Step by step
How to set up an online store for your business
The software part of this takes an afternoon. Almost everyone who has done it will tell you the same thing: the platform was never the hard bit, the product data was.
So the order below is deliberate. It front-loads the work that determines whether the store sells anything — photographs, honest descriptions, correct variants — and treats choosing a platform as a decision you make once and then stop thinking about.
It is written to be followed on any platform. Where sell.ke changes a step, that is noted rather than assumed, because a guide that only works if you buy something is not a guide.
What you get
What this gives you
Products before platform
Photographs, descriptions, variants and stock decide whether the store converts. Every platform will sell a good catalogue; none will rescue a bad one.
Your own domain, from day one
Search authority accumulates to a domain. Building it on a platform subdomain means starting again if you ever move.
Test the money before you launch
A real order, a real card, a real refund. Payment problems discovered by a customer cost more than the ten minutes this takes.
Promise delivery you can keep
Honest zones, fees and timescales. An optimistic delivery estimate is the most common source of first-month complaints.
One stock figure if you also have a shop
If the store and the counter keep separate counts, somebody reconciles them forever. Decide this at the platform step, not after the first oversold order.
Launch to the customers you already have
The store's first job is to serve people who already buy from you. Strangers come later, and cost far more to reach.
Step by step
Seven steps to a store that is actually live
Decide what you are selling online
Not necessarily everything. Start with the lines that travel well, have healthy margin and do not need explaining in person — those are the products that make an online store worth running. Twenty products done properly beat three hundred done badly, and you can add the rest once you know what the first orders look like.
Get the product data right
This is the step that takes the time and the one that decides whether anyone buys. Each product needs at least one clear photograph on a plain background, an honest description that answers the question a customer would ask in the shop, the correct variants and pack sizes, and an accurate stock figure. If what you have is a supplier price list rather than a catalogue, photograph it and let an assistant build the products from it.
Choose a platform, and choose it on maintenance
Hosted builder, self-hosted platform, custom build, or a system that includes your counter. The question that separates them is who maintains it and whether the store shares stock with your shop. Decide that, and the rest of the comparison mostly resolves itself.
Buy a domain you own
Buy it from a registrar in your own name rather than through the platform, and point it at the store. This is ten minutes of work and it is the difference between building search authority for yourself and building it for a subdomain you rent. Keep the renewal on a card that will not expire quietly.
Switch on payments
Connect the payment methods your customers actually reach for in your market — card, and mobile money where that is how people pay. Check three things before launch: that money arrives in your own account, what percentage the processor takes, and how a refund is issued. Put a test order through with a real card and refund it.
Set delivery honestly
Define the areas you will genuinely deliver to, the fee for each, and how long it really takes — not the time you hope for. Offer collection if you have a shop, because a meaningful share of customers prefer it and it costs you nothing. Write the returns policy now, before the first dispute rather than during it.
Publish, then tell people it exists
A live store with no traffic sells nothing, and this is where most first stores stall. Tell your existing customers first — the people already buying from you are the cheapest orders you will ever get. Put the link in every place your business already appears, share individual products rather than the homepage, and give it a few weeks before judging it.
How long it actually takes
For a shop with an existing catalogue already in a system, a store can be live the same day — the products exist, so publishing is layout, domain and payments. For a business starting from nothing, plan a fortnight of evenings, and expect ten of those to be photography and descriptions.
The timeline that goes wrong is the one that budgets a week for the platform and no time for the catalogue. That store launches with three products, placeholder text and no photographs, gets no orders, and gets abandoned as evidence that online does not work for this business.
What to do about photographs
You do not need a photographer, but you do need consistency. A phone camera, a plain background, daylight from a window rather than overhead light, and the same framing for every product will out-perform mixed professional and amateur shots. Shoot everything in one session with one setup.
Two photographs per product is the practical minimum for anything where scale or detail matters: one clean shot of the whole thing, one showing the detail a customer would look for if they picked it up. For clothing add one on a person. Supplier-provided images are fine for branded goods and obviously worse for anything where yours is the differentiator.
- One setup, one session, consistent framing
- Daylight from the side, never direct overhead light
- Plain background — a sheet of white card is enough
- Two shots per product: the whole thing, and the detail
- Same aspect ratio throughout, so the grid looks deliberate
If you already have a shop
There is one decision here that matters more than all the others, and it is easiest to get right at the start: whether the online store and the counter share stock. If they do not, every sale in either place creates work in the other, and that work does not stop.
