How we built the garmin.az online store for the official Garmin distributor

Garmin.az is the online store of the official distributor of Garmin products in Azerbaijan. Smartwatches, handheld GPS devices, bike computers, marine electronics and accessories are gathered in one catalog, and every product has its own page, price and stock status. The site was built by the Shaftali.az team and is one of our online store development projects.

Below we explain how the store works for shoppers and for the distributor, what's inside it and which decisions matter when building a site like this. We counted the figures about the store on the site itself on 14 November 2026.

What Garmin.az is and who it's for

Garmin.az is the website of the official Garmin distributor in Azerbaijan. As the “About us” page says, the company has represented the brand for more than 20 years and sells original products with an official warranty and local service support. That defines the site's job. The shopper needs to find the original device, see its price and whether it's in stock, and then contact the seller easily.

The catalog has a broad audience. Someone into running, swimming or triathlon looks at Forerunner, Fenix and Venu watches. Someone heading into the mountains or on an expedition looks for an inReach satellite communicator or a GPSMAP or eTrex navigator. A cyclist picks an Edge bike computer and a Tacx trainer for training at home. A boat owner finds radar, VHF radios and STRIKER fishfinders in the Marine section. And someone who needs a new strap or charging cable for their watch goes to Accessories.

The price range is wide too: the catalog has a 65 AZN silicone strap as well as a 6,000 AZN MARQ Commander watch. To show such different products in one store, the catalog structure has to be clear, and the shopper should reach the right section in two clicks.

What the home page tells the shopper

On desktop, the black bar at the very top of every page reads “Garmin.az is the official distributor in Azerbaijan”. Someone searching online for an expensive watch first wants to know whether the product is original and who provides the warranty, so that answer is right in front of them.

The home page opens with a slider. It currently features three models: Fenix 9, Venu X1 and Instinct 3 AMOLED. Each slide's “Learn more” button opens that model's page directly, so the shopper doesn't have to look for it in the catalog. Below come the “Latest Watches” feed, two large banners and then three short blocks: professional support, delivery within Azerbaijan, and original products backed by official distributor status. At the end of the page are the latest blog posts, and the footer has the address, phone, email and social media.

For the distributor, the home page works as a shop window. When a new model arrives, it can go into the slider and the “Latest Watches” feed, while the other blocks answer the same questions every day: who is this store, where is it and how do I contact it.

How the catalog is structured

“Products” opens in the top menu and shows five categories. We counted how many products each category had on 14 November 2026:

That adds up to 362 products, and each product sits in only one category, so the catalog has no duplicate cards. A category page shows products 12 per page, with pagination at the bottom and the number of results found at the top.

The left column has search within the category (“Find a watch”), an “Availability” filter, a “Latest Products” block with the most recently added models and links to other categories. The filter has three options: “In Stock”, “Out of Stock” and “All Products”. With one click, the shopper can keep only the models they can buy right now.

A product card shows the photo, name, price and stock badge. The photo on the card can be swiped, so the model can be seen from several angles without leaving the list. Some models have no price shown on the site, and on those cards the shopper asks the seller for the price.

There's also site-wide search. Clicking the magnifying glass at the top opens a search panel, and after two letters the results appear as you type. They're split into three groups: products with a photo and short description, articles and services. Typing “forerunner”, for example, brings up the Forerunner 570 watches right away.

The model code is in the product name

A single Garmin model comes in many variants: case size, material, color, strap. In the smartwatches section alone, 40 products have “Fenix” in their name. That's why Garmin's official code is written into every product name, for example “Fenix 9 Pro - 47 mm Amoled Graphite Titan (010-04336-26)”. When a shopper sends a link or a code on WhatsApp, the seller knows straight away which variant they mean, and two watches with the same name can't be mixed up.

Any store with a lot of color and size variants runs into this.

What the shopper sees on the product page

The product page is where the shopper makes the decision, so the key information fits on one screen. Thumbnails are on the left and a large gallery in the middle; the Fenix 9 Pro, for example, has six photos. On the right are the model name, price, short description, stock status in the “Available” line and the category. Below comes the long description: sports profiles, GPS and navigation, health metrics, battery and everyday features.

The page ends with a “Similar Products” feed. Someone looking at the Fenix 9 Pro sees the Forerunner 570 and Venu 4 there with their prices. If the model they're looking at is out of stock, the shopper can move on to a similar one instead of closing the page. There are share buttons too (Facebook, X and LinkedIn). People often consult family or friends before buying an expensive watch, and sending the link takes one click.

