Outgrowing Your First Website: Ecommerce and Apps in the UAE

A retailer in Dubai kept a first website alive by adding plugins for Arabic, a popup, a delivery timer, and a payment redirect. Telr was never the merchant of record on the company's licence; the redirect used a test key the freelancer owned. The original build had been invoiced at AED 14,000 plus 5% VAT. Sharjah customers saw VAT added twice on some SKUs. Abu Dhabi trade buyers could not get a private price. On a phone the catalogue took 7.2 seconds. Checkout completion in the planning model was 1.4%. Then the freelancer travelled and the staging password left with them. The live site stayed up. Nobody could change a price.

Plugins pretending to be a system

Arabic as a plugin on top of an English theme, a second plugin for currency, and a third for invoices will eventually disagree about the 5% VAT line. That is the frankenstein pattern: each request solved, the whole unable to be edited. Rebuilding the base is cheaper than a sixth plugin once staff are scared to click update.

The mobile checkout guests actually use

Shoppers will not watch a spinner and then fail 3-D Secure. The rebuilt flow in the model loaded in 1.9 seconds and completion moved to 3.3%. Test it on a normal connection in Dubai, with Telr in the company's merchant account, and with the VAT-inclusive total identical on the page and the receipt. Abu Dhabi and Sharjah delivery rules belong in that test, not in a chat message.

Store or app

Pick ecommerce when the job is catalogue, VAT invoices, and occasional repeat purchase. Pick an app when staff or members transact weekly and a login is the product. An app will not repair a 7-second mobile site. Do that repair first if guests buy from the browser.

Do not fund a ghost

• Domain, hosting, and Telr must sit on the trade licence before the next milestone.
• Staging credentials live in the company's password store, not in one person's phone.
• A backup is taken before any plugin weekend.
• If messages stop, prices can still be changed the same day.

We start with that list. The estimate can say "handover only" if a new build is premature. You are not tied to us to keep the keys.