How to build an ecommerce website: a step-by-step guide

This guide is for US small business owners opening their first online store, or moving a store off a platform that isn't working. It walks through each step in order, with real prices read from the platforms' own pages. It also covers the parts most guides skip: sales tax, payment security, accessibility and the FTC's rules on shipping times and fake reviews.

What is ecommerce website development?

Ecommerce website development is building a site where customers can browse products, pay and get an order confirmation without talking to you. For a small business that usually means configuring a platform, not writing code. You choose a theme, add products, connect payments and shipping, and set up the legal pages. Custom development comes in when you need something the platform can't do, such as a product configurator or an unusual checkout.

The market is still growing. The US Census Bureau puts online sales at 17.1% of all US retail sales in the second quarter of 2026. In the same quarter of 2019, the share was 10.3%.

Key ecommerce facts for 2026

• Online sales were 17.1% of all US retail sales in the second quarter of 2026. That is the US Census Bureau's current published figure, released August 18, 2026. Revised estimates are due November 19, 2026.
• Baymard Institute puts the average cart abandonment rate at 70.22%, across 50 studies (vendor research, updated September 2025).
• Stripe's standard US card rate is 2.9% + 30¢ per successful domestic card payment (as of October 2026).
• The South Dakota law in South Dakota v. Wayfair (2018) covered sellers with over $100,000 in sales or 200 or more transactions there a year.
• Seyfarth Shaw counted 3,117 federal website accessibility lawsuits in 2025.
• Each email that breaks the CAN-SPAM Act can bring penalties of up to $53,088 (as of October 2026), says the FTC.

Step 1: Decide what you're selling and to whom

Before you open a single platform account, write down 4 things. What do you sell, and how many products will you start with? Who buys them, and how will they get them: shipping, local pickup or digital download?

These answers decide your platform, your shipping setup and even your sales tax obligations. A bakery shipping cookie boxes across the country has very different needs from a boutique selling 40 dresses to local customers.

Which ecommerce business model fits you?

Most small stores follow one of a few models. The model changes what you stock, how you ship and which platform features you need.

Step 2: Choose a platform

There are two broad routes. A hosted platform (Shopify, BigCommerce, Squarespace, Wix) runs the servers, security and checkout for a monthly fee.

An open-source setup, most often WordPress with the free WooCommerce plugin, gives you more control. It also makes hosting, updates and security your job. Prices below are as of October 2026, read from each company's US pricing page on October 21, 2026:

Our take: if you don't have someone technical on hand, start hosted. You trade some flexibility for not having to patch plugins at 11 p.m. We compare the two most common choices in detail in WordPress vs Shopify.

How to build an ecommerce website with WordPress

If you pick WooCommerce, you start with a WordPress site on your own hosting. WooCommerce's install guide says to check its server requirements first, to confirm your host is compatible.

1. Buy hosting and install WordPress. Our tutorial on how to make a WordPress website walks through it.
2. In the WordPress admin, go to Plugins, then Add New Plugin, and search for WooCommerce.
3. Click Install Now, then Activate. The WooCommerce Setup Wizard opens on its own.
4. Answer the wizard's questions about your store details, industry and product types.
5. Set up payments, shipping zones and tax, then add your products.

Can you build an ecommerce website from scratch?

Yes. A developer can code a store from scratch with a web framework instead of a platform. You then own the checkout, the hosting and every security fix.

Our take: for most small stores, a platform does the same job for less. Custom code makes sense for features that no platform, app or plugin offers.

Step 3: How much does it cost to build an ecommerce website?

Building an ecommerce website yourself on a hosted platform costs about $400 to $1,500 in the first year, by our estimate below. One agency, OuterBox, starts a small professional store at $5,000 in its pricing guide (as of October 2026). Card fees of about 2.9% plus 30¢ per order come on top (as of October 2026).

The plan fee is the smallest part for most stores. Here is a rough first-year picture for a small store with 50 to 100 products. Lines marked "estimate" are our ranges, not quoted prices.

Ecommerce website cost table for the first year

Then come payment fees on every order, and they grow with your sales.

