How to Launch an e-shop in Less Than 24h
Building an e-commerce website (or e-shop) might sound heavy-lifting for many entrepreneurs. Thankfully, today, a bunch of platforms (Shopify, Woocommerce, Drupal, Big Cartel…) will let you launch your online shop with zero tech complexity: without dropping a single line of code, you will be able to launch your online business in less than 24 hours! That’s what I will be showing you using Big Cartel.
Here are the steps explained — and the estimated duration for each step.
1- Create your account and setup your shop
This is step 0. It’s the initial setup to get you going.
Here is where you put you shop’s name and description in, as well as some preferences such as being notified when an order is placed.
Nothing major here except for optionally (this is not mandatory) linking your Google Analytics account (property ID UA-XXXXX-XX) to your e-shop to get advanced tracking.
Duration: 1 hour
2- Setup your payment
To enable payments, link your e-shop to your Paypal or Stripe account. I personally use Stripe because it offers broader merchant features, but they both do the job. Your e-shop will now accept Visa, MasterCard and American Express. By connecting Paypal to your shop, you will be increasing your reach of potential customers who trust and prefer to checkout securely via Paypal.
Duration: 2 hours (including your Stripe or Paypal initial setup and testing)
3- Setup your domain name
Create or select a domain name, then link it to your e-shop. I usually use Google Domain for its simplicity, but you can also use GoDaddy or namecheap.
Your domain name is the www url people will use to get to your shop. Make sure to get an easy to remember name. Once setup, your domain name will look like www.yourshop.com and will direct to your e-shop.
Duration: 1 hour
4- Create and upload your catalog
This is the core of your shop. We all know the importance of the 4P Marketing Mix (Product, Promotion, Place, Price). Your products catalog regroups these four pillars, that is why you need to put the right efforts to get the best product catalog outcome:
- Appealing product pictures. You can use some online tools like Apowersoft or Pixlr. There is also this amazing tutorial published by Jeff Delacruz at Shopify Product Management for a DIY Guide to Beautiful Product Photography.
- Product description. Give the proper description to your product and the right title, while keeping in mind the importance of SEO
- Pricing & Inventory. To put it simply: put the right and fair pricing, and make sure you can keep up inventory (especially if you are drop shipping)
Duration: 4 hours (for an estimated catalog of 10 products)
5- Choose a cool theme
Create your look & feel by choosing a theme from a free template gallery available in your Big Cartel back-office (the templates look good and pro, and you have good room for customization, even by code overriding). Many Big Cartel examples are available online: Delish condish, Jessica Hische, Uno + Ichi
Duration: 2 hours (for an estimated minimum customization)
6- Finally. You can now launch your e-shop!
At this stage, select one single channel to drive traffic to your site and to announce your launch (IG, TikTok, Facebook, Google Ads..). Focus on only one channel at the beginning to get the right reach, and to drive prospects and customers to your site. You could also reserve a small budget on paid ads which sometimes will help you get the initial traction (IG Sponsored Posts, Google Ads, etc.). And last but not least, share, share and share your link with everyone who might be interested in your products.
Duration: 4 hours (for setting up a social account and preparing your 15 first posts)
To recap, from step 1 to step 6, if you start with your initial version of an e-shop with 10 products and 15 social posts, it would take you around 14 hours to launch your site and to promote it.
