Many brick-and-mortar retailers now sell online as well as in store, and the reasons are simple: an online presence puts your products in front of customers who will never walk through your door.

Setting up shop online can feel daunting, but it doesn’t have to be as hard as you might think. Online success won’t happen overnight, but with an effective strategy you open your business up to new sales opportunities and a far wider audience.

Follow these four steps to get your online store up and running and grow your business both online and in store. Starting from scratch, with no existing store? See our guide to creating an online store for free.

1. Select your channel or platform

Deciding to sell online is a big step in itself. Once you’ve decided, you need to choose where you’re going to sell. Broadly, that comes down to one of two options: selling through an online marketplace, or setting up your own ecommerce site.

Research your options before you decide, and start by thinking about what you expect from selling online and the commitments each option involves. Do you have the time to build and maintain an ecommerce site? Or would it make more sense to start with an established marketplace?

Think about your customers too. Are they more likely to shop on a marketplace than to search for an ecommerce site? Ask your in-store customers where they shop online, and use their answers to guide your choice.

Realistically, each option has benefits, which is why many sellers use both. If you want to focus on one first, here’s what to expect from each.

Setting up your own ecommerce site

An ecommerce platform lets you manage your website, showcase your products, and accept payments from customers.

There are hundreds of solutions, but you’ll typically choose between two types. The first is a hosted all-in-one platform, such as Shopify, BigCommerce, or Squarespace. These provide the tools for designing and managing your website, including hosting and domain names, and some include point-of-sale tools for your shop.

The second is an open-source platform, such as WooCommerce or Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento). These give you more control and room to grow, but you’ll need technical knowledge. Our guide to SaaS vs. open source ecommerce compares the two approaches.

Advantages of your own site

• A fully customizable store. Many platforms offer design tools such as customizable themes or CSS editors, so you can replicate the look and feel of your shop.
• Access to customer information. Once a customer buys from your site or subscribes to your newsletter, you can use their details to stay in touch and encourage repeat purchases.

Disadvantages of your own site

• It takes time. You’re responsible for the entire customer experience, from site design and maintenance to customer acquisition, marketing, shipping and fulfillment, payments, and customer service.
• There’s no ready-made customer base. For less established brands, building awareness and driving traffic is a challenge, and advertising and marketing costs can stack up.

Selling on an online marketplace

Whether you choose Amazon, eBay, or a more niche marketplace such as Etsy or Walmart Marketplace, these channels can be a great way to get started online and reach new audiences.

Advantages of marketplaces

• Minimal effort to set up and maintain. Setup is quick, and you don’t need to worry about layout, features, or widgets.
• Access to an extensive customer base. Marketplaces come with a ready-made audience of shoppers. By following marketplace best practices, such as optimized listings, you can increase visibility and conversions.

Disadvantages of marketplaces

• Little control over your store. Some marketplaces let you create your own store, but you’ll typically have limited control over branding and design, which makes it harder to show off your brand’s personality.
• You must follow their rules. It’s their site and their rules, including rules on what you can sell.
• Marketplace fees. Selling on a marketplace isn’t always cheap. Check your margins against the marketplace’s fee structure to see whether it’s a good fit.

2. Make your site design consistent with your branding

If you’re setting up your own ecommerce site, keep it consistent with the branding you use in your physical store.

There are typically two ways to design your online store: choose a platform with easily customizable templates, or invest in a custom design by hiring a web designer.

When you’re designing your website, find the right balance between reflecting your brand’s personality and following web design best practices, which include:

• Simple navigation
• An uncluttered homepage that keeps the customer experience clear
• Text in a font and size that’s easy to read
• A design that works well on mobile devices
• Original photos instead of stock images where possible
• No heavy animations or auto-playing media that slow page load times

If you’ve chosen to sell on a marketplace, many give you some freedom to customize your seller profile and listings. How much varies. Amazon, for example, lets eligible brand-registered sellers build a branded Store, and eBay lets sellers open an eBay Store with extra marketing tools.

3. Create and optimize your product pages

Product pages are often neglected by retailers starting out online, with many focusing only on the homepage. But on an ecommerce site, product pages do most of the work of generating sales, as long as they’re attractive, compelling, and optimized.

Think about the customers who come into your shop. They decide to buy based on the product, not because they love your brand and want to walk out with one of your carrier bags. Ecommerce works the same way, with one extra step: shoppers can’t handle the product before they buy, so your pages have to describe and show it accurately and reduce any risk of buying.

Images

Show your products with high-quality photos, and provide several angles of each item so customers can see exactly what it looks like.

If you’re selling fashion, consider showing items on a model too, so customers can see how they look worn. Where possible, share photos from customers wearing your items, which helps reduce the perceived risk of buying.

Product titles

Marketplaces limit title length (eBay allows 80 characters, for example), so check each marketplace’s current rules. On your own site, keep titles clear and concise, and include relevant details such as brand, model, and product type.

Product descriptions

There’s no single right way to write product descriptions, but a few practices help conversions. Use bullet points to list the product’s attributes, and cover details that aren’t evident in the images.

Keep descriptions accurate and detailed. Misleading customers damages your reputation and leads to returns. Include the keywords customers search for, which helps visibility on a marketplace or on your own store.

Online reviews

Reviews provide social proof and reduce the risk a potential customer feels about your product. Encourage customers to leave reviews after they buy, and respond to them, good and bad.

4. Keep in-store and online inventory in sync

Managing inventory in a single shop is fairly straightforward. Managing it across a shop, your own website, and marketplaces is far more complicated, because the same stock is now selling in several places at once.

If you track stock in a spreadsheet and update it by hand after every sale, mistakes are bound to happen, and they often lead to overselling. These practices help:

• Use one source of truth for stock. Choose a point-of-sale system and ecommerce platform that share inventory, or connect your channels to inventory management software that does.
• Update stock automatically. A sale in store or online should change the stock count everywhere, so you don’t sell what you no longer have.
• Decide how to allocate stock. You can make all stock available on every channel, or reserve units for the shop floor or for online. Keep a small buffer on fast-selling items, using our guide to safety stock.
• Count regularly. Cycle counts catch differences between your system and your shelves before customers do.
• Plan for buy online, pick up in store. If you offer it, stock needs to be visible and accurate for each location.

A multichannel inventory management solution like Linnworks keeps inventory accurate across every channel you sell on, so you can sell in more places without more overselling. Request a demo to see how it works for a retail business like yours.