Before you open an online store, answer these 6 questions
Building the store is the part people worry about. In practice it is the smoothest part. What derails a launch is the decisions nobody made before the cart existed.
1. How will a customer pay you?
Card, mobile wallet, bank transfer, cash on delivery. Each option changes checkout, and some need approval before you can switch them on. Start that paperwork early.
2. Who packs and ships the order?
Decide who touches the parcel, what sending it costs, and how long it takes. Delivery promises live on your product pages, so they have to be true.
3. What happens when something goes wrong?
Returns, damage, a wrong size. Write the policy in plain words before launch, not during your first complaint.
4. Where do the product photos come from?
Nothing sinks a store faster than borrowed, mismatched images. Consistent photographs on a clean background are worth more than any theme.
5. How many products are you really launching with?
Twenty well described products beat two hundred half filled ones. You can always add.
6. Who runs it after launch?
Someone has to add stock, answer messages and mark orders shipped. If that someone is you, the admin has to be simple enough that you actually use it, on a phone, between other jobs. An elegant dashboard nobody opens is worse than a plain one somebody does.
A useful test
- Write one order out, from click to doorstep, as a single paragraph.
- Mark every step a person has to do by hand.
- Anything you cannot describe yet is not ready to be automated.
Answer these and the build is mostly assembly. Skip them and you will be rebuilding the store around them later.