Example: a store selling $10,000 a month, at an average order of $50, takes 200 orders. On Shopify Basic with Shopify Payments (prices as of October 2026), card fees are 2.9% of $10,000 ($290) plus 200 x 30¢ ($60). That is $350, plus the $29 plan: about $379 a month, or 3.8% of sales. Switch to an outside payment provider at the same card rate, and Shopify's 2% fee adds $200, so about $579, or 5.8%.

Step 4: Get a domain and set up the basics

Buy a short domain that matches your brand and connect it to your platform. Make sure the site loads over HTTPS; hosted platforms include the SSL certificate. Set up a business email on that domain.

On the business side, a state with a sales tax generally requires a seller's permit (a sales tax license) before you collect. Keep a separate business bank account for store income.

Do you need a business license to sell online?

Usually yes, but the exact licenses depend on your state, your city and what you sell. The Small Business Administration (SBA) says requirements "vary based on your business activities, location, and government rules".

Retail is on the SBA's list of activities commonly regulated at the local level. Check your Secretary of State's website, and your city or county, for the permits you need.

Most businesses also need a federal tax ID, called an Employer Identification Number (EIN). It's free to apply, so skip any website that charges a fee.

Choose a theme and design for phones first

Start from a theme made for online stores, then change the logo, colors and fonts to match your brand. Keep the theme's layout at first, and change it once real shoppers show you what to fix.

Design for phones first. Google uses the mobile version of a site's content for indexing and ranking, so check every page on your own phone.

Every store also needs a few basic pages: home, category and product pages, a cart, about, contact and FAQ.

Step 5: Build product pages that sell

Each product page has one job: answer every question a shopper would ask a salesperson. That means photos from more than one angle and a description written for the buyer: size, material, contents and how it's used.

Add the price, the shipping cost or at least an estimate, and the returns policy one click away. Describe products in the words customers search with, not internal names.

Show genuine customer reviews on product pages once you have them. Our guide on how to automate customer reviews without losing authenticity shows how to ask for them.

Step 6: Set up payments and checkout

Use the platform's built-in checkout or a hosted payment page from a processor like Stripe or PayPal. Both publish standard US rates (as of October 2026). Stripe charges "2.9% + 30¢ per successful transaction for domestic cards". PayPal lists 2.99% plus a 49-cent fixed fee for standard card payments and 3.49% plus 49 cents for PayPal Checkout.

To see what one order costs you, estimate the fee with our PayPal fee calculator.

A hosted checkout also keeps your security paperwork short. Card data security is governed by PCI DSS.

A store usually qualifies for SAQ A, a short self-assessment questionnaire, when card handling is "completely outsourced to PCI DSS validated and compliant third parties". The PCI Security Standards Council updated SAQ A in January 2025. Ask your payment provider which questionnaire applies to you; if they ask you to complete one, it is usually once a year.

Then fix the checkout itself. In Baymard Institute's research on US shoppers who abandoned a checkout, the top reasons were:

• Show shipping and any fees before the last step, since surprise costs top the list
• Allow guest checkout; making people create an account loses buyers
• Keep the form short and offer wallets like Apple Pay or PayPal
• Show trust signals: a real contact page, reviews, and a clear returns policy

Step 7: Sort out shipping, sales tax and your store policies

Shipping promises have rules

The FTC's Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule sets the bar. You need "a reasonable basis for stating or implying that you can ship within a certain time". If you make no shipping statement at all, you must reasonably expect to ship "within 30 days". If you can't ship on time, you have to ask the customer whether they accept the delay or want a refund. Only promise times you can keep.

Sales tax after the Wayfair ruling

Until 2018, an online seller generally only collected sales tax in states where it had a physical presence. In South Dakota v. Wayfair, the Supreme Court ended that physical-presence rule. The case was over a South Dakota law. It covered sellers delivering "more than $100,000 of goods or services into the State" each year, or making "200 or more separate transactions" there.

