Once you’ve made the decision to start your own eCommerce business, the process of launching it can be confusing and overwhelming.  There are a lot of decisions to make, and focusing your efforts in the wrong areas can lead to months of wasted effort.

Fortunately, you don’t have to blindly guess at the best approach.  Based on my successes and failures founding numerous eCommerce stores, these guidelines will help make your own eCommerce launch a successful one.

Pick an Easy-to-Use Shopping Cart

The more time you spend wrestling with a complicated shopping cart, the less time you’ll have to focus on what really matters:  creating valuable content, interacting with your customers and marketing your business.  So make picking an easy-to-use platform a priority when launching.  You can always change/upgrade later if you need to.

The easiest way to build an online store is to use a fully hosted, subscription-based cart.  These services take care of all the hosting, payment integration and technical details, allowing you to quickly get a site up and running.  There are numerous options to choose from, but I recommend Shopify (aff link).  It has a good community and offers phone-based support and coaching.