To start an online store, you need a product to sell, a domain name, an e-commerce platform to manage your catalogue and payments, and enough visibility on Google to attract buyers. Expect to spend between CHF 250 and CHF 600 a year for a turnkey solution, or several thousand francs for a custom-built e-commerce site designed by a professional. The real challenge isn't technical, it's strategic: picking the right tool, pricing your products correctly, and resisting the urge to add features you don't need on day one.
What follows covers the questions that freelancers and small businesses in Switzerland and France actually ask before they start selling online: which options exist, what things really cost in francs, what steps to follow, which mistakes trip people up, and when it makes sense to hire someone who knows the terrain. This is written for anyone selling physical or digital products who wants to understand the landscape before investing.
Why sell online in 2026?
Selling online in 2026 lets you reach customers far beyond your local area, at any hour, without the fixed costs of a physical shop. E-commerce keeps growing year after year, and buyers are increasingly comfortable ordering from their phone.
For a craftsperson making their own products, a retailer looking to complement a physical shop, or a freelancer launching a brand, e-commerce opens a sales channel that works around the clock. You don't replace your existing business, you extend it: a customer who discovers your products at midnight can place an order without waiting for opening hours. The barrier to entry has also dropped considerably in recent years. Where you once needed a significant budget and a developer to build a functional store, today a turnkey platform lets you start selling for a few dozen francs a month. Access to secure payment methods, shipping logistics and management tools has become straightforward, even for someone with no technical background at all.
What has also changed is buyer behaviour: before visiting a shop or picking up the phone, many people start by searching on Google, comparing options, reading reviews and ordering online if they find what they want. If you aren't there with a store, your competitors are the ones catching those sales. Selling online is no longer a gamble, it has become a natural channel for any business that sells products, and the cost of not being there often outweighs the cost of getting started.
What are the options for creating an online store?
Three main paths are open to you for selling online: using a turnkey platform, building a custom site with a professional, or selling through an existing marketplace. Each option comes with a different level of control, budget and time commitment.
Turnkey platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce or Squarespace are the most common choice for getting started. You pay a monthly subscription, pick a template, add your products and you're live within days. The advantage is speed and simplicity: no need to touch code, security updates and hosting are included. The limit is customisation: you stay within the boundaries of the template you chose, and if you want something truly different, you quickly hit the tool's walls. On Shopify, for example, the basic plan starts at CHF 21 per month on annual billing, plus transaction fees of about 2.95% per sale.
A custom-built e-commerce site, designed specifically for your business, gives you full control over the design, features and buying experience. It's the right choice when your product calls for a particular purchase flow, when your catalogue is complex, or when you want your store to genuinely reflect your brand instead of looking like thousands of others. The price is higher, but the result is yours and can evolve without platform constraints.
Marketplaces like Etsy for handmade goods or Amazon for mass-market products let you sell without building a site at all, riding on their traffic. It's handy for testing a product or reaching buyers quickly, but you depend on their rules, their commissions, and you don't build your own customer base. Many merchants actually use a marketplace as a springboard, then invest in their own store once their product has found its audience.
The right question isn't "which option is best" in the abstract, but "which option is right for my situation". If you're starting with few products and a tight budget, a turnkey platform is more than enough. If you already have a professional website and want to add a store that's fully integrated with your brand, custom development makes complete sense.
How much does an online store cost?
The cost of an online store depends on the path you take: a turnkey solution runs between CHF 250 and CHF 700 a year all-in, while a custom e-commerce site typically falls between CHF 5,000 and CHF 20,000 to build, plus a few hundred francs a year in maintenance.
On a platform like Shopify, the basic plan comes to CHF 252 a year (CHF 21 per month on annual billing), plus a domain name (CHF 10 to 20 a year) and transaction fees on every sale (around 3%). The mid-tier plan runs at CHF 59 per month, roughly CHF 700 a year, with lower transaction fees and additional features like employee accounts and shipping discounts. For an open-source solution like WooCommerce, the software itself is free but hosting, a theme, payment extensions and ongoing technical maintenance push the initial bill to at least CHF 1,000 to 2,000, with CHF 300 to 500 a year for hosting and updates on top.
