How to open an online store — the complete guide

Opening an online store is four completely different jobs that people constantly mash into one:

1. The site — the technical part. The easiest one.
2. Logistics — how the goods reach a human.
3. Money — how you take it and how you account for it.
4. Legal — registration, tax, consumer rights.

We'll go in that order, because that is exactly the order in which people get stuck.

1. The product: start with five, not fifty

The most common mistake is waiting for "the full catalogue". A live shop with five products sells more than a hundred-product shop that is still being built.

How to pick the five:

• They're light. Shipping eats the margin. Anything over 5 kg is pain at the start.
• They don't break. Glass and ceramics mean packaging, claims and stress.
• Margin above 40%. Below that, delivery, returns and packaging will eat your profit whole.
• You can photograph them well. If you can't show it, you can't sell it.

2. The site: what a working shop must have

The non-negotiable boxes:

• A product page with photos and a price. At least three photos. The price visible without a click.
• Checkout without forced registration. Mandatory sign-up kills 20–30% of orders.
• Shipping cost shown before the last step. Surprises at checkout are the number one cause of abandoned carts.
• Clear return terms. EU law gives the buyer 14 days; if you word it like a human, that becomes an advantage rather than an obligation.
• A visible phone number. In a lot of markets a phone number lifts conversion more than any redesign.

In Brandolog that's five blocks and some typing. With WordPress + WooCommerce it's a day of installing and two more days fighting plugins. Your call — but for a first shop the honest advice is: take the path of least resistance.

3. Payments: meet the market where it is

Reality check for 2026:

• Cash on delivery — still dominant in Eastern and Southern Europe for small shops. People trust the courier, not the unknown website.
• Cards — growing, especially with younger buyers and higher-priced goods. Needs a payment provider and more paperwork.
• Bank transfer — rare in retail, normal for B2B and larger sums.

Practical takeaway: launch with the method your customers already use, add cards once you have volume and patience for onboarding documents.

Cash on delivery has a cost: refused parcels. How to push that down to something bearable — the whole tactic here.

4. Shipping: give people a choice

Two serious couriers beat one great courier. People have a favourite pickup point 200 metres from home and won't walk further.

A practical start:

• Contracts with two carriers. A day each.
• Show the shipping price in the cart, not at the end.
• A free-shipping threshold about 30% above your average order. It works like a magnet.

The detailed comparison — Econt vs Speedy, which doubles as a framework for comparing any two carriers.

5. Registration: do you need a company?

Short answer: yes, if you sell regularly for profit.

The options:

• A limited company — the usual choice. Separates personal and business assets. Comes with bookkeeping.
• Sole trader / self-employed — works for services, less so for reselling goods.
• No registration — only if you're occasionally clearing out your own belongings. Regular trading without registration is an offence, not a grey area.

An accountant for a small shop costs €80–180 a month. That's the first person you hire — before a designer, before a marketer.

6. Tax: the part everyone panics about

Rules vary by country, but the shape is the same everywhere:

• Taking cash in person usually means a registered till.
• Taking only card and courier-collected payments is usually a lighter regime.
• Sales-management software often has its own reporting requirements and an audit file the tax office can demand at any time.

For the Bulgarian specifics — registers, SUPTO and the Annex 38 audit file — there's a dedicated post. And if you need the file itself, NAPpy generates it for you.

7. Pricing: the maths people do too late

cost + shipping + packaging + payment fee + expected returns + marketing = never sell below this

A concrete example on a €10 item:

• Cost: €10
• Packaging: €0.60
• Courier (your share): €1.50
• Payment fee: €0.75
• 8% refused parcels: about €1 per order on average
• Ads: €2

Your real cost is €15.85, not €10. Selling at €17.50 leaves you €1.65 — basically nothing. That's why sub-40% margins on small items don't work.

8. The first orders

The shop is ready. Nobody comes. That's normal — a website isn't a traffic channel, it's where traffic lands.

First moves, sorted by effort-to-result:

1. Tell everyone who already knows you. Yes, that's a channel.
2. A Google Business profile if you also exist physically.
3. Instagram and TikTok with real photos of the product in use.
4. Titles and descriptions for search — the SEO basics.
5. A small ad budget only after the shop has sold something organically.

In detail: the first 100 orders.

Pre-launch checklist

• Five products with photos and real prices
• Your market's default payment method working
• Shipping cost visible before the final step
• A returns page and terms of sale
• Privacy and cookie policies
• A tappable phone number
• A test order placed by a friend — not by you

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If you've cleared that list, your shop is better prepared than half the ones I watch launch. The rest is repetition: sell, listen to what people ask, fix it, sell again.