Getting started
How to start an online store
Starting an online store comes down to a handful of clear steps: decide what you sell, choose a platform that includes the essentials, add your products, set up payments and launch. On SitePack you do all of that in one place, on European hosting, with your domain, business email and payments through SitePack Payments included, and you can try the whole thing with a 14-day free trial. This guide walks through each step in order, with the practical decisions that actually matter along the way.
In short
- Starting a shop is five real steps: what to sell, a platform, products, payments and launch.
- Pick a platform that includes hosting, domain, email and payments, so you manage one thing instead of six.
- Accept the methods European customers use: Wero, iDEAL, Bancontact and cards, through SitePack Payments.
- Good product photos, clear descriptions and honest shipping and returns matter more than a fancy design.
- Try it with a 14-day free trial, then choose a plan from 25 euro per month to keep the shop online.
Decide what you sell and to whom
Before any tool, get clear on what you are selling and who you are selling it to, because that decides almost everything after it. A shop with ten carefully chosen products and a clear audience is easier to launch, photograph and market than a sprawling catalogue you are still unsure about.
Write down your first range, roughly what each item costs you and what you will charge, and who the buyer is. Are you selling to people in your own country, across Europe, or both? That affects your shipping, your languages and the payment methods you need. You do not have to have everything perfect, but starting narrow and expanding is far easier than launching wide and cutting back.
Get these clear first
- The first products you will list
- Roughly what each will sell for
- Who your buyer is and where they are
- How you will get orders to them
- What makes your shop worth choosing
Choose your platform
The platform decision is really a decision about how much you want to manage. You can assemble a shop from a store platform, a separate host, a domain registrar, an email provider, an SSL certificate and a payment company, each with its own bill and login, or you can use an all-in platform where those pieces come together.
For most people starting out, all-in wins, because the time you would spend connecting and maintaining separate services is time not spent selling. On SitePack, the store builder, EU hosting, your domain, business email, SSL and daily backups are one plan, and payments are built in. If you want to weigh the numbers, our guide on what a webshop costs breaks down the all-in price against piecing it together.
Good to know
Whatever platform you choose, add up hosting, domain, email, SSL and payments before you compare prices. A low headline price often hides those as separate costs.
Set up the foundations: domain, email and hosting
With SitePack you start your free trial and the foundations are already in place: your shop is hosted on European servers with SSL, and you get your own domain name and business email on that domain. There is no separate hosting account to configure and no certificate to install.
Choose a domain that is short, easy to say and matches your business name where you can. Set up a business email address on it, such as hello or orders at your domain, because a professional address builds trust at checkout and keeps your shop messages separate from your personal inbox. These small things quietly signal to customers that you are a real, established business.
Add your products
Your catalogue is where a shop is won or lost, so this is worth the most care. For each product, add clear photos, an honest and specific description, the price, and the variants and stock where they apply, such as sizes, colours or options.
Photos do the heavy lifting online, because customers cannot pick the item up. Use clean, well-lit images on a simple background, and show the product from more than one angle. Descriptions should answer the questions a buyer would ask in a shop: what it is, what it is made of or how it works, the size or dimensions, and who it is for. Write them in plain language that also happens to match how people search, and you help both your customers and your search ranking at once.
For each product, add
- Several clear, well-lit photos
- An honest, specific description
- The price, and variants such as size or colour
- Stock levels so you do not oversell
- Any shipping weight or delivery notes
Set up payments
A shop only works when people can pay the way they expect to, and in Europe that means more than cards. On SitePack, payments run through SitePack Payments, built in, so you can accept Wero, iDEAL, Bancontact and card payments without applying to and integrating a separate payment provider.
You pay a transparent rate per transaction on top of your plan, which you see up front, and there is no separate account to reconcile. Because iDEAL is moving to Wero across Europe, having both built in means you are ready for that change without doing anything yourself. Offering the methods your customers already trust is one of the simplest ways to reduce abandoned checkouts.
Good to know
Every shop pays to accept payments. On SitePack it is one transparent rate per transaction through SitePack Payments, not a separate provider with its own pricing to negotiate.
Sort out shipping, tax and the legal basics
Before you launch, decide how orders reach customers and what you charge for it. Keep shipping simple at first: a flat rate, free shipping above a threshold, or local pickup are all easy to start with and easy to understand. Set the delivery expectations honestly, because clear delivery times prevent most support questions and complaints.
There are also basics you cannot skip when selling in Europe. Show your business details, terms and conditions, a returns or withdrawal policy and a privacy statement, and handle VAT correctly for where you sell. None of this has to be complicated for a small shop, but having it in place from day one keeps you compliant and builds the trust that turns a visitor into a buyer.
Launch and get your first customers
Launching is less a single moment than a checklist: preview every page, place a test order to see the whole checkout as a customer would, check it all on a phone, and then publish. Your shop goes live on European hosting immediately.
Getting found starts with the basics of search. Give each product and page a clear title and description, use your own domain, and write in the words customers actually use. Then bring your first visitors yourself: tell your existing customers and network, share the shop on the channels you already use, and reach out to the people most likely to buy your first products. Early sales and reviews build the credibility that makes the next ones easier.
Keep it running and grow
Once you are live, the work shifts to keeping the shop current and improving it, and this is where an all-in platform pays off. Updates, security and daily backups are handled for you, so you are not maintaining software. You can update the shop through AI using our own MCP server, describing a change in plain language and having it made on your live site, which keeps prices, products and banners current without a big time cost.
As you grow, add features with free and paid apps, and move from the Webshop Starter plan at 25 euro per month to the Grow plan at 75 euro per month when you need more room. Everything you built carries over, so scaling up is a change of plan, not a rebuild. Start with the 14-day free trial, get your first products and a test payment in place, and you will know exactly what running your shop feels like before you commit.
Ready to get started?
Put your first version together today. Fourteen days free to try, no payment details needed.