A focused review of your digital experience, delivered as a prioritized roadmap: what to fix, what to build, and what to stop doing.
What's included →Embedded product leadership without the full-time overhead: product strategy, conversion and sales-flow optimization, and building the team to sustain it.
What's included →Design and working software, built with agentic AI tools: clickable prototypes, MVPs and pilots, production features, or design on its own. I lead and build, and bring in trusted designers and engineers when a project needs more hands.
What's included →What drives the price
- Platforms in scope: iOS, Android, web, kiosk, and whether they share a code base.
- Brands and markets: one brand in one country, or several brands and countries on one platform.
- Access: how much funnel data, review data and team time is available. Better access makes the work faster.
- For the retainer, time: how much of the week you need, and how much team building is involved.
- For Design & Build, what ships: a prototype, a pilot for real users, or features in your production app, and whether partners are needed.
What a commerce app costs
Brands ask what it costs to build or rebuild an e-commerce, shopping or ordering app. There's no honest single number, because scope drives cost far more than the app does. These are the drivers I'd price against:
- Platforms: iOS, Android, web, kiosk, and whether they share one code base.
- Platform or custom: a commerce or ordering platform with your branding, your own front end on its APIs, or fully custom.
- Integrations: POS, inventory and order management, payments, loyalty, ERP and fulfillment partners.
- Catalog complexity: products, variants, modifiers, pricing and availability by store or market.
- Brands and markets: one brand in one country, or several on a shared platform.
- Who builds and runs it: in-house, an agency, or me through Design & Build, and who owns it after launch.
Agentic AI tools have lowered the cost of the custom options a lot, so building something that fits your operation is no longer only for the biggest brands. Off the shelf is still cheaper for common problems. But SaaS usually gets you about 80% of the way, and the last 20% costs more than the first 80 did: custom work billed by the vendor, workarounds your team maintains, and waiting on someone else's roadmap. Custom earns its keep there.
The most expensive version is the one built without knowing which problems it has to solve. A Digital Audit answers that first; rebuild or fix? covers the bigger decision.
Leadership, building, or both
The audit and the retainer are product leadership: deciding what to build and making sure it lands. Design & Build is the making: I design and build with agentic AI tools, and bring in trusted designers and engineers when a project needs more hands. Many clients combine them, or have me build alongside their own team or agency.
How it compares
A fractional leader costs less than a full-time executive and decides what to build, which an agency doesn't. The full comparison covers when each is the better choice.