The two workable arrangements are a single system that runs both, or two systems with a connector and a deliberately maintained safety buffer on web stock. What does not work, although a great many businesses try it, is two systems and a person keeping them in step.
With sell.ke this step disappears, because the store is generated from the catalogue the counter already uses. That is the argument for it — not the storefront features, which are deliberately conventional.
Questions
How to set up an online store — questions
How do I set up an online store for my business?
Pick the products worth selling online, get their photographs, descriptions, variants and stock right, choose a platform based on who will maintain it, point a domain you own at it, switch on payments and test a real order, set honest delivery zones and fees, then publish and tell your existing customers. The product data is the step that takes the time and the step that determines whether it works.
How much does it cost to start an online store?
At minimum a domain and payment processing fees, which are unavoidable on any route. Beyond that it depends on whether you rent a hosted platform, host an open-source one yourself, commission a build, or use a system that includes the storefront with your business software. The recurring costs matter more than the setup cost.
Do I need a business registration to sell online?
That depends entirely on where you are and what you sell, and it is worth checking properly rather than guessing. In most places, taking payments through a processor requires some form of registration and a bank account in the business's name, and selling certain categories requires a licence. Your payment provider's onboarding requirements are usually the quickest way to find out what applies to you.
Can I set up an online store without any technical skills?
Yes. Nothing in the seven steps requires code on a modern platform — the skills it actually asks for are photography, clear writing about your own products, and being honest about delivery. Those are retail skills, not technical ones.
What is the fastest way to get a store live?
Start from a catalogue that already exists. If your products are already set up in the system that runs your counter, the storefront is a layout choice and a domain — hours rather than weeks. Starting from nothing, the fastest honest route is twenty products photographed in one session, published, and extended once orders start.
How long does setup take?
A single-counter shop is usually selling the same day. The work is the product list, not the software: import a spreadsheet, scan barcodes, or let Amina build products from a supplier invoice or a photo of your price list. A multi-location business with thousands of SKUs and opening stock counts should plan about a week and run the old system alongside for a fortnight. The 14-day trial is long enough to do exactly that.
Can I bring across the products I already have?
Yes — bulk import from CSV or Excel, including photos, variants, pack sizes, prices, cost prices and opening stock counts. If what you have is a supplier price list rather than a clean spreadsheet, Amina can build the catalogue from a photo or a PDF of it, which is usually faster than retyping.
How much does sell.ke cost?
Plans run from USD 12/month for a single-location till to USD 115/month for unlimited scale, with the online store on your own domain included from USD 23/month. In Kenya the same plans are KES 1,499 to KES 14,999/month, billed in shillings. Every plan starts with a 14-day trial and no card, and there is no per-terminal licence and no commission on your sales. There is no hardware to buy either — sell.ke runs on a phone, tablet or laptop you already own.
Which countries does sell.ke work in?
The software is not geographically limited — the counter, inventory, the storefront, reporting and accounting work anywhere, in multiple currencies. What is market-specific is two things: the payment rails available to you, and your country's tax-invoicing rules. We currently run with merchants in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Ghana and Nigeria, and the deepest local payment and compliance integrations are in Kenya. If you are outside those markets, ask before you sign up and we will tell you precisely what would and would not be connected for you.
Read next
The other pages that answer the question you are probably about to ask.
Ecommerce website builder
An online store on your own domain, built from the catalogue you already sell from.
Selling products online
Your own store, a marketplace or social selling — what each actually costs you.
What an online store costs
The four cost shapes, what is genuinely unavoidable, and where budgets overrun.
Shopify vs WooCommerce vs all-in-one
Three different purchases, compared on architecture rather than feature counts.
POS that syncs with your website
Real-time stock between counter and storefront — because they are the same system.
How to take card & mobile payments
What you need to take each payment type, and what each one actually costs.
Go deeper on a feature
An online shop off the same stock
A branded storefront on your own domain, reading the same products, stock and prices as the till.
Setup, growth and the plumbing
Trial, product import, opening stock, eTIMS enrolment and a custom domain — in the order they matter.
Delivery that pays for itself
Zones with their own rates, so the delivery fee covers the delivery instead of eating the margin.
See it for your trade
Try it on your own products
Fourteen days, no card. Import your product list or let Amina build it from a photo of your price list, and run it alongside whatever you use now.