Do you need an e-commerce site or a catalogue?

Beauty, food, and trade companies in Egypt often ask for “a shop” when they mean “put the products online.” Those are different builds. Checkout, shipping rules, and stock are the expensive part. A catalogue with a wholesale or WhatsApp path can be the honest first version.

A catalogue is enough when

• Prices change in chat anyway.
• You sell B2B and the next step is a quote, not a card payment.
• You have twenty SKUs and a person who answers the phone.

The site still needs clear product pages, photos you own, and one action. POWER SHIFT has shipped this shape as a corporate catalogue, for example on Lodiamo, and as shops when the brand actually sells online — Nourvive, Corolla, URUZ.

You need a shop when

• Customers expect to pay without waiting for a message.
• You cannot keep stock straight in a notebook.
• Retail and wholesale need different paths on the same site.

That is e-commerce development, not a website with a buy button that emails you. If staff must manage invoices and inventory beyond the storefront, you may be crossing into operations software.

Do not copy a US checkout onto a WhatsApp business

If your buyers will not complete a guest checkout, do not pay for one yet. Build the catalogue, measure whether people still insist on chat, then add payment. Cost follows that sequence — not a single “shop price”.

A landing page can sell one drop. A shop is for a catalogue that will still be there next season. Do not confuse the two.