Since then, every state with a sales tax has set its own threshold for remote sellers. Some have dropped the transaction count and kept only a sales amount. South Dakota itself did so in 2023. Kentucky did the same under House Bill 757, effective August 1, 2026 (PDF).

In practice: if your home state has a sales tax and your products are taxable there, collect it from day one. Turn on your platform's automatic tax calculation and check your sales into each state every quarter. When you pass a state's threshold, register there before collecting.

Thresholds differ, so check each state's revenue department, and talk to an accountant once you sell into many states. This is general information, not tax advice.

Policy pages every store needs

• Shipping policy with realistic processing and delivery times
• Returns and refunds policy
• Privacy policy. California's CCPA applies to businesses above set thresholds, such as more than $26.6 million in yearly revenue (as of January 2025). It also covers businesses that buy, sell or share data on 100,000 or more California residents or households. Many small stores fall below them, but other state laws can still require a privacy policy, so post one either way.
• Terms of service and a contact page with a real email and address

Step 8: Make the store accessible

Accessibility is a legal risk as well as good business. The Department of Justice says "Title III prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities by businesses open to the public". It has long held that this applies online, while giving businesses "flexibility in how they comply".

There's no federal web rule for private stores; the 2024 rule covers state and local governments. Courts are also split on whether web-only businesses are covered. But lawsuits are common: Seyfarth Shaw counted 3,117 federal website accessibility lawsuits in 2025.

Use WCAG 2.1 AA as your checklist. That means alt text on product images, enough color contrast, labels on every form field, and a store you can shop with the keyboard alone. Test it yourself by unplugging your mouse and buying something.

This is general information, not legal advice; check with an attorney for your situation.

Step 9: Get found on Google

These 3 things help a new store show up:

1. Merchant Center free listings. Google says "one specific way to show your products at no cost is with a free listing". Free listings can appear across Search, Images, the Shopping tab and more. Most platforms can sync your catalog to Merchant Center.
2. Product structured data. Google's documentation separates product snippets from merchant listings, which are "for pages where customers can purchase products from you". Use the merchant listing markup on product pages.
3. Speed. Google's Core Web Vitals targets are a largest contentful paint within 2.5 seconds and interaction to next paint of 200 milliseconds or less. The third target is a cumulative layout shift of 0.1 or less. Big images and too many apps are the usual culprits.

If you also sell from a physical shop, complete your Google Business Profile. If you plan to advertise, read our guide to PPC marketing before you set a budget.

Step 10: Test everything, then launch

Free pre-launch checklist for an online store

After launch, collect only genuine reviews. The FTC's rule banning fake reviews and testimonials took effect on October 21, 2024. It covers fake reviews, paying for reviews that must be positive or negative, and undisclosed reviews from company insiders.

Which launch approach should you pick?

Google's guide to launching an ecommerce website describes 4 approaches. They are a grand reveal, a home page launch, a launch with products out of stock, and a soft launch. Google says a soft launch has the advantage of simplicity, and it lets you test with real shoppers at lower traffic.

One catch from Google: don't switch off add-to-cart to stop early orders. Google may use it to check final prices, including tax and shipping.

Tell Google your store is live

Google's guide also lists these steps for a new store:

1. Verify that you own the site in Google Search Console.
2. Ask Google to index it: use the URL Inspection tool for a few pages, or submit a sitemap for many.
3. Watch the Page Indexing report. Merchant Center may cross-check your products against Google's index.
4. Sign up for Google Merchant Center, so your products can appear in places like the Shopping tab.

On WordPress, our guide to getting a new WordPress website indexed by Google covers each step.

How do you get your first sales after launch?

Get your first sales from people who already know you, then build search and email traffic over time. Tell past customers, friends and your social followers. List products on Google for free, and collect email addresses from day one.

• Add an email signup form and send a welcome offer. Our email marketing strategy guide covers what to send next.
• Post on social media where your buyers already spend time. Our social media marketing strategy guide shows how to plan it.
• Write blog posts that answer buyers' questions, and keep your product data in Merchant Center up to date.
• If you run ads, start with a small budget and track the cost of each sale before you spend more.

