Many people want to launch their own online store, thinking it's quick and easy. And I understand your desire to increase and automate sales. But there are two important factors to consider before launching.

(This article uses photos of the online store I launched, "Brilliant Lucky." I wanted to publish not just a case study in my portfolio, but also share something useful with you.)

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1. Products for an online store

Or rather, uploading them! Uploading 10 items manually is easy. You can even upload 50 products yourself. Maybe even 100.

What if you have 1,000 products or 10,000? You can't upload them manually, which means you need some kind of system. And there is one – you can upload products using something like Excel spreadsheets. This technology exists, but even it has its own nuances. What about photos? We can't upload photos to a table. But we can upload links to photos to this table – in other words, paths to folders on the website where these photos will be stored. This means:
- you need to develop and create a folder structure on the website;
- you need to sort photos into these folders;
- upload the entire photo catalog to the website's file system;
- specify the paths to these photos in our table.

As you can see, the job isn't easy. And that's fine if you already have a table with your products, but what if you don't? Or what if all these products are on suppliers' websites?

All of this is certainly solvable. I'm not trying to dissuade you from creating an online store, no. I just want to point out that this is a lot of work, which means you'll have to spend a lot of time and money on it. You need to be prepared for this.

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2. Payment and Delivery Systems for an Online Store

It would seem that everything has already been thought of, so what could be complicated? This is also a common misconception. The fact is that these services need to be integrated into the online store, and to do this, a connection must be established between the website and the corresponding service. It's easier and faster to use ready-made modules for this task, as this can save us a significant amount of time and money on the programmer's work, who would otherwise have to create them from scratch. However, ready-made modules are not available for all content management systems (CMS), which means we must consider this from the very beginning of online store development, choosing a content management system, a payment system, and a delivery system—all of which can work together. Even after setting up this entire system, unforeseen issues may arise that need to be addressed. And you can't be 100% prepared for this. There have been cases where everything should have worked in theory, but we spent a week troubleshooting unexpected errors in the ready-made modules. Here, you must understand that this is also a very, very complex task that requires knowledge, resources, and time.

In this article, I've only highlighted two complex aspects of creating an online store. We haven't discussed design, categories, options, filters, advertising, SEO optimization, speed, and much more. My point is that if you finally want to automate your sales and launch an online store, you need to be prepared for a lot of work. But don't be afraid of it! Just know that only YouTube videos about how to get rich make it look simple and quick! In reality, a complex project requires an investment of time and money. Fortunately, the results are worthwhile, and will give your business a major boost in the future.

P.S.: By the way, you also need someone to maintain the online store - change prices, upload new products, process orders, and answer customer questions. As a bonus for my clients, after a project is completed, I usually record a video tutorial where I explain and demonstrate how to operate the online store directly on my screen. This is convenient because both the owner and their managers can watch the video at any time, refresh their knowledge, and work comfortably on their website.

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Location: Kobuleti, Georgia