How to Start an Online Store: 10 Simple Steps

There are 10 key steps to starting an online store: identify your target audience, choose what to sell, create your brand, register your business, choose an ecommerce website builder, design your website, set up an inventory and stock system, create a checkout process, set up your domain, and launch a marketing plan.

Whether you’re launching a business or just getting your brick-and-mortar store a bit more attention, ecommerce can boost your profits. It’s a steadily growing industry, and could account for over 30% of all retail sales by 2026. But it comes with unique challenges and pitfalls.

This guide will cover the actionable steps you can take to succeed, along with our picks for the best ecommerce website builders to help you branch out and reach new customers in a meaningful way.

Also, if you’re in the market for an ecommerce website builder, check out our helpful comparison page to get the best deals on the top providers.

In this guide:

• 10 steps to creating an online store
• How to create an online store for free
• Verdict: What’s the best way to create an online store?
• Frequently Asked Questions

10 Steps to Creating an Online Store

Setting up an online store might sound like a trying task, but the reality is that these simple steps will make it easier than ever. Just follow along and we’ll have you selling products online before the end of the day.

1. Identify Your Target Audience
2. Choose What to Sell
3. Create Your Brand
4. Register Your Business
5. Choose an Ecommerce Website Builder
6. Design Your Website
7. Set Up an Inventory and Stock System
8. Create a Basket, Checkout, and Sales Process
9. Set Up Your Domain
10. Launch a Marketing Plan

If you’re looking to create a site at zero cost, you can jump to our section below on how to create an online store for free. However, before you jump down there, just know that it’s certainly not our top recommendation if you’re serious about selling online, even just as a side hustle!

Step 1: Identify Your Target Audience

Before your business can go anywhere, first things first – identify your target audience. This process involves a few key considerations. To begin with – and most importantly – how viable is your niche? In other words, is there a market for what you’re offering?

Once you’ve answered this question, it’s time to establish buyer personas. The more intimately you know your customers, the easier it will be to sell to them. Think about target demographics, locations, and related interests. This stage is vital – when it comes to marketing your products or service, having a firm customer in mind is really helpful.

Don’t neglect this last step – it’s important to think about what you’re interested in. Setting up an ecommerce business isn’t a picnic. When times get tough, you’re much more likely to stay in the game if you’re passionate about you sell.

Step 2: Choose What to Sell

Now that you’ve figured out your audience, it’s time to think about what to sell them. For this, you’ll need to decide which pain points you want to solve – what are your customers looking for, and where are they looking for it? This will require a competitor audit to determine which brands are currently leading the market – and how they’re doing it.

Next, you need to address how you’re going to source your products. How much does it cost to manufacture them, and can you ship them cheaply? Keep on top of product trends to make sure you’re always ahead of the game. At the same time, which products have consistently performed well on the marketplace?

Then, it’s a question of where your products come from. Are you buying them wholesale from a supplier? Perhaps you’re creating them yourself to order, or working directly with a manufacturer? Whatever the case may be, you should always have one eye on your margins.

Step 3: Create Your Brand

Your store’s brand is more than just a logo and slogan: You need to figure out how best to position yourself in order to draw in the customers who are interested in what you’re selling. Do you sell running gear? Furniture? Horror-themed T-shirts? They have different audiences.

Do a little research into what other online stores in your niche look like, and see if you can learn from them. You might want to try building a demographic map of what your audience might look like, from their age, gender, and occupation, to their income levels, geographic locations, and general opinions.

Once you have an idea, try picking out a potential color scheme and a logo idea. If you don’t have the skills to create a logo in Photoshop, you could try Canva or a gig-working site to get a designer to create one for you. Every good website builder will have a way for you to upload the logo you chose. If funds are a little tight, you could even opt for a free AI logo generator.

Eventually, you’ll want to have a set of assets that can keep your brand fresh. This could include product photos or videos as well as graphics.

Step 4: Register Your Business

Before your business can start taking payments, you’ll need to register it within your state. To do this, you’ll first need to consider your business structure – sole proprietorship, limited liability company (LLC), and more. Once you’ve figured this out, it’s time to register with the relevant body.

Typically, a small business will register as an LLC, which protects your personal assets in the event of legal action. This process will vary state to state, so check with a business registration service like LegalZoom to find out which information you’ll need to provide. Other types of registration that you might be required to apply for include a tax ID number, trademarks, and, for nonprofits, tax-exemption status.

