Building the store is the easy part
Most new store owners spend months on the site and weeks on how anyone will find it. That ratio is precisely backwards, and it is the most common reason a good store makes no sales.
A plain store with a distribution plan outsells a beautiful one without.
What the first year usually looks like
| Period | Reality |
|---|---|
| Months 1–3 | Very low traffic, orders mostly from people you know |
| Months 4–6 | First organic orders, if content and listings exist |
| Months 7–9 | Patterns emerge — which products, which channels |
| Months 10–12 | Enough data to decide what to double down on |
That is a normal trajectory rather than a disappointing one. Stores that expect it plan differently from those that do not.
Get to a hundred orders
The first hundred orders teach you more than any amount of planning: what people actually buy, what they ask, what gets returned, and what your real costs are.
Optimise for reaching that number rather than for perfecting anything. Everything after it is informed by data rather than by assumption.
Where new stores go wrong
- Rebuilding the site instead of solving distribution
- Adding products instead of promoting the ones they have
- Advertising before the store converts
- Ignoring the customers they already have
- Never calculating actual margin after all costs
What to measure from day one
- Where every order came from
- Contribution margin per product, honestly
- Contacts per hundred orders, and their reasons
- Return rate and reasons
- Whether anyone orders twice
That last one is the most important and the most commonly ignored in a first year.