Out-of-stock products aren't removed from the catalog. They stay with a red “Out of Stock” badge and can be separated with the filter. This has two benefits. The shopper sees which models the distributor works with and can ask about the one they need. And a page Google already knows doesn't disappear: when the model comes back, its URL is still in place.

How selling without a cart works

Garmin.az has no cart or online payment; every path on the site leads to the seller. On desktop, every page has an “Ask a question” button at the top, and on a phone the “Contact” item in the menu opens the same page: a form with first name, last name, email, phone and message fields, plus the address, phone, email and a Google map of the office. The green WhatsApp button in the bottom right corner shows on every page, on phones too. We also made direct contact between buyer and seller the main path on the icare24.az rental platform, where the renter calls the listing owner or messages them on WhatsApp.

This model suits a distributor's store well. The devices are expensive and often raise technical questions. Shoppers want to know whether a strap fits their watch (22 mm QuickFit or 18 mm Quick Release), how a radar or fishfinder is mounted on a boat, and who will update the maps on a navigator. The text on a product page can't cover all of that, while a five-minute chat with the seller settles it. Stock also keeps changing, and the seller confirms availability in the conversation.

To help you pick the model that suits your business, we put the two approaches side by side:

Often the right answer is a mix of the two. Cheap, simple items like straps and cables can be sold with a cart, and expensive technical devices by inquiry.

How the store works in three languages

The language selector is in the top left corner of the site: Azərbaycan, Русский and English. When the language changes, the menu changes along with the category names («Ağıllı saatlar», «Умные часы», «Smartwatches»), the color in product names (“Boz Titan” becomes “Graphite Titan” in the Russian and English versions), the short and long descriptions, the stock badge and the category page titles. Some shoppers prefer to read in Russian, and the English version is needed for foreigners living in the country and for partners abroad.

In a three-language catalog, the texts take the most time, because every product's name and description is written separately for each language. So on a project like this we agree upfront who does the translation and which language new products are added in first.

On Garmin.az the chosen language is stored in the session, and the page URL doesn't change. If it matters for the business that the Russian and English versions show up separately in Google, each language gets its own URL (for example /ru/ and /en/) and hreflang tags. It's easier to make this decision at the start of the project, because later it touches every URL on the site.

Service, blog and document sections

An official distributor's work continues after the sale: service, map updates, technical questions. That's why the site has a separate “Services” section. It currently describes the Garmin GPS navigator service: installation of original navigators, map updates, device setup and technical support. The service page has its own questions at the bottom, for example how to update a navigator's maps.

Posts in the “Articles” section are split into three categories: Smartwatches, GPS and Smart Scale. There are posts about the Garmin Index S2 smart scale, the eTrex Touch navigator and the fēnix 8 watch, and the latest posts also appear on the home page and the “About us” page. The blog gives the store two things: shoppers get to know a model more closely, and Google finds extra pages on the site that people search for by model name.

The site also has a privacy policy page. Any site whose contact form collects names, phone numbers and email addresses has to have one.

How we prepared the store for Google

Most shoppers come to an online store from search, and they usually search by model name: “Garmin Fenix 9 Pro”, “Forerunner 570 price”, “Garmin watch Baku”. That's why every product and every category on garmin.az has its own page and readable URL. The URL contains the model name and code, for example /product-info/fenix-9-pro-47-mm-amoled-boz-titan-010-04336-26. On top of that:

• every product and category has its own title and description tags; for smartwatches, for example, the English version has “Garmin Smartwatches | Fitness & GPS Watches in Azerbaijan”;
• the H1 heading on a product page is the full product name together with its code;
• pages have a canonical tag, so filtered and paginated lists don't compete with the category itself in search;
• the site opens over HTTPS, and the old http address redirects to https with a 301;
• the sitemap.xml file includes category and product pages;
• Google Search Console is verified and Google Analytics 4 is connected, so the store owner sees which pages get viewed;
• blog posts add extra pages for searches by model and category name.

This list is the SEO baseline for any store. As the store grows, product markup (Schema.org), category texts and new blog posts are added on top.

How the store opens on a phone

These days people often visit an online store from their phone, so we checked garmin.az's mobile view separately. When we measured on 14 November 2026 in Chrome's phone mode (Pixel 7 screen), the main content of a product page appeared in about 0.4 seconds, and the home page's in about 1.1 seconds. The server responded in around 0.3 seconds. These numbers vary with internet speed, but they give the overall picture. Pages fit the width of the screen, with no sideways scrolling.

On a phone the menu collapses into one button, and “Products” opens inside it. On the product page the gallery takes up most of the screen, while the WhatsApp button stays in the corner, so the shopper can reach it from any page.

