Thinking about starting an online store? In this post I aim to go thoroughly through the stages of starting an online store, what you need to consider when starting one, and tips for each stage. This in-depth article will surely help new merchants in particular, but it also works as a checklist for those who have started an online store before.
Through an online store you reach your customers far more effectively than with a brick-and-mortar shop alone. Your customer base is many times bigger: all of Finland, or even the whole EU. Whatever your industry, being visible online is vital for many businesses.
My goal with this post is to go through the different stages of starting an online store and give guidance at each stage. Starting an online store is not especially difficult these days, since there are many tools and ecommerce platforms that let you set up your own store in just hours. In this post I cover starting an online store on Shopify, which is my absolute recommendation.
In the best case, you start building your own online store today, and in a few days you already have your own side-business store ready to sell!
The topics of this post are listed below. If some of them are already familiar, feel free to skip ahead to the next one.
💡 See also: I have published the Online Store with Digital Products guide, which thoroughly covers starting an online store and scaling advertising. The guide also suits merchants selling physical products.
Starting an online store: 8 steps
- Decide your store's market and what products you will sell
- Work out where you will source the products you want, or will you make them yourself?
- Come up with a name for your brand and register a domain for your store
- Choose an ecommerce platform and add content to your store
- List products for sale in your store
- Get your store's look in shape
- Check, test and launch your online store!
- Actively market your new online store
#1 Decide your store's market and what products you will sell
You are starting an ecommerce business, so you need a topic and a market. More precisely, which products you want to sell and who your target audience is.
Choosing your products and product category is a critical part of ecommerce, which is why this stage deserves special attention. Your product choice affects, among other things:
- Sales and margin structure
- The market and competition (are there already big dominant brands in the market?)
- The amount of customer service
- Whether customers buy again after X time (do you get loyal repeat customers?)
Sales and margin structure
Are your products cheap (under €50), mid-priced or expensive (over €500)? Online stores can successfully sell products in many price ranges, but this is worth taking into account in customer acquisition and when planning your product range: it is much easier to sell a cheaper product than a really expensive one, but on the other hand you have to sell hundreds of products costing a few tens of euros to reach the same sales as with products costing thousands.
With cheap products, customer acquisition is also basically cheaper, but acquisition costs (e.g. Google or social media advertising) can easily get too high and make the store unprofitable.
It is also worth thinking about the price range from this angle: you will probably spend the same (or almost the same) time and effort packing and shipping a €25 product as a €150 one.
I have found products in the €50-250 range to be a good price range for online stores. For many consumers, this range is still such that buying does not require much deliberation or price comparison. This is of course just my own observation and is not based on general data, only my own experience.
The market and competition
My recommendation for new merchants is to compete in a market where competition is moderate. It is of course possible to succeed in highly competitive markets, but it takes a lot more marketing budget.
For example, if you decide to start selling wireless headphones, your competitors are not only Verkkokauppa.com, Gigantti or Power but also telecom operators' stores such as Telia and DNA (all of which have huge marketing budgets). Of course, with a sensible strategy and marketing angle it is possible to win market share, but it will not be easy or cheap.
The amount of customer service
Are your products technical, or do they require teaching / practice to use? Do you have to explain the products and how to use them in your marketing, or are they clear to use (like clothing or accessories)?
It is worth thinking in advance about roughly how much customer service the products you sell will require. Ideally, your products are easy to grasp and need no practice or guidance to use. Products breaking can also cause challenges and customer service, like the wireless headphones in the previous point breaking. How does customer service work in that situation?
Do customers buy from your store again
Online merchants still pay far too little attention and time to figuring out and improving customer lifetime value. I have talked about this more, and I also cover it in an interview for Sami Suhonen's well-known Facebook advertising course.
All online merchants know that building the store itself is nowhere near as challenging as acquiring customers. And in ecommerce, in the long run, the biggest cost item will most commonly be customer acquisition, in other words marketing costs.
That is why it is very important to think in advance whether your product(s) will be bought again, or whether you can sell to your existing customers again at all over the next 3, 6 or 12 months.
