Guide · E-Commerce
Start an online store from offer and unit economics through platform, catalog, payments, shipping and a launch checklist — without treating legal registration as a how-to.
360ecom Editorial · Updated Aug 10, 2026 · 9 min read
An online store is a catalog, a checkout, a fulfillment promise and a way to get paid. The software you choose is downstream of those four. This guide walks from offer and unit economics through platform, catalog, payments, shipping and a launch checklist.
It is not a legal guide. Business registration, licences, product safety, advertising rules and tax registration vary by place and product. Mark those items as “check locally” and use a qualified adviser. 360ecom will not tell you which form to file.
If you need the vocabulary first, read what e-commerce is and what you need before you open an online store.
A store that “sells everything” has no search query, no shipping model and no support script. Write a one-paragraph offer:
That paragraph drives category structure, photography, returns policy and ad creative. If you cannot write it, you are not ready to pick a theme.
E-commerce business models covers the trade-offs in full. For launch planning:
| Model | You hold stock | Typical margin pressure | Operational load |
|---|---|---|---|
| First-party / wholesale buy | Yes | Medium | Receiving, storage, accuracy |
| Made to order | Partial | Often better if lead times are honest | Production SLAs, communication |
| Dropship | No | Often thin after shipping | Supplier quality, delays, brand risk |
| Marketplace-first | Sometimes | Fees and ads | Listing rules, account health |
| Digital or service add-on | No physical | Different delivery and refund rules | Access, licensing — check locally |
You can add a second channel later. Launch with one primary fulfillment story so shipping pages and checkout do not contradict each other.
If contribution after product cost, inbound freight, packaging, payment fees, expected shipping subsidy and expected returns cannot cover a realistic acquisition cost, the store is a hobby funded by ads.
Run the numbers with tools, not optimism:
Read e-commerce profit margin explained and markup vs margin so you do not mix the two percentages in a spreadsheet. Tax-inclusive vs exclusive prices are another silent error; the GST calculator splits a price, it does not classify your goods. Rate and place-of-supply rules: check locally.
A worked pattern (illustrative math, not a forecast): cost 800, 30% target margin → price 1,143. After 2% payment fees and 90 shipping you absorb on half of orders, contribution is thinner than the 30% on the sticker. Model the messy version.
Do not assume a conversion rate or ROAS. You do not have them yet. Use break-even units as a “can this even work at plausible volume?” check.
Shopify vs WooCommerce is the comparison to read in full. The short version:
| Question | Lean Shopify | Lean WooCommerce |
|---|---|---|
| Who hosts the storefront and checkout? | Shopify | You (or your host) |
| Checkout customization | Plan- and app-dependent | Highly flexible, more to maintain |
| SEO URL control | Good enough with known quirks | Full permalink and robots control |
| Apps / plugins | App store, monthly cost, script weight | Plugin ecosystem, compatibility and security work |
| When it fits | You want a hosted commerce OS and can live with its URL and checkout rails | You already run WordPress, need unusual data, or have developers who will own performance |
Neither choice ranks you. Neither choice is “more professional”. Pick the constraint you can live with for two years. Headless and custom stacks are for teams that already know why a coupled theme is not enough.
If SEO is part of the plan from day one, skim the e-commerce SEO guide so you do not launch 40 tag pages and a search-results index.
Launch catalog quality beats catalog size.
For each SKU you need, at minimum:
Do not invent reviews. Do not scrape manufacturer PDFs into 12 duplicate pages. The product page guide is the template for what a PDP should contain once you are live.
If you sell on Amazon as well, listing rules and search ranking are a different system. Do not copy Amazon title packing onto your own PDP without editing for your brand and Google-facing page. See Amazon product listing optimization when that channel is in scope.
Checkout conversion follows expected methods, trust and failure recovery — not the number of logos. Read e-commerce payment gateways explained.
Launch checklist for payments:
Cash on delivery is a product and logistics decision, not a checkbox. It changes refusal rates, courier choice and packaging. The shipping guide and COD vs prepaid orders cover the trade-off. Do not enable COD on fragile, high-value, or made-to-order goods without a policy.
PCI and local payment licensing: check locally. Do not store raw card data on your own server.
Shipping is on the product page whether you designed it or not. Shoppers infer speed, cost and hassle from whatever you print.