Step 5: Choose an Ecommerce Website Builder

The days of building your website from scratch are over. You don’t need to be able to code or even be technically proficient to get a site up and running, and the same is true for online stores. With an ecommerce website builder, you’ll be walked through the process with ease so you can get your online store up and running without too much hassle.

But which one are you going to choose? There are plenty of great ecommerce website builders out there, each with their own strengths and weaknesses depending on your needs.

Our research shows that Shopify is the best website builder for ecommerce, closely followed by Wix, with the latter being more geared towards business marketing and designs.

Honorable mention goes to Squarespace, as it offers stunning design and template options with solid functionality for smaller businesses. Some website builders, like Wix’s Editor X (currently transitioning to Wix Studio) have advanced commerce tools and a back-end aimed at designers and creatives.

Check out the table below to see how other ecommerce website builders match up against each other, and read on for a more in-depth dive into our top three options.

Shopify

Whether you’re looking to launch an online store or just want to get a basic website up and running, Shopify ticks all the right boxes. It’s massive selection of features, robust analytics, and ecommerce-focused templates all add up to the best platform for ecommerce website building around.

Larger organizations with huge inventory and lots of transactions in particular will love Shopify, as it offers granular features perfect for a wide range of needs.

Arguably the best aspect of Shopify is that it offers some serious multi-channel options for your sales. You can integrate everything from social sales to your website in one location, so you’re getting the complete sales picture for your business. The platform’s detailed tools help managers boost efficiency in ways that aren’t always obvious: One June 2024 update delivers improved analytics and reporting, for instance.

Pick a quick 3-day free Shopify trial with the Tech.co deal, and you’ll get the next month for just one dollar. And for more tips on how to make a site that sells, read our guide to building a profitable site here.

The downsides? Shopify can be expensive, and Wix or Squarespace arguably offer better design tools. Still, if you’re a business focused on selling large or small, Shopify is a no-brainer.

Wix

Wix doesn’t quite beat Shopify, but it comes within a hair: It’s easy to use, affordable and offers great templates for users looking to make a good first impression. Whether you’re looking to launch an online store or just want to get a basic website up and running, Wix offers some seriously advanced business tools.

With Ascend by Wix – a marketing and customer management suite – you’ll be able to organize and automate a range of business operations, from promoting your business with marketing emails to giving customers help and support with chatbots. The platform also introduced an Afterpay integration in November 2023, so that your customers can buy now and pay later.

While Wix is easy to use, the learning curve can be a bit steep. But once you get going, you should have no problem getting your website set up. Simply put, Wix is the best website builder for ecommerce available (and also the best website builder for Mac users, according to our research!)

Wix also has a free plan that will let you build and publish your website, but you won’t be able to sell any products on it. We’ll talk more about how to create an online store for free later in the article (spoiler – it’s not our recommended way of doing things!).

Building an online store yourself with a CMS

If you want to go the DIY route, you can always find a reliable hosting provider and build your online store with WordPress or your preferred Content Management System (CMS). Still, you aren’t going to want to try this if you’re not technically proficient enough to pull it off, as bugs and other issues could crash your online store before your first purchase.

If you feel this is the route for you, first you’re going to need a web hosting provider to get your site online. Our top-rated pick is Bluehost, as it’s easy to use and reliable enough for even the biggest online store. Check out our list of the best web hosting providers for more information.

Step 6: Design Your Website

This used to be one of the most complicated parts of constructing a website. You’d either have to hire an expensive and time-consuming web designer to get the job done, or be a pretty handy coder yourself.

Fortunately, those days are long gone. Instead, ecommerce website builders will give you templates to base your website around, which give you the ability to control the design of individual website pages and their content. They’ll offer editing tools to help you tweak the design as well: Squarespace has one of the easiest editors to use.

For example, you’ll be able to create standardized product pages for everything you sell, or pages with FAQs or contact details for your business.

Some ecommerce website builders offer hundreds of different templates, so it’s worth taking a bit of time and being prudent with your selection – you might find yourself stuck with it!

If you’d like a bit more flexibility in your web design, several sites offer an in-built AI website builder to automate large portions of the setup process – while giving you the ability to suggest prompts. Wix’s Artificial Design Intelligence platform, for example, will build a website in seconds and give you the tools to tinker with the design.