Every marketing email must follow the CAN-SPAM Act. Include your valid physical postal address and a clear way to opt out. Honor each opt-out request within 10 business days. The FTC says each email that breaks the law can bring penalties of up to $53,088 (as of October 2026).

This is general information, not legal advice.

What to check every month after launch

• Conversion rate: the share of visits that end in an order
• Average order value: total sales divided by the number of orders
• Cart abandonment: how many shoppers add items to a cart but don't buy, next to Baymard's 70.22% average
• Top search terms and pages in Google Search Console

Our Google Analytics 4 guide shows how to track purchases, so these numbers fill in on their own.

Should you build your store yourself or hire a developer?

Build it yourself if you're testing an idea and a store template covers what you need. Hire a developer when you need custom features, a migration, or links to your inventory and accounting systems.

Our take: if you're testing an idea, build it yourself on a hosted plan and spend the savings on photos and marketing. Bring in a developer when sales justify it, or when you need custom features, migrations or integrations a template can't handle. (DigitalTreed sells this service.)

Your next step: write down your product count, the platform you picked and any systems the store must connect to. With those, price a DIY build from the tables above, or get a quote for a professional build and compare the two.

First published July 2020. Rewritten October 2026: new US platform prices and card fees, a worked fee example and state sales tax thresholds after Wayfair. It also adds PCI SAQ A, accessibility lawsuit numbers and the shipping and fake-review rules for online sellers.

How we made this guide: it is built from the platforms' own US pricing pages for Shopify, BigCommerce, Squarespace, WooCommerce, Stripe and PayPal. It also uses the US Census Bureau's ecommerce report, the Supreme Court's Wayfair decision, FTC business guides and state revenue departments. ADA.gov, Google's documentation and Baymard Institute's checkout research cover accessibility, search and checkout. Sources are linked inline. We checked every number against the source named next to it on October 22, 2026. Shopify's monthly-billing price and Squarespace's prices come from our October 21, 2026 reading of their US pages. Those pages show local prices to our checker's location. Updated October 23, 2026: added ecommerce business models, WordPress setup steps, business licenses, theme and mobile design, and Google's 4 ways to launch. We also added a section on first sales with the CAN-SPAM rules, a key facts list and 2 FAQs. Platform prices were rechecked on their pricing pages that day.

Sources

• US Census Bureau: Quarterly Retail E-Commerce Sales (Q2 2026 release, August 18, 2026)
• Shopify: Pricing (read October 21, 2026)
• Shopify: How much does an ecommerce website cost
• BigCommerce: Pricing
• Squarespace: Pricing
• WooCommerce: Pricing
• WooPayments: Fees
• Stripe: Pricing
• PayPal: Merchant fees (last updated October 1, 2026)
• OuterBox: Ecommerce website pricing (agency)
• PCI Security Standards Council: Updates for merchants validating to SAQ A (January 2025)
• South Dakota v. Wayfair, 585 U.S. 162 (2018)
• South Dakota Department of Revenue: 2023 legislative updates
• Kentucky Department of Revenue: remote retailer threshold change (PDF, July 29, 2026)
• eCFR: 16 CFR Part 435, Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise
• FTC: Business guide to the Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule
• FTC: Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule Q&A
• California Attorney General: CCPA
• California Privacy Protection Agency: CPI adjustment
• ADA.gov: Guidance on web accessibility and the ADA (March 18, 2022)
• Seyfarth Shaw: Federal website accessibility lawsuit filings in 2025 (March 2026)
• Google Merchant Center Help: Free listings
• Google Search Central: Product structured data
• web.dev: Web Vitals
• Baymard Institute: Cart abandonment rate statistics (vendor research, updated September 22, 2025)
• SBA: Apply for licenses and permits (read October 23, 2026)
• WooCommerce: Installing and uninstalling WooCommerce
• Google Search Central: How to launch a new ecommerce website (last updated December 10, 2025)
• Google Search Central: Mobile site and mobile-first indexing best practices (last updated December 10, 2025)
• FTC: CAN-SPAM Act, a compliance guide for business