Start a Profitable Online Shop
A step-by-step guide to building an online shop that performs. Choosing a platform, design, payments, logistics and the strategies that sell.
The steps to follow
Validate your market and your products
Before you build your shop, check there is demand for your products. Look at the competition online: who sells something similar, at what price, with what promise? Tools such as Google Trends and Ubersuggest help you gauge search volume. Decide where you sit on price and what sets you apart. Test the idea with a simple landing page and some targeted ads before you invest in a full site. Work out which 20% of your products will bring in 80% of your revenue. Prepare detailed product pages with descriptions, specifications, high-quality photos and customer reviews where you have them.
Choose the right e-commerce platform
Your platform decides what is possible and what it costs. Shopify is ideal if you want to start quickly on an all-in-one monthly subscription. WooCommerce on WordPress gives you more flexibility but needs more maintenance. For a bespoke, very fast shop, a custom build with Next.js and a database such as Supabase lets you customise everything. Judge the options on what matters: how easy the catalogue is to manage, payment methods, stock control, transaction fees, design flexibility and room to grow. At ConvertiLab we recommend the solution that fits your sales volume and your budget.
Design the buying experience
User experience is the single biggest driver of conversion in e-commerce. Your home page should put your best offers and categories front and centre. Product pages need professional photos from several angles, a detailed description, the available variants and customer reviews. The basket should be one click away from any page. Keep the checkout short: three steps at most (basket, details, payment). Let people buy as a guest without forcing them to create an account. Show delivery costs clearly as soon as they reach the basket, so nobody drops out at the last moment. Add reassurance: secure payment logos, your returns policy, verified customer reviews.
Set up payments and logistics
Offer payment methods people trust, and more than one of them. Stripe is the benchmark for card payments, with competitive fees. Add PayPal for buyers who prefer it. Offer payment in three or four instalments through Alma or Klarna to lift the average basket. For logistics, choose between shipping from your own stock, dropshipping, or a fulfilment partner. Set up delivery zones with clear rates. Offer free delivery above a certain spend to increase basket value. Prepare professional transactional emails: order confirmation, dispatch, review request.
Optimise e-commerce SEO
Organic search is a free and lasting source of traffic for your shop. Give every product page a unique title, an appealing meta description and a clean URL. Use schema.org Product markup so prices and ratings show directly in Google. Build optimised category pages that target commercial keywords. Run a blog with buying guides and comparisons to attract people earlier in their research. Give images descriptive file names and alt text. Avoid duplicate content between product variants. Submit a product-specific sitemap in Google Search Console.
Launch and win your first customers
Plan your launch across several channels. Set up Google Ads Shopping campaigns so your products and prices appear in search results. Run Meta Ads targeted at your ideal audience with eye-catching creative. Turn on retargeting to bring back visitors who did not buy. Create attractive launch offers: a promo code, free delivery, a gift with the first order. Build a social media presence by posting engaging content regularly. List your shop on Google Merchant Center so it appears in Google Shopping for free.
Our advice
Start with a tight range of 10 to 20 flagship products rather than trying to sell everything at once.
Invest in professional product photography: it is the first thing people judge when buying online.
Set up automatic abandoned-basket emails. They recover 10 to 15% of lost sales on average.
Frequently asked questions
What budget should I plan for an online shop?
Allow from 1490€ for a working e-commerce shop. The budget depends on the number of products, the integrations you need and how custom the design is.
Can you run an e-commerce site without holding stock?
Yes. With dropshipping, the supplier ships directly to the customer. It is a good way to test a market with very little upfront investment.
How do I keep payments secure on my shop?
We integrate Stripe, the most secure payment solution on the market, with an SSL certificate, PCI DSS compliance and 3D Secure to protect your customers.
