Guide
How to start an online store
Starting an online store comes down to six steps: decide what to sell, confirm demand, build a storefront, set up checkout, write your policies, and launch. Two are quick judgment calls. The other four are where most stores stall.
The six steps
Decide what to sell
Start with an offer you can describe in a sentence and supply reliably: a physical product, a digital download, or a service. The clearer the offer, the easier every step that follows. If you can't explain it simply, a buyer won't get it either.
Check that people want it
Before you build anything, look for signal. Search how people talk about the problem, see what comparable products charge, and ask a handful of potential buyers if they'd pay. You don't need a formal study, just evidence that people actually want it.
Build your storefront
You need product pages with honest descriptions and clear images, a homepage that explains who you are, and collection pages that group what you sell. This is where most first-time sellers stall. Writing copy and arranging pages takes longer than anyone expects.
Set up a checkout that takes real payments
A store isn't a store until it can take money. You need a payment processor (Stripe is the standard), a checkout flow buyers trust, and a way to handle orders, refunds, and receipts after the sale. Treat this as the part that has to actually work.
Write your policies and trust pages
Buyers look for shipping, returns, and privacy information before they pay, and missing policy pages quietly cost sales. Cover where you ship, your return window, how to contact you, and how you handle data. Don't claim a shipping zone you can't serve.
Launch and get your first sale
Share the link, tell your network, and post where your buyers already spend time. Your first few orders almost always come from people who already know you. That's normal. Then watch what buyers do and improve the store from there.
The fast path
Steps 3 to 5 are where stores stall.
Deciding what to sell and confirming demand are yours to do. They depend on judgment only you have. But building the storefront, wiring up checkout, and writing policy pages are where most stores sit half-finished for weeks. That is the part commerce.fyi does for you.
Describe what you sell and you get a finished storefront, real Stripe checkout, and drafted policy pages, ready to edit. You still own every decision. You just start from a working store instead of a blank one.
You know what you sell. Get the store.
No signup to start. Describe your products and see a real store you can take live.