Website for florists: seasonal stock, local delivery and what it costs
A florist website that needs to be a very good shop window is step 02 or step 03, EUR 900-3.500, built in 2 to 6 weeks. The moment customers order and pay on your own site, with delivery slots and postcode rules behind it, you are at step 04, EUR 3.500-7.500, over 6 to 12 weeks. That is also the point where a hosted shop platform can be the better buy.
We will say which side we think you are on before you spend anything. A fixed quote follows scoping either way.
What each step buys a florist
| What you need | Step | Price | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| One page with your range, opening hours, a call button and an order enquiry form | Step 01 | EUR 600-900 | 1-2 weeks |
| Range, occasions, about, contact flow, basic CMS | Step 02 | EUR 900-1.500 | 2-3 weeks |
| Occasion and neighbourhood pages, CMS, contact or booking, links out to a hosted shop | Step 03 | EUR 1.500-3.500 | 3-6 weeks |
| Your own ordering with payments, delivery slots, postcode zones, customer accounts | Step 04 | EUR 3.500-7.500 | 6-12 weeks |
| Several shops, shared stock, driver rounds, wholesale accounts, admin | Step 05 | from EUR 7.500 | after discovery |
Care sits outside the steps at EUR 100-300 per month for updates, monitoring, backups and small fixes, and it does not cover a redesign or new features. SEO foundation is a separate one-off of EUR 450-750: Search Console, analytics, indexation, technical hygiene, titles, internal links and a plan for the following 3 to 6 months.
Seasonal stock is the part that breaks florist websites
A photograph of a bouquet is a promise about stems that may not be in the market on the morning the order lands. Every florist knows this, and when the website ignores it the gap gets absorbed by hand, on the phone, by whoever is on the bench.
The way out is to model the product as the thing you can actually repeat. Size, palette, shape and style, photographed as the last one you made, with the substitution rule in plain words on the product rather than buried in terms. Florist's choice becomes a real product line instead of an apology.
Around that, three mechanics carry the season. Availability windows, so peonies exist in the shop only inside a date range and wreaths appear in December without anyone unhiding them. Price control, so when the wholesale price moves you change it yourself rather than sending us a message. Capacity caps, so a product or a whole day can be closed once the bench is full. Valentine's Day and Mother's Day are a capacity problem wearing a marketing costume, and the third of those three is what answers them.
Local delivery is a rules engine, not a checkbox
Delivery logic is the real reason a florist outgrows a generic shop. Postcode zones with different charges and different minimums. A cut-off time per zone for same-day. Slots with a maximum number of drops. Collection running alongside delivery from the same stock.
Then there is what the order form has to ask that a normal one does not: a card message, a delivery date, a recipient address that is not the billing address, an instruction for what to do if nobody answers, and a phone number for the recipient rather than the buyer. Five extra fields, each of which ends up printed on something in the shop. Get both sets of rules right and the site stops generating phone calls. Get them wrong and it is a lead form with extra steps.
When a hosted shop platform wins
If your range is a set of arrangements at fixed prices, delivery is your own van across a defined area, and you want to be taking orders soon, a hosted shop platform is the right answer and we will say so. It carries the card handling, the tax rules and the security burden that arrive with taking money, it is maintained without you, and there are florist delivery apps on top of it that already model zones and cut-offs.
Pairing that with a step 01 or step 02 site of your own, carrying the brand, the story and the neighbourhood pages, is a genuinely good outcome for EUR 600-1.500.
Four things flip it the other way. Your delivery rules are specific enough that no plugin models them. You need capacity tied to your bench rather than to a stock count. You take corporate and subscription orders on account, with invoices. Or you want orders landing inside the process you already run in the shop instead of in an inbox someone has to watch. When two or more are true, step 04 stops being an indulgence.
We build the step 04 version as a Next.js site so product pages stay fast on a phone, which is the approach described on Next.js development in Amsterdam.
Process and timeline
- Scoping. Your range, your zones, your cut-offs and your peak days, written down. This is where the hosted versus custom decision is made, and the fixed quote comes out of it.
- Structure and design. Home, range, occasion pages, neighbourhood pages, about and contact, designed together.
- Build. CMS and templates for step 02 and step 03. For step 04, the ordering flow, the zone and slot rules and the account area as well.
- Content load. Photography and product text go in with us present, since product text keeps changing after launch.
- Launch and handover. Redirects, analytics, Search Console, the Google Business Profile checked, and the repository handed to you.
Step 02 runs 2 to 3 weeks, step 03 runs 3 to 6, step 04 runs 6 to 12. The part that waits on you is photography. Shoot in your quiet season and nothing stalls.
When to spend less
If you are unsure which side of the hosted question you fall on, do not guess towards the bigger build. A step 02 site at EUR 900-1.500 plus a hosted shop gets you selling, and rebuilding later against real orders beats designing a shop you are still imagining.
Spend the difference on photography and on your Google Business Profile. A florist is found on a map and chosen on a picture, and neither is fixed by a larger website. SEO foundation at EUR 450-750 one-off is the next cheapest thing worth buying, since it tells you whether your neighbourhood pages exist as far as a search engine is concerned.
Questions florists ask
Can we sell online without building our own shop?
Yes. A step 03 site carries everything a customer reads and hands over to a hosted shop for the ordering itself. The money is handled on the platform, which is why the site stays at EUR 1.500-3.500 instead of moving to step 04. The trade is that the last part of the journey looks like the platform rather than like you.
Can the site stop taking orders when Saturday is full?
On a step 04 build, yes. Capacity is a number per slot and per day, and when it is reached that slot closes itself and the customer is offered the next one you can actually make. On a hosted platform it depends on the delivery app you choose, so check that before you commit.
Who owns the site, the product data and the order history?
You do. The code, the repository and the database are yours and you get them at handover. Hosting is agreed per project, decided during scoping rather than assumed.
What happens around Valentine's Day and Mother's Day?
Plan them into the build rather than around it. Products go live from a date, capacity caps and cut-offs are set in advance, and nothing structural changes in the run-up. If you want us on hand through those weeks, that is Care, EUR 100-300 per month for updates, monitoring, backups and small fixes.
Will we show up for our neighbourhood?
That is the job of real pages for the areas you deliver to and the occasions you serve, each one specific rather than a template with the place name swapped. Getting those indexed and linked is SEO foundation, a one-off at EUR 450-750. Adding to them month after month is SEO growth at EUR 500-800 per month. The full picture is on packages.
Tell us your zones, your cut-offs and what should happen when a Saturday sells out, and we will scope it. Start here.
Building something?
JP Studio designs and builds websites, storefronts and product interfaces.