In some product categories it is really hard to build a lasting customer relationship. It is not necessarily about your products but simply that they are only needed once. An example could be strollers. When a customer buys a brand-new stroller from your store, they are hardly going to buy another stroller. Of course, a broad online store selling baby products has other products in its range too, but you get what I mean.
On the other hand, if an online store sells supplements or sportswear, these can be sold to the same customers many times, supplements at best even monthly.
#2 Work out where you will source the products you want, or will you make them yourself?
What is the next stage in starting an online store once you have decided on the product category and the market? Sourcing and/or making the products themselves!
I sell products I make myself
If you will make the products you sell yourself, this stage is very clear. The most important thing is to define where you get the materials needed to make the products and, if sales volume grows, whether you can make enough products to fill customers' orders.
It is worth thinking about and calculating things such as:
- How long does it take you to make one product?
- How much do all the materials needed to make it cost?
- When you need more materials to make products, are there minimum order quantities or long delivery times?
I buy the products I sell
If you do not make the products you sell yourself, there are several sourcing channels and business models. The most common are:
- Acting as a reseller for an existing brand's products
- Sourcing (and branding) your own products
Starting to resell a well-known brand requires negotiating with the brand or its current importer. Depending on the products and the brand, the terms can be very strict and the requirements high.
Probably one of the most common ways for new merchants to start selling is to source products themselves and brand their own product line and/or online store. One of the best-known channels is Alibaba, a huge Chinese marketplace full of manufacturers of different products. On Alibaba you will find tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of different products.
Having ordered products from Alibaba myself, I recommend being especially careful when choosing sellers. Favor sellers with lots of good reviews and, ideally, long experience as an Alibaba merchant. This is easy to check from the Gold Supplier badge and the number of years as an Alibaba merchant.
Also keep in mind the EU General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR): when you import products from outside the EU, you need a responsible person in the EU, and the manufacturer's details must be shown on the product page.
With different manufacturers it is worth carefully negotiating minimum order quantities, the price of any sample orders, and delivery times and methods. I recommend ordering a sample before placing a bigger order so you can still check the quality. It is quite possible that the quality does not always meet your expectations, which is why it pays to talk to several suppliers at the same time and order samples from a few, so you find the best partner and manufacturer for your products.
#3 Come up with a name for your brand and register a domain for your store
Naming your brand and online store is an interesting, and at times frustrating, stage. I recommend thinking the name through carefully, but keep your head here and do not get stuck going round different names for ages. Here is a short checklist for choosing and thinking about the name:
✅ Your store's name should be easy to pronounce and remember.
✅ The name does not have to relate directly to your products, but if it does, it helps customers remember it.
✅ Make sure the name has free .fi and .com domains. I always recommend registering both to avoid possible problems.
✅ Make sure the name is free on social media.
❌ Never copy a name from others. Variations too close to other brands' names can also cause problems, especially when the topic and product category are the same.
#4 Choose an ecommerce platform and add content to your store
We finally get to the point, building the online store. There are plenty of ecommerce platforms on the market. One absolute favorite, though, is Shopify, which is excellent for new merchants but also works as your store grows. It is easy to grasp, and you can set up the store entirely without technical skills.
I have written several Shopify articles, and you can read about Shopify pricing here, for example. You will also find my in-depth Shopify article here, which covers Shopify's pros and cons and gives instructions for setting up a Shopify store.
Sign up for Shopify or get in touch to have your store registered
By visiting Shopify's website you can sign up and start a three-day free trial. After that the first three months cost €1/month, so you have time to get your store in shape before paying the full monthly price.
With Shopify's starter offer you get three free trial days and then the first three months for €1/month. You can get started here!
Add text and content pages
Once you have signed up for Shopify, it is worth starting by writing your content pages and adding products. Only after these stages do you start customizing the look (I will come back to that later in this article). This order works because, with most of the content in place, you immediately see how visual changes affect your products or product presentation, for example.
The most common content pages in online stores include:
- Shipping methods page
- Payment methods page
- Exchanges and returns page
- Contact page
- Privacy policy and Terms of use and delivery
Plus any other content you want to feature in your store, such as product sizing, warranties, usage information, tutorials etc.
You can easily add content pages in Shopify by going to Content > Pages on the left and adding and writing the content pages you want.