A custom e-commerce site, built specifically for your business, represents a larger upfront investment but delivers a tool tailored to your needs, a design that looks like no other, and a store that can grow without platform limitations. The budget depends on the number of products, the complexity of the purchase flow, the integrations required and the level of finish you want.
In every case, don't forget the hidden costs that inflate the bill: paid extensions that pile up, the payment gateway, buying or retouching product photos, and above all the time you spend configuring everything yourself. That's often where the "free solution" ends up being expensive: not in francs, but in hours you aren't spending selling.
What steps should you follow to launch an online store?
To launch your online store, start by defining what you sell and who you sell it to, then choose your tool, build your catalogue, set up payments and shipping, and finally open the doors. The order matters: the most costly mistakes come from things that weren't thought through before you began.
The first step is to clarify your offer and your audience. What products are you selling, at what price, for whom, and how do you stand out from what already exists? The clearer your positioning, the easier everything else becomes: copy, photos, design, shipping rates. Many stores fail not because the site is poorly built, but because the offer is vague.
Next, choose your domain name and your platform. The domain is your address on the internet: keep it short, memorable and easy to spell, and register it before doing anything else. The platform is the tool that manages your catalogue, orders and payments. Take time to compare, but don't spend weeks deliberating: an imperfect store that's live beats a perfect store that only exists in your head.
Then come the product pages. These are what actually sell: a clear title with the exact product name, a description that answers the questions a buyer has in mind (size, material, weight, lead time, care instructions), and above all good photos. In e-commerce, the photo is your salesperson: a poorly photographed product doesn't sell, even if it's excellent. Invest time, or a bit of money, in clean visuals on a neutral background with proper lighting.
Set up payments and shipping next. Offer at least credit card payments and, if possible, a payment method popular in your market (Twint in Switzerland, PayPal elsewhere). For shipping, display clear prices and realistic delivery times: nothing drives a buyer away like surprise shipping fees appearing at the last moment. Test your entire purchase flow yourself, from the first click to the order confirmation, and have someone who doesn't know your site test it too. The bugs and friction you no longer notice jump out to a fresh pair of eyes.
How do you get your online store found on Google?
For your store to show up in search results, each product page needs to target a specific keyword that your customers actually type, with a clear title, a useful description and content that matches what the buyer is looking for. E-commerce SEO rests on the same foundations as ranking any website on Google, with a few quirks specific to product pages.
The basis is the content of your product pages. A title that uses the exact product name as people search for it, a unique description that doesn't copy the manufacturer's text, and complete information (dimensions, materials, uses) give Google enough to understand and rank your page. Copying the same description across twenty similar products is one of the most common mistakes, and it costs dearly in visibility.
Add a blog to your store as well, even a modest one. An article explaining how to choose the right product in your category, how to care for it, or how to use it attracts visitors who don't know you yet and who, once convinced of your expertise, often end up buying. It's exactly the same principle as a blog on a showcase website: each article is an extra doorway into your store.
Your site's speed matters a great deal too. A slow site makes visitors leave before they've even seen your products. Compress your images, choose decent hosting, and regularly check that your pages load in under three seconds on a phone. Google factors speed into its rankings, and buyers simply don't wait.
Finally, if you sell locally, set up a Google business profile and link it to your online store. Local SEO remains the most profitable lever for a small business selling in its area: it puts you on the map when someone searches for your type of product nearby.
Can you sell online without holding stock?
Yes, dropshipping and selling digital products both let you sell online without physical inventory, but each model has its constraints and doesn't suit every business.
