What to do when setting up an online shop

When setting up an online shop, the main jobs are choosing products, settling the legal and tax basics, picking a platform, connecting payments and couriers, building trust with clear pages, and planning how you will keep buyers informed after they order. This guide explains each job and why it matters.

Try TrackIt For Business →

Work out your product and your margin

A shop can look beautiful and still fail if each sale loses money. Add up everything that comes out of the selling price: the cost of the item, packaging, shipping you absorb, payment fees, platform fees, returns and a share of advertising. What is left is your real margin.

If the margin is thin, look at where you can improve it. Buy in larger quantities, raise prices for products that are hard to find elsewhere, or set a minimum order value for free shipping. Doing this arithmetic before you build anything is much cheaper than discovering the problem after launch.

Get the legal and tax tasks done early

Look up how your country treats small online sellers. You may need to register the business, register for tax once you pass a threshold, keep records for a set number of years and comply with consumer protection and data protection laws. Selling to customers in other countries can bring extra obligations around import duties and tax.

An accountant can set up your books in an hour or two and explain what to file and when. That conversation tends to save more than it costs, particularly in the first year.

Pick a platform that matches your skills

Hosted tools such as Shopify, Wix and Squarespace suit people who want to start fast and avoid maintenance. WooCommerce suits people who are comfortable with WordPress and want more control over design and plugins. Marketplaces such as Takealot and Etsy suit sellers who want to borrow an existing audience.

Look at the monthly cost, transaction fees, how easily you can export your data, and whether the platform supports the payment methods and couriers you need. Changing platform later is possible but tedious, so a few hours of comparison now pays off.

Set up payments you can rely on

Choose a provider that supports your currency, pays out to your bank in a reasonable time and has a fee structure you understand. Read what it says about chargebacks and disputes, because as a seller you carry the risk if a customer claims they never received an order. Keeping proof of dispatch and delivery protects you.

Test with a small real payment before you launch, and look at the receipts your customers will get. If your shop supports more than one payment method, make sure each one works on a phone.

Sort out shipping and returns

Choose couriers on the basis of coverage, price, reliability and how good their tracking is. Using more than one is normal, for example a cheaper option for local parcels and a different one for larger or international items. Decide who prints labels, where parcels are collected from and what the cut-off time is for same-day dispatch.

For returns, say clearly who pays for postage, how long customers have and how refunds are made. A generous, well-explained policy reduces hesitation at checkout and gives you fewer disputes later.

Weigh and measure each product once and store the numbers in your shop.
Compare courier quotes using real parcels.
Keep a record of every dispatch, including the tracking number.

Plan what happens after the order is placed

Setting up a shop usually focuses on getting the order in. The weeks after a customer pays decide whether they come back. When a parcel is quiet for a few days, buyers worry, and a small shop with no reputation gets the worst of that worry as emails, direct messages and chargeback threats.

TrackIt For Business was built to take that burden off a small team. It tracks your parcels across more than 3,000 carriers while you keep your own couriers, and sends customers a branded Apple Wallet or Google Wallet pass that updates live as the parcel is scanned. No Apple Developer account is needed on your side. Automatic notifications and a self-serve tracking page handle the routine questions, and your dashboard highlights delayed or at-risk parcels so you can contact the courier before the customer contacts you. You can invite colleagues with owner, admin, member or read-only roles, and developers can use the REST API and signed, retried webhooks.

Make the shop easy to trust

Customers decide quickly whether a small shop is safe. Show who you are, give an address or contact number, list delivery times honestly and keep your policies one click away. Real photos of your products and packaging tell buyers more than stock images do.

Reviews help, so ask your first customers for them and reply to every one. A polite answer to a complaint shows future buyers how you behave when something goes wrong.

Set a routine for the first month

Decide in advance when you will pack orders, when couriers collect and when you answer messages. Check stock every morning and look at your sales and delivery figures once a week. Write down every problem a customer reports and fix the root cause instead of apologising for the same thing repeatedly.

After a month you will know which products sell, which couriers perform and which questions come up most. Use that information to refine the shop before you spend heavily on marketing.

Common questions

What is the first thing to do when setting up an online shop?

Decide what you will sell and check that it makes a profit after all costs. Once the numbers work, deal with registration and tax, then pick a platform. Building the shop before you check the margin is the most common way to waste time and money.

Do I need to use more than one courier?

Not at first. One reliable courier is enough to start. Many sellers add a second for heavier parcels, remote areas or international orders. A tracking tool that works across carriers lets you add couriers without changing how customers receive updates.

How do I handle customers who say their order has not arrived?

Check the tracking, contact the courier if the parcel has stalled and reply to the customer quickly with what you found. Keeping proof of dispatch also helps if a payment dispute follows. A delivery dashboard with delay alerts tells you about problems early.

Can TrackIt For Business work with my current store?

If you use WooCommerce, you can connect it and completed orders become tracked shipments automatically. Other stores can add shipments manually, by CSV import or through the REST API, so it fits most setups.

How much should I spend on setting up a shop?

Spend what you can recover from early sales. Platform and domain fees are small compared with stock and advertising. Start with a modest catalogue, and add products once you know what your customers actually buy.