How to start an online store when you already have a shop

If you already run a shop, you have most of what an online store needs: products, suppliers, prices that work and customers who know you. What's left is a short list. Choose which products go online first and get them photographed. Set up payments and delivery. Then make sure the website and the shop count the same stock. The stock count is the part that causes trouble later if you skip it.

We build online stores for shops on Sirat Retail OS. This is the order we'd do it in, with or without us.

Do you actually need an online store?

Ask this first, because the answer is sometimes no.

An online store earns its keep when people outside walking distance want what you sell, or when your regulars would rather order from their phone than drive in. A fabric shop with ranges you can't find elsewhere, a supplier with a trade catalogue, a speciality food shop: these sell well online.

If most of your trade is impulse buys from foot traffic, or your stock changes every week and never repeats, a website with your hours, location and a WhatsApp button may do more for less. Our website pricing starts at R5 000 for that.

Selling on a marketplace such as Takealot is another route, with different trade-offs. Selling on Takealot vs your own store works through them.

Step 1: Pick what goes online first

You don't need the whole shop on day one.

Start with the products that are easy to post, don't break, and that people already ask about by phone or WhatsApp. A short, well-photographed range is better than a long one with gaps. Leave out the bulky, fragile or fast-changing stock until the basics are working.

Step 2: Get photos and descriptions

This is the job most shop owners underestimate. Every product needs at least one clear photo on a plain background, a price, and a few lines that answer the questions a customer would ask at the counter: size, material, what's in the box.

A phone and good daylight are enough to start. On our Growth plan and up, the store can clean up a phone photo into a product shot and draft a description from the product name and a few facts. You check both before anything goes live.

If your products are already in a spreadsheet, Growth and up can import them rather than you typing them in one by one.

Step 3: Decide how customers pay

South African shoppers expect card payments, instant EFT and, more and more, the option to pay in instalments. Our stores take payment through Bob Pay, Paystack, Payfast, Payflex, PayJustNow and EFT, and we add 0% to each sale. You pay only the payment provider's fee.

Fees differ between providers, and some platforms add their own percentage on top. Which payment gateway should a South African online store use? compares them on a real sale.

Step 4: Sort out delivery and collection

Decide this before you launch, not when the first order arrives.

• Collection from the shop. The easiest option, and it brings people through your door.
• Local delivery. Your own driver for nearby suburbs, at a flat fee you set.
• Courier. For the rest of the country. Get quotes from two or three couriers for your typical parcel size, because rates vary a lot with weight, size and how many parcels you send.

Put the delivery cost in the checkout clearly. A delivery fee that only appears at the last step puts people off.

Step 5: Keep one stock count

This is where shops that go online get caught. If the shop and the website each keep their own stock number, sooner or later the website sells something that left the shop yesterday.

You can update the website by hand, join two systems with a sync, or run the shop and the website on one system. We compare all three in Can my shop tills and online store use the same stock?

In our system, the tills and the website share one stock count. When you receive stock from a supplier, it's available in the shop and online at the same moment. Suppliers and receiving stock are on every plan.

Step 6: Tell the customers you already have

Your first online orders usually come from people who already know the shop. Put a sign at the till, add the web address to your receipts and slips, and send a message to your WhatsApp contacts and email list.

After that, the store can do some of the work itself. On Starter, a customer who leaves an order unfinished gets a reminder email, and on Growth and Pro a series of three. Growth and up add email and SMS campaigns. They also add loyalty points and referrals, and ask customers for a review after delivery.

What does it cost to start?

Here's what our system costs. You'd compare this with the other routes: Shopify, WooCommerce, a marketplace, or a freelancer.

Item	Price
Setup, once-off	Quoted after a 20-minute call, because it depends on the design and what the store needs. It covers design in your brand, the store build, payments, domain and staff training
Starter	R400 a month: 1 branch, 2 staff logins, 5 000 emails a month
Growth	R900 a month: 3 branches, 5 staff logins, 10 000 emails and 100 SMS a month, loyalty points and AI product photos
Pro	R1 500 a month: 5 branches, 10 staff logins, 25 000 emails and 200 SMS a month, a customer app with free push notifications
Tills in the shop	Pro only, with one till included. More tills are priced with you on an Enterprise plan
Our cut of each sale	0%

Yearly billing is 10 months' fee. A shop that only wants the website pays the plan, and can keep its card machine at the counter. A shop that wants our till on the same stock count goes on Pro, which includes one till.

If you're looking at Shopify instead, it's worth knowing that Shopify Payments isn't available in South Africa. Shopify adds a fee to each sale when you use a local payment provider, and its plans and apps bill in US dollars. What Shopify really costs in South Africa does the sum.

If you already have a WooCommerce store that's become hard to manage, we bring across your products, customers and old links, so the pages Google already knows keep working.

Who has done this?

Sizabantu Fabrics has two shops in the Durban CBD selling bridal satins, shweshwe, lace and haberdashery, and sells online nationwide on our system. Victoria Packaging, a Pietermaritzburg supplier of packaging, farming and safety equipment trading since 1993, was the first store on it and still runs on it. The Happiness Factory, a sweet shop in Overport, sells imported chocolates and snacks online too. All three are in our portfolio.

When are we the wrong choice?

• You want to test the idea for a few hundred rand. A free or cheap store builder, or a marketplace listing, is a better first experiment than paying to set up a full store system.
• You sell only a handful of items. Payment links from your card provider, shared on WhatsApp, can cover that.
• You want to build and run it yourself. Then WooCommerce or Shopify gives you that control, and we'd rather point you there.

The short version

Choose a first batch of products. Photograph them properly. Set up payments and delivery before launch, keep one stock count, and tell the customers you already have.

If you'd like help with the whole thing, look at Sirat Retail OS, get an estimate for your shop, or WhatsApp us on +27 73 453 8352. We'll tell you on the first call whether a full store makes sense for you yet.