The weight of the catalog comes mostly from images. The hosting's CDN serves images to the browser in WebP automatically. One product image we checked came to about 464 KB as PNG and about 48 KB as WebP, nearly ten times lighter. The site is written in Laravel on PHP 8.2. Laravel is convenient for a catalog: when the store grows, a cart, payment and a customer account can be built on top of the same product database.

How an online store like this is built

A store the size of Garmin.az (catalog, three languages, stock filter, search, blog, service pages and sales by inquiry) falls into the standard online store range in our price list. With us, a project like this usually costs 1,500–3,000 AZN and takes about a month; the exact amount depends on the catalog size and features. The stages usually go like this:

1. Days 1–3Structure and sales model We agree on the categories, the product card fields (code, price, stock, gallery), the languages and how sales will work: with a cart, by inquiry or a mix.
2. Days 4–9Design Home, category, product and contact pages. We think through every screen for the phone first.
3. Days 10–20Development and admin panel Catalog, filter, search, translations, forms, the WhatsApp button and a panel for adding products.
4. Days 21–26Product upload and SEO Names, codes, photos, descriptions, title and description tags for every page, sitemap.
5. Days 27–30Testing and launch Checks on phone and desktop, form testing, connecting Search Console and Analytics, and opening the site on its domain.

Uploading products affects the timeline more than anything else. If the catalog is ready in an Excel file, products can be bulk-uploaded. If every product's text and photos are prepared from scratch, and in three languages on top of that, this work can take longer than the development itself.

Domain, hosting and SSL are free for the first year, basic SEO setup is included in the price, and corporate email is also set up free of charge. When a cart, online payment, a customer account and advanced filters are needed, the project moves into the full-featured store range: 3,000–7,000 AZN and up to 2 months. All our rates are on the prices page.

What to prepare before ordering an online store

To build a catalog store like Garmin.az quickly and properly, it helps to have answers to these questions before work starts:

• a product list in one file: name, model code, category, price and stock status;
• photos of each product, ideally on a white background and from several angles;
• how many languages the site will have, who will do the translations, and whether the Russian and English versions need their own URLs in Google;
• how sales will work: with a cart and online payment, with an inquiry form and WhatsApp, or both;
• who will update prices and stock and how quickly, and how a product without a listed price will look on the site;
• texts about delivery, warranty and service, the address, working hours and contact numbers;
• what's needed for Google and social media: product markup (price and stock), the image and title shown when a link is shared, a blog plan;
• the domain, corporate email addresses and the employee who will manage the site day to day.

We go through most of these questions together at the first meeting and make decisions there on the ones that don't have answers yet.

Frequently asked questions

How do I buy a product on Garmin.az?

The site has no cart. After choosing a product, you can send the form with the “Ask a question” button (“Contact” in the menu on a phone), message on WhatsApp with the button in the corner, or call the number on the contact page. You confirm everything about the model, price and stock directly with the seller.

How many products does Garmin.az have?

As of 14 November 2026, it has 362 products in five categories: 151 in Accessories, 133 in Smartwatches, 43 in Marine, 19 in Handheld GPS devices, and 16 in Bike computers and Tacx.

What languages is the site in?

Azerbaijani, Russian and English. The language is chosen from the menu at the top, and along with the menu, the categories, product names, descriptions and stock badge change too.

How much does an online store like this cost and how long does it take?

With us, a standard store the size of Garmin.az usually costs 1,500–3,000 AZN and takes about a month. Domain, hosting and SSL are free for the first year, basic SEO setup is included in the price, and corporate email is set up free of charge.

Can a cart and online payment be added later?

Yes. If the catalog is built properly, a cart, online payment and a customer account are added on top of the existing product database. With us, a store with these features counts as full-featured: as a new project it's in the 3,000–7,000 AZN range and takes up to 2 months. We price the expansion of an existing site separately, based on the scope of work.

Should out-of-stock products be removed from the site?

Usually not. On Garmin.az, such products stay in the catalog with an “Out of Stock” badge, and shoppers can hide them with the filter. As long as the page stays, shoppers can ask about the model, and the URL Google has found doesn't disappear.

How is a catalog store different from a regular corporate website?

A corporate website presents the company, while a catalog store shows each product separately: with its own page, price, stock status, photos and a URL that can be found in search. That's why a store needs categories, a filter, search and an admin panel that makes adding products easy.

What technology is Garmin.az built with?

The site is written in Laravel on PHP 8.2. The hosting's CDN serves images to the browser in WebP format, and Google Analytics 4 and Search Console are connected.