How to Start an Online Store: The Definitive Guide for 2025
The best time to have launched an eCommerce website may have been 20 years ago, but there’s no time like the present to start an online store.
And, eCommerce as a general industry only shows signs of growth. The last 5 years have been meteoric, so if they are any indicator for the future, things are looking good for online sales.
Plus, selling online opens doors that just wouldn’t be opened if you only operated brick and mortar locations. Online, you can sell to anyone in the country, and in a sense, anyone in the world – not just the people in your neighborhood.
Also, with so many popular SaaS platforms that are user-friendly, it’s never been easier to launch an online store.
So, with that said, let’s take a look at how to do just that, from a very high level.
Define Your Target Market
Other digital marketers might have you determine what you want to sell, or even design a brand, before you determine your target audience.
I’m breaking from them. I think you need to define your target market first, before you actually start an online store. That way, you can define your own core competencies before you determine what you’re going to sell.
Knowing who you’re going to sell to will determine everything else, from the products to the brand to the online storefront itself – as well as how you will market it.
There are a few main things to keep in mind when you’re trying to identify a target market. Some of these are:
- Demographics, which are factors such as age, gender, education, income, trade, background and ethnicity, cultural identity, and other similar attributes.
- Location, which gives where the indicated member of your target market lives, works, or otherwise spends a lot of time.
- Interests, which are relatively self explanatory – what do the members of your target market like to do or learn about?
- Psychographics, which determine how your target audience views themselves, what values they hold and how they align with information.
From here, you can segment your target audience into a few different groups of key buyer personas – that is, a specific identity of an “ideal” customer. This is the “person” to whom you will be marketing and selling. (Keep in mind here that a brand may have more than one buyer persona.)
Determine What You Will Sell
Once you know the people to whom you’ll be marketing and selling, you can determine what you want to sell.
All buyer personas have problems or pain points that you can help them solve with a product or service – so what will it be?
In this day and age, you’re probably going to get your products from a distributor or wholesaler rather than manufacturing it yourself, but if you are, that’s good too. You just need to determine who will supply you.
There’s also the option for you to be the “manufacturer” yourself, in the sense that you can sell handmade goods. Print-on demand, such as in the case of customized t-shirts or art posters, is another option.
Another option is drop-shipping, in which case you will work with other sellers for fulfillment, and will carry no actual inventory in your home (or wherever else you conduct business).
Choose an eCommerce Platform
Now, unless you are an veteran website developer with extensive experience coding and building websites, you’re going to want a platform. Even if you aren’t the amount of time it would take to build your own solution would be time and cost prohibitive.
So, you’re going to want a platform. There are lots of website platforms out there but the best ones for conducting business online are those that are geared for eCommerce.
One class of platforms are SaaS, or software-as-a-service platforms, that charge you a subscription fee to use all of their tools, features, and website builders. Two of the most common SaaS platforms are BigCommerce and Shopify, and another option is Volusion.
Both of these former platforms are compatible with some free templates (along with premium, paid templates) and make it fairly easy for anyone to build and (somewhat) customize an eCommerce storefront.
They also have native functionality for managing website performance, security, administrative and customer accounts, and collecting payments through processors. If you’re looking for the fastest, easiest way to get an eCommerce website off the ground, this is the way.
Then you have open-source platforms, like Magento. Because they are open-source and anyone can access the code, they are free to use – but building and maintaining a Magento website is a serious commitment in terms of development resources. They are the most flexible, scalable, customizable solutions, but you should not choose an open-source platform like Magento unless you have the resources to commit to building and maintaining the website.
There are other open-source platforms that are not specifically geared for eCommerce, but which can be converted to eCommerce platforms through plug-ins. One such example is WordPress, which can be adapted into an eCommerce website through WooCommerce.
WordPress is free and has a massive online support community, but managing products, orders and customers through it is not as easy as it is through some SaaS platforms. Also, making advanced customizations will not be as easy.
