How we built our own digital products: from websites to SaaS platforms

Where a website ends and a product begins

A marketing website has one job: present the offer clearly and lead to an enquiry. A product has users who enter data every day, and it must keep that data reliable, separate and secure. For Bizko that means accounting documents, for BizkoShop the orders and payments of many shops, for Sitequiry measurements users take at face value, and for Spletiva profiles that must belong to the real domain owners.

So with all four we start by asking what must never happen. The answer is different each time and shapes most of the architecture.

Bizko: when the data are accounting records

Bizko was built for sole traders and small businesses that write invoices in Excel or in overly complex software. Technically it is the most sensitive kind of application: issued and received invoices, quotes, pro forma invoices, payment records and travel orders with mileage are documents someone later takes into the books.

Most of the work was not in the forms but in what happens after an invoice is issued. Instead of emailing individual PDFs, Bizko has an organised hand-over of documents to the accountant. New users try it free and without a payment card, because nobody chooses invoicing software from a description alone.

Tip: If you are planning an application where users will store documents, define the export first: who will take the data over, in what format and how often. It often matters more than data entry. More at Bizko.si.

BizkoShop: many shops in one application

BizkoShop is our most demanding platform: a merchant opens an online store in a few steps on the subdomain store-name.bizkoshop.si and pays monthly. All shops run in one application, so the first challenge was keeping data apart. A shop is identified only by its verified domain or subdomain, never by data sent by the browser, and every query is limited to that shop's data.

The second challenge was payments. A customer can return from the payment page even if the payment failed, so BizkoShop marks an order as paid only after the payment provider's verified notification or the merchant's manual confirmation. A repeated notification does not create a double payment.

The third was design. Merchants choose between 14 themes, but the features are shared: a theme changes the look and the recommended settings, while blocks and features work the same in every theme. Switching theme therefore never means migrating.

• For merchants: Slovenian payment methods (UPN QR, cash on delivery, invoice) and shipping with GLS, DPD and Pošta Slovenije are built in, not added through apps.
• For search engines: structured data for products, a sitemap with hreflang tags, an llms.txt file and automatic 301 redirects when a product URL changes.
• Kept separate from what works today: the link with Bizko for issuing invoices from the shop is in preparation.

When BizkoShop is the right choice and when Shopify is, we compared in Shopify or WooCommerce. Prices and features are on bizkoshop.si.

Sitequiry: a tool that must not exaggerate

Sitequiry checks a website in four dimensions: SEO, speed (real Google PageSpeed measurements for mobile and desktop), readiness for AI answers (AEO) and suitability of the content for citation in generative search (GEO). The hardest part was not collecting the data but keeping the report honest.

Some tools promise a 'ChatGPT visibility score', which cannot be measured reliably. Sitequiry therefore labels every piece of evidence as measured, detected or inferred, and when a measurement fails it says so instead of showing a number. Result pages are excluded from indexing, and every result has its own share link.

The free tool grew into a product with a paid full audit of up to 20 pages, a PDF and CSV report and a re-check after 30 days. Stripe handles payments and VAT; weekly monitoring with email alerts is in preparation.

Tip: We use the same checks as Sitequiry when working on client websites. You can analyse one page free at sitequiry.com or on our free website check page.

Spletiva: verification instead of a form

Spletiva is a directory of Slovenian websites and online stores. It started from the observation that directories are often full of abandoned and duplicate listings. The fix is technical: only someone who verifies ownership of the domain can create a profile, and they then edit it themselves through a user account. The directory grows more slowly, but every listing has someone looking after it. Content is organised by industry and by Slovenia's twelve regions. The directory is at spletiva.si.

What they have in common: five decisions we repeat

• Start with what must never happen. Separated data, verified payments, confirmed ownership and honestly labelled measurements were decided for each product before the first screen.
• Own code where it matters. Bizko and BizkoShop are custom PHP 8 applications, BizkoShop without an external framework. That lets us build features for the Slovenian market directly instead of assembling them from add-ons.
• A trial without barriers. Bizko and BizkoShop can be tried free without a card, Sitequiry analyses one page free without registration, and listing in Spletiva is free.
• Search engines and AI from the start. Hreflang, structured data, sitemaps and llms.txt are part of the architecture, not a fix after launch.
• Planned features kept apart from working ones. In product pages and with clients we state clearly what is in preparation, such as the BizkoShop–Bizko link or weekly monitoring in Sitequiry.

When a custom application makes sense for a business

Our own products taught us above all when a custom application is not needed. A website is enough to present a company, and an existing platform is enough for most shops. A custom application pays off when a business needs a process that existing tools do not cover well, when data are at the core of the business, or when it wants to offer the solution to others as a service.

For such a project it helps to answer three questions at the start: what must never happen to the data, who will take the data further, and how a new user will try the solution before deciding. If you write to us with those answers, the first conversation is much shorter.