How to start an online store and sell online

Wix

Try free for 14 days

Our top-rated web builder and top-rated ecommerce platform, Wix is a great fit for anyone that wants to create an online store thanks to:

• An unrivalled choice of over 70 ecommerce-specific templates
• Intuitive design tools give lots of creative freedom
• A good range of sales features

From our first-hand user testing, we found Wix to be a robust ecommerce website builder because it’s highly intuitive and accessible to those that are amateurs in website building. For instance, it recommends which items to put into your website based on the type, industry and name of the page. It also has an extensive App Market, which prepares you with all the sales functionalities you need to boost your conversions.

Shopify

Try free for 3 days, then pay just £1 for first month

If you’ve got grand ambitions for your online business, then Shopify could be your ideal partner. Its prices are top end but you’ll get access to:

• Templates specifically designed to turn browsers into customers
• Advanced sales features like multi-channel integration
• An extensive app store full of useful add-ons and extra features

From our independent research, we found Shopify has a wide range of sales features and is a great platform to use if you’re looking into dropshipping. It also has a solid affiliate program, which we’ve determined is the best for ecommerce brands.

To see how Wix and Shopify compare to some of their rivals, check out our ecommerce platform comparison page for an at-a-glance lowdown on the UK’s leading providers.

2. Design your online store

Let’s start by stating the obvious – the way your online shop looks is pretty damn important.

Think about it like a physical store, you need to grab attention, clearly demonstrate what you’re selling, and present your business as reputable and trustworthy.

With a bricks and mortar outlet, one of your biggest challenges is trying to get people through the door but, with an ecommerce site, the really tricky part is trying to get them to stay, browse, and ultimately buy.

Generally speaking simplicity is the key, your potential customers will respond well to clean lines and an approach that doesn’t fill pages with overwhelming detail.

Remember, if they can’t quickly find what they’re looking for, they’ll click away and go to a competitor instead.

Thankfully, ecommerce platforms guide you through this process, starting with the crucial decision of selecting a template for your online shop.

Choosing an ecommerce template

Your template is the foundation for your whole online store, so this is a decision that needs real thought and consideration.

It could also influence your choice of which ecommerce platform to use – Wix has the widest selection of templates (with over 70 specifically designed for ecommerce).

However, we’d say Squarespace’s super stylish template offering is better for design-focused businesses.

Ecommerce heavyweights like Shopify offer less design choice but leverage their expertise with templates focused on conversion and the user journey.

Once you’ve chosen a template, you can then customise it, with many platforms offering intuitive drag-and-drop tools so you can make sure your online shop perfectly matches the vision in your head.

Or, if you’re in a hurry, the Wix ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) lets you knock up a basic ecommerce site in minutes. Simply enter a few details about your company, make a couple of design choices, choose the features you need, and you’ll be up to speed in no time – with a simplified editor then guiding you through how to tweak things to your liking.

3. Add products to your online shop

Product pages are the beating heart of your online store.

To make sales and grow your business, you’ll need to nail your product listings, product descriptions, product images and product categories.

4. Connect online payments

Once you’ve picked an ecommerce platform, created a dynamite homepage for your online store, and crafted masterful product pages, you need to focus on making sure your customers can actually buy what you sell.

This brings us to the not insignificant issue of online payments. How exactly you set this up will depend on which ecommerce platform you’re using, but you will be guided through the process, and all it really involves is filling in forms with your business info and bank account details.

Some platforms, including Wix, offer their own payment processing services (you can check out Wix Payments) as well as supporting third-party providers such as PayPal. If you do have this option, it’s well worth offering both options – an in-house payment provider lets you keep customers on your site for the whole purchase and checkout process, but other buyers prefer to use a payment service they know and trust like PayPal.

If you’re choosing to go for Shopify, you can activate Shopify Patments in just one click and pay 0% in extra transaction fees. You can also choose form over 100 third-party payment providers or offer to pay through PayPal.

To ensure that customers trust your site, you should create pages that explain your business’ privacy policy; refund, return and cancellation policy; and shipping, fulfilment, or delivery policy.

And, speaking of shipping …

5. Set up your shipping options

There are two components to tackling shipping for your online shop.

Firstly, you’ll need to decide how you’re going to actually get your products to your customers – and whether you want to use the national postal service Royal Mail or a private courier company like DPD, Hermes or Yodel. This is a big decision, so you should check prices and customer reviews in order to work out which is the right partner for your online store.

Once you’ve done that, you have the rather complex process of setting up shipping policies for your online store. You’ll do this through your ecommerce platform, and there are several options to choose from:

• Free shipping – This keeps things simple, and you can either absorb the cost of delivery yourself or add it to your product prices.
• Flat rate shipping – This is where you charge a set delivery fee on each purchase, and is a good fit for online stores that only sell one type of product.
• Shipping rate by weight – This is pretty much what it sounds like, your delivery charges change according to the weight of the products being shipped, with heavier products costing more.
• Shipping rate by price – Again, this is pretty straightforward. Your delivery charges change according to the price of the products being shipped, so you could offer free delivery for orders over £25 for example.
• Shipping rate by product – With this option, you arrange your products into groups and change different delivery rates accordingly. So, for example, you could charge higher rates on more fragile products as these require special care.

You can also offer multiple shipping options at checkout, such as a standard and next-day service.

You might also want to consider offering international shipping if your products have a global appeal. To do this, you need to select which countries you want to ship to, and then create shipping rules for those countries (see main pic above).

6. Market your online store before launch

Your online shop is going nowhere fast if people don’t know about it. So, if you’re going to make it a success, you’ll need to master digital marketing.

SEO

For ecommerce businesses, SEO (search engine optimisation) is a huge part of this. Without going into too much detail, this is all about how high up you appear on search engine results pages (SERPs) and is affected by both the structure of your site and the content of your site.

Both our top two ecommerce platforms – Wix and Shopify – offer expert support in this area, with Wix explicitly detailing how it makes all its sites attractive to search engines. Shopify also provides further information about its SEO support on its website.

If you want to learn more about how SEO works and what you need to do to push your site up those results pages, there are tons of resources online and the Ahrefs beginner’s guide to SEO is a great place to start.

Social media

The other thing you should really focus on is maximising your social media presence. As an online shop, your Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, etc profiles are massively important – they need to grab the attention of your audience and reflect the personality of your brand. They also give you a chance to engage with customers/potential customers and get honest feedback on what they like and don’t like about your business.

Different platforms require different approaches. For example, Instagram is highly visual, so successful businesses create bold graphics that catch the eye and often use humour (like the tortoise post from Startups 100 member Wild shown above).

Make sure to be aware of the latest digital marketing trends. This will help ensure your social media marketing is a success.

Also, think about hiring a social media marketing agency to support you. We have reviewed the best agencies in the UK so be sure to check that out to help you make a decision.

Once again, the internet is full of articles on how to best use social media, and Hootsuite’s 12 simple social media tips for small businesses is a great jumping off point.