Starting an Online Shop: An E-commerce Guide for UK Small Businesses

Every high-street business has thought about it: "we should sell online". And you probably should — but the gap between an online shop that exists and one that sells is wide. Here's the practical path for a UK small business, and the mistakes that sink most first attempts.

Choose the platform for the business you'll be in two years

For a straightforward product range, hosted platforms like Shopify get you selling quickly. For businesses whose selling is more particular — configurable products, trade and retail pricing, subscriptions, bookings mixed with products, or a shop that has to integrate deeply with your stock or accounting systems — a custom build (we use Next.js with Stripe) fits how you actually work instead of forcing you into the platform's shape.

The honest rule: don't over-build for a hobby shop, and don't squeeze a complicated business into a simple template. Both errors are expensive; the second is more common.

Payments, delivery and the legal bits

• —Payments: Stripe or PayPal cover cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay; expect fees around 1.5–3% per transaction
• —Delivery: decide your rates before launch — unexpected delivery cost is the biggest single cause of abandoned baskets; flat-rate or free-over-£X thresholds work best
• —Returns: UK distance selling rules give consumers 14 days to change their minds — write a plain-English returns policy
• —VAT: the registration threshold matters as you grow; online sales count toward it, so talk to your accountant early
• —Essentials pages: terms, privacy, returns and contact details — legally required and trust-building

Product pages are where sales are won

Most shop owners obsess over the homepage; customers arrive from Google or Instagram straight onto product pages. Each one needs photos worth zooming into (natural light and a phone beat no photos at all), a description that answers real questions — dimensions, materials, sizing, what's included — a clear price and delivery promise, and reviews once you have them.

Thin product pages are also why shops don't rank: if your description is the same three lines the manufacturer gave everyone, Google has no reason to choose your page.

The unglamorous truth: launch is the start

An online shop is a marketing commitment. The shops that work put ongoing effort into being found (SEO and Google Shopping), converting (fast pages, painless checkout, trust signals) and returning customers (email, mostly — it's still the highest-ROI channel for small shops). "Build it and they will come" is the most expensive sentence in e-commerce.

We've built shops from single-product launches to full platforms with subscriptions and customer portals. If you're weighing up selling online, tell us what you sell and we'll recommend the right-sized approach — including telling you if Shopify is honestly all you need.