and when. A store that ships within forty-eight hours keeps its promise. A store that ships when it finds the time collects negative reviews.
How returns are handled. The fourteen-day right of withdrawal applies. Better to make it a selling point than a buried clause.
Stock management. If you also sell in the shop, synchronization is not optional.
After-sales service. An email address and a reachable phone number are enough, provided someone answers.
Building the store: packages and scope
| Package | E-commerce scope | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Site Web Essentiel | Store of up to fifteen or so products, written for you, online payment, collection in person, SEO strategy applied. | €109/month |
| Site Web Premium | Advanced store of up to thirty or so products, variations, multiple carriers, monthly strategic review and reinforced protection. | €230/month |
A €99 sign-up fee, charged once, with no minimum term. Amounts in euros, VAT not applicable, article 293 B of the French tax code. Beyond thirty products, or for a catalog with complex variations, the scope is priced case by case.
Brochure site or store: decide before you invest
Many store projects would do better to start with a brochure site. If your sales close over the phone or at a meeting, if your offer needs a quote, or if your products are few and high in value, a well-ranked small business website will bring in more than a half-filled store. The detailed comparison is in our article on brochure site vs e-commerce.
The right test is simple: is your typical customer ready to pay without speaking to you? If so, the store makes sense. If not, start by capturing the lead.
Talk to us about your project
A store can be scoped in an hour’s conversation: catalog, logistics, payment methods, timescales. By the end, you know whether the project holds together and what it will ask of you. Book a slot or describe what you need. See also: website design in Pau and SEO agency in Pau.
Also worth reading: Brochure site vs e-commerce: which one to choose
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