What You Need to Start an E-Commerce Site: Steps, Cost Items and the Marketplace Decision

Technically an e-commerce site is set up in a day; getting it to sell takes months. The difference lies in four things that must be handled before setup: product, images, logistics, payment. This article covers those first, then the setup steps and the cost items. No figures; they vary by sector and product count, and website pricing explains which item changes what.

Before setup: four questions

1. 01
   Product. How many products, how many variants (size, colour)? Where is stock kept, who counts it?
2. 02
   Images. Does every product have a consistent photo suitable for a sales page? If not, that is a bigger job than the site itself. Creating product photos and marketplace photo rules cover it.
3. 03
   Logistics. Courier agreement, packaging, returns process. Return terms must be published on the site.
4. 04
   Payment. Virtual POS or a payment institution; applications require company documents and can take days.

Official requirements

E-commerce in Turkey carries obligations such as tax registration, the distance sales contract, the pre-information form, return and delivery terms, the KVKK privacy notice and ETBİS registration. This article is not legal or financial advice; verify current requirements with your accountant and the Ministry of Trade’s e-commerce pages. These are not “details” to add later; they are conditions for going live.

Marketplace or your own site?

• Marketplace (Trendyol, Hepsiburada, Amazon): ready traffic, ready payment and courier infrastructure; in return, commission, competitors on the same page, customer data not yours, rules the platform’s.
• Own site: the brand is yours, the customer is yours, no commission; in return you bring the traffic (SEO, social, ads).

For most businesses the right order: start on a marketplace to see demand, then open your own site and move loyal customers there. The two do not exclude each other; the same images and product data feed both.

Setup steps

1. 01
   Domain (registered in your name) and hosting.
2. 02
   Platform decision: hosted e-commerce (monthly fee, fast) or custom build (higher entry cost, full ownership). Decision criteria are in website pricing.
3. 03
   Product data: name, description, variants, stock, price — as a table, before the site.
4. 04
   Images: main image on a plain background, extra images staged; every product in one language.
5. 05
   Payment and courier integration.
6. 06
   Legal pages and consent boxes in the checkout flow.
7. 07
   Analytics and search console setup: measurement starts before sales do.
8. 08
   Order notification and stock alert automation (order notification, stock alert) — from day one, so no order is missed.

The cost items

• Domain and hosting (fixed, annual)
• Platform fee or custom development
• Product image production (proportional to product count — usually the biggest item)
• Payment institution commission and virtual POS fee
• Courier agreement and packaging
• Legal texts (accountant / lawyer)
• Traffic: SEO content, social media, ad budget
• Maintenance and updates

Common mistakes

• Building the site and leaving product images for later.
• Thinking about courier and returns when the first order arrives.
• Copying legal pages from another site.
• Expecting “the site is live, sales will come” without a traffic budget.

By sector: for modest fashion, opening a modest fashion boutique covers the image and variant problem in detail. Sufitware’s website service puts image production and automation in the same package for e-commerce; write your product count and marketplace plan in the brief form and we will state plainly which steps are yours and which are ours.