Starting an online shop: where to begin?

List what you will sell at the start, not everything you might sell one day:

• How many products, and which have variants (size, colour, volume)?
• Do you have a sharp photo of each product, on a consistent background?
• Are the price, short description and useful details (ingredients, dimensions, care) ready?

A shop that opens with twenty well-presented products sells better than one that opens with a hundred incomplete pages.

Decide early how products reach the customer: post, pick-up point, local delivery or collection. Each option has its own costs, timings and packaging.

Show delivery costs before the cart: they are one of the surprises that most often make people abandon an order.

Selling online to consumers means informing them clearly. In France and the EU, plan in particular for:

• terms of sale available before the order;
• the 14-day right of withdrawal, which applies to most products, with exceptions (perishable goods, personalised items…);
• a legal notice and a privacy policy.

This guide is not legal advice: for a specific case, ask a legal professional or your chamber of commerce.

An e-commerce platform opens quickly and handles large catalogues; it is paid by subscription, sometimes with a commission on sales, and its add-ons add up.

A custom-built shop suits a small catalogue well: it is light, fast on a phone, has no plugins to update, and you own it. For a large catalogue you manage alone, a platform may suit you better; it is a question to raise before the quote.

Payment goes through a payment provider, with an account opened in your name: the money comes straight to you, and its per-transaction fees are yours. The website never sees card numbers.

• Photos that match, framed the same way.
• The price visible without opening the product page.
• Useful filters, not a list of checkboxes.
• A cart that stays visible and is easy to change.
• Payment in few steps, with no forced account creation.
• Delivery costs and times shown early.

The Maison Ondée demo applies these rules: filterable catalogue, product page, cart.