First and foremost, you must know the formula: set specific goals and step-by-step think through the journey. You can surely do it yourself or follow our recommendations to make it a bit easier and avoid common mistakes. 

We assume you already have a clear picture of what you are going to sell, who the target audience is, and what's more important, you've already decided that it will be an online store. So, what's next? 

We've been dealing with ecommerce for a while now. That's why we have come up with an essentials kit to launch an online store. In short, it includes: 

• domain name & hosting, competitors analysis;
• design and development;
• promotion and marketing.

Looks plain and simple, right? Now let's dive a bit deeper. 

We'll start from the beginning and share some tips on the domain name and hosting.

This item comes as the first on the list and for a good reason. Hosting is the place where your online store will dwell, and the domain name will be its address. Which one to choose depends heavily on your budget and plans. If your online store is relatively small, then a $3 per month fee may be sufficient. If the ecommerce business grows, it will be necessary to reconsider the hosting plan.

As to the domain name, it's usually the actual name of the online store. Yet, if it's already occupied, you'll need to think of something else. Our experience shows that in ecommerce, this problem can be possibly solved in three ways:

1. You can try and buy out the online store domain name. As the practice shows, it's actually an option and not that expensive. 
2. Play with the name by adding an extra word or hyphen. 
3. Finally, you can always think of a different name. 

Going further to competitor analysis, research the main competitors' activities taking these actions:

• Find companies with similar business models and products with the help of Google and Amazon.
• Poke around social networks to find more information about their brand and communication style.
• Create your competitor list, including basic info like their shop name, website, strengths, weaknesses, social following etc. In a perfect world, you should select 5-10 competitors.
• You should include data on their: market share, main differentiators / unique value-add, price points, shipping approach, etc. 

To reveal some specific elements of your competitors’ approaches, you might consider adding more sections to your competitive analysis:

• Features on competitors' websites (search tools, product images, design/layout, etc.)
• Customer experience elements (cart abandonment strategy, customer support, mobile UX, etc.)
• Social media approach (channels, frequency of posting, engagement, etc.)
• Content marketing tactics (blog topics, content types)
• Marketing tactics (types of promotions, frequency of discounts, etc.)
• Customer reviews (language used around products, recurring complaints, etc.)

If you managed to do all mentioned things - well done, the preparatory stage is finished (as well as the first part of our “How to start an online store” podcast).