Step 7: Set Up an Inventory and Stock System

Now you’ve picked your ecommerce website builder, settled on a brand direction, and chosen your template, it’s time to set up your inventory and stock-keeping system. Keeping an accurate inventory is key, as customers will shy away from an online store with too many unavailable products.

The best dedicated ecommerce platforms will have this functionality baked into their systems. However, with some website builders (such as Wix), you might have to install an app or plugin from their app stores to gain access to this functionality.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll need to upload your actual products onto your site. Some ecommerce website builders, such as Shopify and Squarespace, allow you to seamlessly bulk upload products, which is handy if you sell a wide range of goods. You’ll need to make sure you have high quality photography to hand, and lots of product information to make sure your customers are informed about what products they’re actually buying.

After your products are in the system, you’ll be able to keep an eye on the number of products you have in stock through your platform’s dashboards.

Monitoring inventory with the Shopify dashboard. Source: Tech.co

Step 8: Create a Basket, Checkout and Sales Process

Your products are on the site, but they’ll be no good to you or your customers if nobody can buy them.

When you pick an ecommerce or online store template, you’ll likely be given a checkout page ready to go. This means you won’t have to spend ages creating one from scratch. It’s worth bearing in mind, though, that there will still be a level of setup to go through. You’ll need to connect a bank account and set up a payment processor, for example, but most sites will guide you through this.

It’s also worth remembering that not all ecommerce website builder checkouts are created equal. For example, BigCommerce doesn’t let you change the information you require from your customers when they buy a product.

You want to make sure that your checkout page is easy to understand and appears trustworthy. You don’t want customers changing their mind on a purchase at the final hurdle because your checkout looks a little shady. If in doubt, show it to your friends and family to get some honest feedback.

A Wix-constructed checkout page. Source: Tech.co

Step 9: Set Up Your Domain

Every website needs a domain. Ours, for example, is www.tech.co.

Some ecommerce website builders will offer to host your domain as part of their service. For example, Wix and Squarespace offer free domain hosting when you buy one of their plans on an annual package.

However, it’s always worth checking out the prices and services of third-party hosting companies. You’ll be able to connect your domain from a third-party host to any ecommerce website builder you like. Bluehost is our top-rated web hosting provider, but there are plenty of good web hosting options out there if you’re on the market.

Find out more – How Much Does Web Hosting Cost?

Step 10: Launch a Marketing Plan

Together, a good marketing plan and the right Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) are among the biggest differences between a failed online store and a success story. But the right approach will vary depending on your audience.

Start by gathering data on how your website is used. You can set up a Google Analytics account for free, and most website builders will also offer their own reporting tools, such as Shopify Reports, which logs all traffic and sales, automatically determining conversion rates.

Following a good SEO checklist can help push your website higher in the search results for certain terms. You’ll want to include the keywords that you want to rank for across four areas of your website: Title tags, meta descriptions, page headings, and image alt texts. We’ve ranked the best website builders for SEO over here.

Finally, you can try a range of outreach campaigns. Facebook ads and Google ads are a popular choice, but you can also try guest blog posts, paid content marketing, newsletter ads, loyalty programs, giveaways, or paying an influencer.

How to Create an Online Store for Free

If you’re on a strict budget but still want to create an online store, you’re in luck! There are some ecommerce website builders that will allow you to sell your products online without charging a monthly fee.

Square Online is the most notable example, allowing you to sell unlimited products on its free plan, a surprisingly generous offer. However, Square Online does charge transaction fees (2.9% + $0.30) and you’ll be limited in the features you can use. Still, this is a great way to get started when you don’t know how much you’ll be able to sell. Plus, it integrates perfectly with Square POS, which can be helpful for those with a physical store as well.

There are also some sites that offer free website building, but you won’t be able to actually sell until you opt for a paid plan. Wix is one of them, allowing a free plan that is hampered with non-custom URLs and other limitations in features. You can build the website, though, which will give you a good jumping off point before you make your sales.

The other avenue is using the free trials of popular website builders like Squarespace and Shopify. Each provides a free trial, so you can get two weeks to test out the platform before you commit to a paid plan to sell your products online.

Generally speaking, you’re going to want to go with a paid plan when setting up your online store. While you may be saving money, the limitations far outweigh the savings, leading to a net loss for your business. With plans starting as low as $23 per month, you’ll save a lot of time and money in the long run.

Frequently Asked Questions