Before launch, you need:
Build the cost with the shipping cost calculator and the full e-commerce shipping guide.
You do not need a magazine. You do need pages that answer operational questions:
Trust is specificity: cut-off times, who delivers, what happens if a payment fails. Fake countdown timers and invented testimonials are not a launch tactic; they are a credibility problem. The conversion optimization guide stays on honest patterns.
Use this as a gate, not a mood.
A store that cannot answer email or show the product clearly will not be saved by a better theme.
Photography. You do not need a studio brand film. You do need consistent, sharp images that show the item, a sense of scale, and the colour the shopper will receive. Shoot on a simple background first; lifestyle can wait. If you sell apparel or furniture, size and scale images prevent returns more than a homepage slider does. Reuse the same assets on the PDP (see the product page guide); do not invent a second visual language for ads that the site cannot match.
Transactional email. Order confirmation, shipping notice and a reachable reply-to address are part of checkout. Test them on a phone. If those messages land in spam or never send, you will create “where is my order” tickets before you have a marketing problem.
Support hours. Publish when you reply, even if the answer is “within two business days.” A contact page with a working inbox beats a chatbot that cannot see the order. Restricted products, warranties and complaint handling can be regulated — check locally.
Backups and admin access. Know who can log into the platform, the domain registrar and the mailbox. Write recovery steps down once. This is operations, not paranoia.
The first month is operations: stock accuracy, shipping exceptions, payment failures, and whether the offer is understandable. Do not spend it redesigning the homepage. A simple weekly note — orders, refunds, the worst support thread, one catalog fix — is enough reporting until volume appears. The analytics guide can wait for a scorecard; it cannot wait for a purchase event that never fires.
When the path from product to payment is stable, improve conversion on the pages that already get traffic (conversion optimization guide) and make the catalog crawlable (SEO guide). Those guides assume a store that can take an order.
Starting a store is a sequence of reversible software choices sitting on irreversible unit economics. Get the economics and the fulfillment story right; the theme is the easy part.
E-commerce is selling goods or services online. Learn store vs marketplace vs D2C, the catalog-to-fulfillment loop, and when opening a store is the wrong fit.
Before you launch, lock the offer, suppliers, margin, photos, policies and support. A practical checklist for opening a store—not a platform sales pitch.
D2C, marketplaces, wholesale, subscriptions and dropshipping differ in margin, inventory risk and ops load. Compare the economics before you pick a model.
Shopify and WooCommerce solve different hosting, cost, SEO and checkout problems. An honest comparison so you can match the platform to how you actually operate.
Gross, contribution and net margin answer different questions. Channel fees, shipping and returns sit between list price and cash. Worked numbers included.
Markup is the add-on over cost. Margin is profit as a share of selling price. Mixing them up is a common pricing error. Formulas and a conversion table.
A gateway is not a processor or a payment method. This article separates the stack, covers cards, UPI and wallets at a conceptual level, and failure handling.
Often you need some form of registration, tax ID or consumer-sale compliance before you take payment. The rules depend on country, state and product type. Check locally with a qualified adviser. This guide covers the store operating model, not incorporation.
It lowers inventory cash, and it moves the hard problems to supplier reliability, shipping time, returns and thin margins. Model contribution after shipping and refunds before you treat it as easy.
Marketplaces supply demand and take fees, rules and account risk. Your own site supplies control and requires traffic. Many operators do both. Price each channel with fees included.
Enough to make a coherent offer and a navigable catalog — not a number for its own sake. A tight range that is in stock and well explained beats a thousand thin SKUs.
Find how many units you need to sell to cover fixed costs at a given price and variable cost.
Work backwards from cost and a target margin to the selling price you need.
Calculate gross profit and profit margin from revenue and cost. Use it before you set a selling price or judge a channel.
Add or remove GST/VAT from a price. Includes common Indian GST rate presets and a custom rate field.
A practical map of e-commerce SEO: information architecture, keyword research, product and category pages, technical indexation, schema, Core Web Vitals and measurement.
Design shipping that you can fulfill: zones, packaging, dimensional weight, rate cards, returns, COD logistics and the messages customers see before they pay.
Improve store conversion with research, hypotheses and honest changes to product pages, cart, checkout, trust and shipping promises — without dark patterns.