Go through your Shopify store's settings
I recommend going through all your store's settings in one go, point by point. You will find the settings under Settings in the bottom left corner. In the settings you add payment methods, shipping, your company's contact and tax details, edit the notifications sent to customers (such as order confirmation emails) and add and remove your store's staff accounts, among other things.
#5 List products for sale in your store
In an online store, products are sold mainly with product images (and videos), the product description and any customer reviews. So these are absolutely critical to your store's success. Weak or incomplete product information also burdens customer service, because you have to answer questions that could have been covered well in the product details. If your customers do not get clear information about a product, it is at least likely that no order will be placed.
Adding products in Shopify is very straightforward. You can add and edit products under Products in the left menu. Remember clear naming, a comprehensive product description and high-quality, varied product images. Products also affect your store's search visibility, so it pays to invest in product details and images for SEO reasons alone.
Tip! I recommend adding all images in the same format (e.g. 2048 x 2048 px squares, so zooming stays sharp). This makes sure the product listing, i.e. the category page (on Shopify, category pages are called "Collections"), stays consistent and clear, and the product page stays a sensible size. Some Shopify themes show product images in their original size, and if an image is very tall, for example, the product page can "break" visually.
#6 Get your store's look in shape
Now the main content is added, products are listed for sale and the settings are in order. Next it makes sense to customize the store's look. Since we already added products and content in the earlier stages, the visual edits are now easier.
Choose the Shopify theme you want for your store
Shopify offers an extensive theme store, where you will find many different types of themes for your store. A theme is the so-called template of an online store, which defines your store's structure, look and functionality. All themes can be customized in terms of images, colors, fonts, text, elements and functionality, among other things. Some customizations are theme-specific, though, so for example the cart style cannot be changed in every theme. There are other theme-specific limitations too.
When choosing a theme, the important thing is to find a style that already comes closest to how you want your own store to look. This 1) makes customizing the theme easier, since you already like the style, and 2) speeds up the process of building the site.
Some themes are free, but I really recommend considering a paid premium theme. They offer many more options and customization styles than free themes and often look visually better.
During the trial you can build your own Shopify store in peace and try and customize paid premium themes free of charge before buying. With Shopify's starter offer you get three free trial days and then the first three months for €1/month. You can get started here!
Customize the theme to your liking
Once you have chosen a theme and added it to your store, you can customize it to your liking. You will find the theme editor in Shopify by going to Sales channels > Online Store > Themes and choosing Customize next to the theme.
The theme editor is clear to use, and even a beginner gets into it easily after a little familiarization. I recommend starting the customization by going through the left menu point by point. Take your time exploring everything you can customize in the theme you chose. Add logos and images, change the order of elements, and the colors and fonts.
Shopify's theme editor requires no technical skills at all, so you get into it quickly.
#7 Check, test and launch your online store!
Finally! You have now finished your online store and the launch is at the door, almost. Before launching your store, go carefully through everything point by point once more:
- Store settings: are shipping methods set up? Are the right shipping costs defined?
- Can the return policy be clearly found in the store?
- Do all products have product images and the right prices?
In practice, it pays to go through the whole store in general and check that everything has been done right and is in order. It is also worth testing that all the links in your store work, so customers can navigate between pages and products.
Once everything has been gone through one more time, it is time to take your store live! You do this easily in Shopify under Settings > Plan. First choose a Shopify plan. Read more about the differences between the monthly plans.
After choosing a plan, go to Sales channels > Online Store > Preferences. Scrolling down, you will find the option to remove the password from your store. By removing the password, your site goes live!
#8 Actively market your new online store
Your new online store is now live, yay!
But where do the traffic and customers come from? Unlike a shop inside a busy shopping mall, an online store has no ready flow of customers. These days, with competition really tough online in many industries, you can be sure customers will most likely not stumble on your store by chance either.
As I mentioned at the start of this post, customer acquisition is usually, for every online merchant, A) the biggest cost and B) the most time-consuming part. Below I go through some of the most common marketing channels online stores should master; if not all at once, then gradually start trying different channels and find the most profitable ones for your own store.
💡‼️ I have created several downloadable guides for online merchants that help both new merchants get started and entrepreneurs who have already launched their store grow their sales. You can take a closer look at my products here!
