Brochure site or online shop: the right choice for an SME

"You need an online shop." It is the default recommendation, and it is often wrong. A shop is the most expensive type of site to build, the most expensive to keep alive, and the one that most often fails silently.

Here is how to decide based on what you sell, with real Swiss market prices, and the middle option few providers propose because it earns them less.

The short answer

You sell standardised, shippable products to people who buy without talking to you: online shop.

You sell services, consulting, custom work, or anything local: brochure site, with a proper contact or booking flow. Nobody puts a fiduciaire in a shopping cart.

You are in between (a few products, paid bookings, deposits): there is a middle ground, covered below.

The prices, for context

Swiss market ranges, detailed in our guide to website costs in Switzerland:

The gap between a brochure site and a shop is not a technical surcharge. It is a change of profession.

What a shop really costs after launch

The build quote is the visible part. A living shop demands, every month:

Product pages kept current: decent photos, descriptions, prices, stock. A fifty-product shop is a permanent writing and photography job.

Logistics: shipping, returns, disputes. Swiss customers expect fast delivery and easy returns, and postage eats small margins.

Payment fees: budget around 3% per transaction depending on the provider, plus possible fixed fees.

Maintenance: a shop is the type of site that needs the most of it, security updates included.

Which is why the question is not "can you pay CHF 15'000" but "do you have someone to run a second profession". A twelve-product shop receiving three orders a month costs more than it earns, and we see that case regularly.

The middle ground nobody proposes

Between brochure and shop sits a very profitable zone for a service SME:

A brochure site with paid booking: the appointment is paid online, no more no-shows. With a payment link: the accepted quote gets settled without a paper invoice. With a structured quote form: the client specifies their need, and you answer in an hour instead of a forty-minute call.

These mechanisms cost a fraction of full e-commerce (the CHF 8'000 to 20'000 range above covers the ambitious cases) and capture most of the value: money moves, with no stock and no logistics.

Three questions to decide

Do your clients buy without talking to you? If every sale involves a conversation, the shop adds nothing: the form and the phone do the selling.

Do you have the hours? Photos, stock, shipping, returns: if nobody on the team has five hours a week, the shop will die in public, which does more damage than a well-kept brochure site.

Does the average basket hold up? Below a certain basket size, payment, shipping and admin costs eat the margin. Run the numbers on ten real orders before signing a quote.

If you are still unsure, start with the brochure site. It is the only reversible choice: a well-built brochure site can take on a shop later, while an abandoned shop never becomes a good brochure site again.

That is how we approach the sites we build: scope is decided on your numbers, not on the trend. Tell us what you sell, and we will tell you honestly which type of site you need, including when it is the cheapest one.

Frequently asked questions

Shopify, or a custom shop?

For standard products, Shopify and its equivalents do the job well and cut the entry cost; their subscriptions and commissions are paid over time. Custom builds are justified when your sales logic leaves the standard path: configurators, per-client pricing, integration with an existing system.

Can we start with a brochure site and add the shop later?

Yes, and it is often the right order, on one condition: say so from the start. A site designed for extension takes on a shop without a rebuild; a site designed closed gets rebuilt. The difference is decided in the initial quote, not in the technology.

Does a shop rank better than a brochure site?

No. More pages does not mean more visibility: fifty thin product pages can even hurt. A brochure site whose pages answer real questions beats a generic shop, and most ranking work happens at build time.

What about selling through Instagram or a marketplace?

To test demand, it is the cheapest path, before any website. Commissions and platform dependency become the price as volume grows: that is the moment a shop of your own becomes worth it.