Starting an online store in 2026 is easier than ever, but the competition is tougher too. This guide walks you through the whole journey step by step: what to sell, how to handle business registration and VAT, which platform to choose, how to take payments, how shipping works and what everything costs.
The guide is written for first-time store owners selling in Europe. We are a Swedish agency, so the examples lean Nordic, but the steps, the legal checklist and the budget apply anywhere in the EU. At the end you will find the most common beginner mistakes and answers to the questions we hear most often.
Choose what to sell (and check the competition)
The most important decision happens before you build anything. A store with the wrong product will not sell, no matter how good it looks. Start with three questions: is there demand, can you handle the competition, and is the margin big enough?
Demand you can check for free. Search for your planned products on Google and note who is advertising, use Google Trends to see whether interest is growing or shrinking, and browse Amazon and eBay to see what similar products actually sell for. Seeing lots of existing sellers is a good sign for demand, but it also means you need a clear reason for customers to pick you.
List your five biggest competitors and go through their stores as if you were a customer. What do they charge for shipping? How fast do they deliver? How good are their product pages? The goal is to find a gap: a narrower selection, better content, faster delivery or a sharper niche. As a small store you rarely win on price, but you often win on focus.
Finally, work the margin backwards. From the selling price, subtract product cost, shipping, payment fees, returns and marketing. As a rule of thumb, a small online store usually needs a gross margin of at least 50 percent to be viable, because marketing eats a large share of revenue in the beginning.
Own stock or dropshipping?
A question every beginner faces is whether to buy your own stock or run dropshipping, where the supplier ships products directly to the customer. Dropshipping sounds tempting: no capital tied up in inventory, no packing, and no risk of sitting on unsold goods.
The downside is margins and control. Competition is brutal because the barrier to entry is so low, delivery times are often long when the supplier is overseas, and you remain fully responsible to the customer under consumer law, even when the supplier lets you down. Your own stock requires more capital but gives better margins, faster delivery and control over the whole customer experience.
A common middle road is to start with a small stock of carefully chosen products, see what sells, and only then buy larger volumes. That way you tie up little capital but keep the advantages of fast delivery.
Business registration, VAT and the legal basics
Most first-time store owners start as a sole trader, which is quick and cheap to register in most EU countries, and switch to a limited company once revenue grows. Register for VAT with your national tax authority; the standard rate, thresholds and small-business exemptions vary by country, so check the local rules before you set your prices.
If you sell to consumers in other EU countries, the EU-wide rules kick in once that cross-border revenue exceeds 10,000 euros per year. Above that threshold you charge the customer's local VAT rate and report it through the One Stop Shop (OSS) system, one report for all EU countries instead of registering in each one.
Selling to consumers online also comes with a set of EU consumer protection requirements your store must meet from day one:
A 14-day right of withdrawal, clearly explained before the purchase
Clear company details: registration number, address and contact information
Prices including VAT and all mandatory fees
Shipping, delivery and return terms visible before the customer pays
GDPR: a privacy policy and lawful handling of customer data and cookies
None of this is hard, but it takes an evening to do properly. It is time well spent: clear terms and correct company information are among the first things a hesitant customer looks for before their first order from a new store.
Choose a platform: Shopify, WooCommerce or custom-built
In practice the choice comes down to three routes: a subscription service like Shopify, an ecommerce plugin for WordPress like WooCommerce, or a custom store built around your business. All three can become an excellent online store; they just fit different situations.
Shopify
WooCommerce
Custom-built (Next.js)
Monthly cost
From approx. 40 EUR
From approx. 10 EUR (hosting)
Fixed price or subscription
Time to launch
Days
1 to 2 weeks
4 to 8 weeks
Technical skill needed
None
Basic
None, the agency runs it
Design and features
Ready-made themes and apps
Themes and plugins
Built entirely around your business
Performance and load time
Depends on theme and apps
Depends on plugins and hosting
Fastest, built for top speed
Best for
A fast start with standard needs
Stores already built on WordPress
Stores serious about ecommerce
Shopify is the fastest route to a first order. You pay a monthly fee plus transaction fees and get hosting, security and support built in. WooCommerce is free as software and gives you more freedom, but you are responsible for hosting, updates and security yourself, which requires some technical confidence.
Our recommendation is clear: if the store is more than a side project, a custom store built on Next.js is the best choice. It loads faster than theme-based setups, which means better Google rankings and higher conversion. Features are built exactly around your workflow instead of the other way around, and you avoid both platform transaction fees and monthly app costs. Shopify and WooCommerce work well for testing a business idea quickly, which is also why many stores move to a custom build once sales take off.
Payments: Stripe, PayPal, Klarna and local favorites
If the payment method a customer prefers is missing at checkout, there is a real risk they abandon the purchase, no matter how good the rest of the store is. As a new store you do not need every payment method from day one, but you need the right ones for your market.
Stripe is the most common choice for card payments and also covers Apple Pay and Google Pay, for a percentage fee per transaction. PayPal is still the most recognized wallet internationally. Klarna adds invoice and installment payments, which dominate checkout in the Nordics and keep growing across Europe.