Search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing
Your online store will not be found in search engines (e.g. Google) right away. In fact, getting into search results may take from weeks to a couple of months, not to mention reaching Google's first page, which in competitive industries you may not reach for months.
By making sure your store has high-quality, clearly written and comprehensive content, you make sure your site (hopefully) ranks in Google's search results for exactly the keywords that are relevant to you. By adding a blog to your store and regularly writing articles about your industry and products, you improve your chances of ranking in search results.
Like many other ecommerce platforms, Shopify mostly works really well from Google's point of view, so a new Shopify merchant does not need to think about technical SEO on Shopify. The only thing I recommend paying attention to is the meta data of pages and categories, i.e. the texts shown in Google's search results (page title = the heading on Google's results page and meta description = the text on Google's results page).
Social media (organic)
Every business should be on social media, and for online stores in particular (depending a little on the industry, of course) it is important. Social media will probably be one of the first channels where you find new customers for your store.
The share of organic social media reach has shrunk year after year (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok), but I still see it as important to keep your business's social media accounts active. For many online merchants, active social channels are also a good customer service channel (e.g. Facebook Messenger).
Please note, however, that in terms of time, organic social media is one of the biggest time sinks. At the same time, the commercial benefit (= sales) from it is almost without exception one of the weakest. So I definitely recommend spending most of your time and resources on the other marketing actions presented in this post.
PPC advertising: Google Ads and social media
PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising means paid advertising based on cost per click. The best known include Google search advertising, Google Shopping advertising and Meta advertising on Facebook and Instagram (run through Meta Ads Manager).
I would argue that the most significant and most important customer acquisition channel for a new online merchant will be one, or both, of the paid advertising channels: Google and Facebook.
Do you want to learn more about Facebook advertising in particular, how to do it right and how to grow an online store with paid advertising? Take a look at my guides here and get going right away!
Email marketing and automations
Email still works really well for many online merchants. And it does not just "work well"; it is often even the most profitable channel relative to the time and budget spent. I definitely recommend collecting an email list from the very first day. Email does not grow into a huge channel overnight; it takes building a quality marketing list continuously over a long time, so the sooner you start, the sooner you benefit from your customer list.
With email, keep in mind that everyone who has joined your email list has decided to subscribe to your newsletter themselves (nobody ends up on a list by accident, or at least they should not). So these customers want to receive your marketing. That makes it especially effective, as long as you remember to use your newsletters regularly.
I also recommend at least a few small automations for every online merchant. These email automations include, for example:
- Abandoned cart reminder
- Thank you for your order emails
- Product review requests
Email automations are automatic messages, a few newsletters long, that customers receive after taking certain actions in the online store. In this case, a product review automation might go out about 2 weeks after the order and ask the customer to review the product they ordered.
Read my post on different email marketing apps for Shopify.
Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing has become hugely common, and at the same time all of us are "influencers" these days with a few hundred Instagram followers on our accounts. Done right, influencer marketing can be very profitable, but it is worth carefully considering whether it suits your store's products. Think about things such as:
- The influencer's topics: does the influencer talk about things related to your store's product range?
- The influencer's reach and engagement: pay attention to follower count, the quality of comments and the reach of posts.
- The influencer's other collaborations: does the influencer do several collaborations a week or fewer? Influencers with bigger followings often have more authentic content, a moderate number of collaborations and better results from them. Then again, the fee for the collaboration is clearly higher, and so is the risk.
It is quite likely that new online stores get better results from well-executed PPC advertising, but campaigns with influencers also have their place and can bring good "sales spikes" to your store. Trying it out will tell you whether influencers suit your products.
Finally
If you made it this far, I hope my post has sparked some thoughts and enthusiasm for a possible online store of your own. As you surely noticed, starting an online store is not as big a challenge as people tend to think. Growing a successful online store with lots of sales is a whole different matter. So that starting an online store does not stay just an idea: With Shopify's starter offer you get three free trial days and then the first three months for €1/month. You can get started here!
Hi again! 👋 Some of the links in this post are affiliate links, and I really hope you use them. 🖤 Clicking a link costs you nothing extra, so feel free to explore the sites and tools recommended in this post. If you end up becoming a paying customer through my link, I get a small commission.
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