Dropshipping means selling products you never stock: when a customer orders, your supplier ships directly. You never touch the product. The upside is obvious: no stock to finance and no warehouse to manage. The downsides are serious: you don't control packaging quality, delivery times or returns. If the supplier drags their feet or ships a damaged product, it's your reputation that suffers, not theirs. Margins are also very thin, often between 10 and 20%, because you're selling the same products as hundreds of other stores. This model can work for testing a market or validating an idea, but building a lasting business on it demands intense marketing work and a very tight niche.
Digital products (courses, templates, files, software) are another way to sell without stock. No physical shipping, no product returns, and much better margins since the production cost is fixed regardless of how many units you sell. It's an excellent model if you have expertise to share or content to sell, but competition is fierce and the product needs to be good enough to convince buyers to pay when so much content is available for nothing.
In both cases, no stock doesn't mean no work: you still have to build the store, drive traffic, handle customer service and keep the business running day to day. Stock is just one line item in an online store, and often not the hardest one.
What mistakes should you avoid when launching your store?
The most common mistake is spending months polishing your store without ever opening it, because it's "not ready yet". An e-commerce site is never perfect at launch, and that's normal: you'll improve it based on feedback from real customers, not by imagining what they might want.
The second mistake is neglecting photos. In a physical shop, the customer can touch the product, turn it over, feel its weight. Online, they have only your photos and your description to make up their mind. Blurry, badly framed photos or cluttered backgrounds cast doubt on the product's quality, even if the product itself is excellent. Take the time to shoot decent visuals, it's worth more than any extra feature on your site.
Third pitfall: stacking extensions and features from day one. Every tool you add has a cost (in money or time), sometimes slows the site down, and adds complexity. Start with the strict minimum, a clean catalogue, working payments, clear shipping, and add the rest later, once you know what you actually need based on real customer feedback.
Fourth mistake: ignoring shipping costs. Many stores display an attractive product price, then tack on steep shipping fees at checkout. It's the number one cause of cart abandonment. Better to fold part of the shipping cost into the product price and show free delivery, or at least state the fees clearly on the product page itself.
Finally, don't overlook legal notices and terms of sale. In Switzerland and in France, an online store must clearly display the seller's identity, general terms and conditions, return policies, and comply with data protection rules. This isn't a boring legal detail: it's what reassures a buyer hesitating to hand over their card number to a site they've never heard of.
Should you hire a professional for your online store?
For a simple store with a few dozen products, a turnkey platform and some spare time are enough to get started on your own. For an e-commerce site that needs to reflect your brand, handle a complex catalogue or integrate with your business tools, hiring a professional saves you time, money and sales.
Turnkey platforms are built so you can manage on your own, and for many small stores that's a good thing. But as soon as your needs step outside the standard framework, the time spent working around the tool's limitations quickly exceeds what you would have invested in a custom build. A purchase flow designed for your products, a design that doesn't look like thousands of other stores, loading speed optimised to convert rather than just to show a decent score: these are things a web professional handles in days, and that you'd spend weeks cobbling together on your own with uncertain results.
The other advantage is reliability. A professional knows how to structure a site so it ranks well, how to avoid the security mistakes that expose customer data, and how to build a site that handles the load as your business grows. If you're planning to redesign an existing site and add a store to it, that's the ideal moment to do things right from the start rather than patching things up later.
The real calculation is simple: how many sales are you losing each month because of a slow site, a design that doesn't inspire trust, or a clumsy checkout flow? If the answer is "more than the cost of a professional", the choice is made. And if you're still unsure, starting with a free conversation with a developer to understand what a custom site would bring to your specific case costs you nothing and gives you a solid basis for comparison.
Where to start, concretely
Get going with the minimum: a product that sells, a platform that works, and photos that make people want to buy. You don't need everything in place to open, you need to open to find out what's missing. The online stores that succeed aren't the ones that were perfect on day one, they're the ones that started, learned and adjusted with every order.
If you're selling a handful of products on a tight budget, a turnkey platform puts you online in days for a few dozen francs a month. If your business calls for something more powerful, or you want a site that truly looks like you, get in touch and let's talk it through: we'll look at what exists, what you need, and find the right approach for your situation.