Then come the local favorites, and they matter more than most beginners expect: Swish in Sweden, iDEAL in the Netherlands, Bancontact in Belgium, MobilePay in Denmark. If you focus on one market, offer its local favorite. All major platforms have ready-made integrations for these providers, so the technical part is rarely the problem. Compare the fees against your average order value instead: fixed fees hit cheap products hard, while percentage fees matter more for expensive ones.
A good starting point is Stripe for cards plus the local favorite in your main market. Add more payment methods once you see what your customers actually choose.
Shipping: carriers, parcel lockers and negotiated rates
Shipping decides surprisingly often whether the customer completes the purchase. Unexpected shipping costs at checkout are one of the most common reasons for abandoned carts, so show the price and delivery time on the product page itself.
The big European carriers are DHL, DPD, GLS and UPS, alongside strong national players like PostNord in the Nordics. Parcel lockers and pickup points have become the default in many markets, and many customers have a strong favorite among delivery options, so offering two alternatives is usually worth the extra setup.
As a new store without volume you pay list price with the carriers. There are ways around that: shipping brokers like Sendcloud or Sendify give you discounted rates without volume commitments, and the platforms' built-in shipping solutions often include negotiated deals. A shipping tool that prints labels and sends tracking automatically saves real time even at a few orders per day.
Free shipping above a certain amount raises the average order and is one of the easiest offers to communicate. Just do the math first so the threshold sits above your average order value. Be clear about your return policy too: complicated returns are one of the most common causes of bad reviews for new stores.
How much does it cost to start an online store?
The cost depends almost entirely on which route you choose. Here is what a typical first-year budget can look like:
First-year cost
Shopify
WooCommerce
Custom-built (Next.js)
Platform and hosting
Approx. 500 EUR
150 to 500 EUR
From 3,000 EUR or a monthly subscription
Design and setup
0 to 2,000 EUR
500 to 3,000 EUR
Included
Payment fees
Percentage per order
Percentage per order
Percentage per order
Marketing
500 to 5,000 EUR
500 to 5,000 EUR
500 to 5,000 EUR
Notice that the biggest line in year one is rarely the technology but the marketing. It is also the line most beginners forget to budget for. A finished store without visitors sells nothing, so plan for ads, content and email marketing from the start. Think about costs over time too: subscriptions, apps and transaction fees grow with your sales, while a custom Next.js store has a predictable cost no matter how much you sell.
Ecommerce design is less about looking good and more about removing friction. The customer should find the product, understand it and pay without hesitating. Start from mobile: more than half of purchases happen there, and a checkout that is awkward on a phone costs you real money every day.
The product page is your most important salesperson. Use several photos from different angles, ideally with the product in use. Write descriptions that answer the customer's actual questions: dimensions, materials, fit, care and delivery time. Show stock status, shipping cost and delivery time close to the buy button, and surface customer reviews as soon as you have your first ones.
Speed is part of the design. Slow pages lose customers before checkout and rank worse on Google, and image-heavy stores become slow without the owner noticing.
SEO for a new online store takes time; expect six to twelve months before Google traffic pulls its weight. But the foundation is laid on day one: category pages with their own copy, product names people actually search for, and unique product descriptions. Never copy the supplier's texts as they are, or you will compete with a hundred identical pages for the same search results.
In the first months, traffic comes mainly from ads and social media instead. Google Shopping ads catch buyers who are already searching for your products and are often the best starting point. Build your email list from day one, ideally with a discount on the first order. The newsletter is the cheapest channel for repeat sales, and the only one you fully own.
A simple plan for the first six months can look like this:
Month 1: Google Shopping ads on a small budget, with analytics and conversion tracking in place
Months 2 to 3: your own copy on every category page and your ten most important products
Months 4 to 6: collect customer reviews, get regular newsletters going and test social media ads against your best audience
Too broad a product range from the start. Start narrow and expand once you see what actually sells.
No marketing budget. Expect marketing to cost more than the technology in the first year.
Supplier product texts copied as they are. Duplicated copy keeps your product pages out of Google.
Unclear shipping and return terms. Surprises at checkout are the most common cause of abandoned purchases.
The wrong price from day one. Subtract payment fees, shipping, returns and ad costs before you set the price.
Want help starting your online store?
Developly is a Swedish agency building custom online stores on Next.js for clients across Europe, with design, payments and shipping in place from launch. Tell us what you are going to sell and we will suggest the fastest route to a store built to sell.
With Shopify or WooCommerce you can get started for under 1,000 euros in the first year, plus marketing. A custom-built store starts at around 3,000 euros or is built as a monthly subscription. The biggest expense in year one is usually the marketing, not the technology.
In practice, yes. If you sell regularly and for profit, it counts as a business activity in most countries, which means registering with your national authorities and handling VAT. A sole proprietorship is enough in the beginning and is quick to set up in most EU countries.
With Shopify you can take your first order within a week. WooCommerce often takes another week or so. A custom-built store typically takes four to eight weeks from start to launch, including design, payments and shipping.
Yes, most people start exactly that way. Choose a setup with low fixed costs and automate what you can: payments, shipping labels and order confirmations. Just check that your employment contract does not restrict running your own business.
I’m one of the founders of Developly and work as a software engineer with a focus on JavaScript. With 8 years of experience in both front-end and back-end development, I’m passionate about building smart, modern web solutions. I stay closely involved in our projects and combine technical craftsmanship with an eye for what truly creates value for the customer.