The bottom line is that open-source software offers the greatest flexibility and customizability, but only if you can afford the resources needed to do so.
Register Your Business
Naturally you also want to stay on the right side of the law and also limit liability for yourself. I am not a lawyer so don’t take this as legal advice, but you will want to register your business with local, state and federal authorities.
Whether you should file as a proprietor or incorporate as an LLC really depends on your model. For that, consult a legal professional who can help answer your questions and perhaps even help you with the paperwork.
Build and Launch Your Online Store
Once you’ve identified your target market, sourced your products, settled on a platform and incorporated (or registered) you can get serious about actually building your storefront.
Start by purchasing a domain. It should be unique and contain your brand’s name, which will help you later on with SEO.
Find hosting (if you’re using open-source platform) next; if you’re using a SaaS platform, hosting will be included in the subscription fees.
Decide on a theme or template for your online store. Most website builders associated with eCommerce platforms have drag and drop editors that will enable you to customize the look of your homepage.
Make sure you create categories associated with the main products you intend to sell and embed navigation features, like a mega menu, tiles, or search functionality, into the homepage.
You will also want to create an “About” page (wherein you can tell your story) and a “Contact” page, both of which should be accessible from the homepage.
When laying out your homepage and your overall online store, make sure to keep your overall design as branded and cohesive as possible. When you’re just starting out, keep the number of pages to a minimum as well. You can always add products in the future, but you don’t want to start out with an overwhelming number because that will make it harder to navigate and manage the website when you’re starting out.
Once you get done with the main informational pages you can get started adding products and setting prices (and options, if applicable).
Start out with the main products you expect to be selling. Add descriptions that are accurate and succinct, as this is important for both the user experience as well as for search engines to help connect potential shoppers with your products.
If you can, do some keyword research before you start adding products so you can optimize the page titles and copy as you add them, rather than having to go back and do it.
Once you add the product, enrich the page with copy in the description. Remember to accurately describe what the product is and does as well as how it is differentiated from competing products. Highlight key features of the products and if possible, attempt to preemptively answer shopper queries in the description.
Add original images of the products if you can, as duplicate imagery will not perform well with respect to SEO. Still, duplicate imagery is better than nothing if it’s all you have, so use it if you must. You should also include videos if you can.
As time goes on, you may want to incorporate UGC, or user-generated content, into your product pages, although out of the gate you likely won’t have anything to work with. If the page builder you’re using has a review feature, make sure to incorporate that through the editor. You want users to be able to leave reviews as that will increase the credibility of the page (and your website) and should also increase conversions.
When adding products, you also need to remember to add important information about variants, options, pricing, and tax settings.
Allocate Marketing Dollars
With your preliminary store built, you need to think about how you’re going to reach your target audience.
That latter consideration is one of the keys to determining where to put your marketing budget and your efforts.
For instance, if your target audience is very young and plugged into social media, then a dual-pronged organic and paid social media marketing approach may be best. You need to pay attention to the platform, though – Facebook users skew older, TikTok users younger, and then there are platforms like Instagram that users of all ages use, but which is only practically engaged with video or photographic content.
There’s also SEO, which, all things being equal, is not just the best organic marketing channel, but the best one of all. There are no restrictions in SEO, which means that any seller can pursue this strategy and will not be penalized, even those in restricted industries.
You can also engage in SEO efforts, while you are building and maintaining your website, so you can bake it into the process of growth.
Two other marketing channels that you should consider pursuing are PPC and email marketing. With research and optimizations, the former is great for starting to drive traffic overnight. As for the latter, it is a great channel for maximizing the customer lifetime value of each customer.
All in all, this is a subject you should explore at greater length with your marketing team, and the case may very well be that you won’t just want to pursue one marketing channel, but several in concert.
Keep the Ball Rolling After You Start an Online Store
Even though this is a very high level exposition, you’ve now built a functioning eCommerce website, after determining your target market, what you’ll sell, and how you’ll promote what you’re selling.
Now all you have to do is keep that momentum going.