Starting a Small Online Store: What to Sell First and How to Get Paid
You don't need a warehouse or a separate e-commerce platform to take your first online order. Here's how to launch a small catalog on the site you already have, with Stripe checkout on the Pro plan.
Most small businesses that could sell online don't, because "setting up a store" sounds like a project. It doesn't have to be. A store with a dozen products is a section on your existing site, not a second website. Here's how to start small and start this week.
Pick the first five products
Not your whole range. Five things that are easy to describe, easy to photograph and easy to hand over. Good first candidates:
- Gift cards. No stock, no shipping, and customers buy them for other people.
- Your best seller. The thing people already ask for by name.
- Bundles. Three of something at a friendlier price than three separate purchases.
- Something that travels well. Coffee beans, prints, candles, jars.
You can add the rest later. A store with five products people actually buy beats one with fifty that nobody finishes scrolling.
Write descriptions people can skim
Two or three sentences: what it is, what's in it or what size it is, who it's for. If you have twenty products and one afternoon, Webmarlin's built-in AI will draft the descriptions from a short note about each one, and you tidy them up.
Photograph in daylight, on a plain background
Phone camera, near a window, one plain surface. Consistency matters more than equipment. Ten products shot the same way look like a shop. Ten shot differently look like a car boot sale.
Set up payment
Webmarlin's store takes payment through Stripe. Connect your Stripe account, and money from orders goes there. Customers pay with the cards they already use, and you don't have to run a separate checkout service.
Add the store to your site
The store is part of the Pro plan ($19.99/mo or $222.99/yr), which also gives you a custom domain. In Webmarlin it lives in the same editor as your pages. Add your products, drop a product grid onto your home page or a dedicated shop page, and publish. Product pages pick up your template's design automatically, so the shop looks like part of the site because it is.
Tell people it exists
The single most common reason a new store makes no sales is that nobody knows about it. Put a "Shop" link in your menu, post the link on your social accounts, mention it to regulars at the counter, and write a short blog post about what you're selling and why.
Then watch and adjust
After a month you'll know which products sell and which don't. Swap out the slow ones, add the things people asked for, and grow the catalog from evidence rather than guesswork.
Build the site on the free plan, move to Pro when you're ready to sell, add five products, connect Stripe, publish. Your first order is closer than it feels.
