Store Setup: A Step-by-Step Checklist

Step 1 — Account & identity verification

• Use your real legal details. Platforms verify identity against government ID and bank records. Mismatched names or borrowed accounts are the most common cause of frozen payouts.
• Decide individual vs. business account honestly. Most beginners start as individual sellers; you can usually upgrade later. Don't register a business type you don't have documents for.
• Use a dedicated email you check daily. Platforms send compliance warnings with deadlines; missing one can mean suspension.
• Bank account in the same name as the registered seller. Third-party payout accounts trigger reviews.

Step 2 — Store identity

• Pick a name you can keep. Avoid trademarked words (including platform names) in your store name. Generic-but-memorable beats clever-but-risky.
• Write a real "about" blurb. Two or three honest sentences about what you sell and who it's for. Empty profiles read as fly-by-night to both customers and platform reviewers.
• Upload a simple logo — even text on a colored square. Default avatars depress click-through on your store page.

Step 3 — Shipping settings (where most new stores get hurt)

Shipping settings are promises. The platform enforces them with penalties, so set them to what you can actually deliver:

1. Handling time: set the slowest realistic time, not the most attractive one. If your supplier needs 3 days, promising 1-day handling earns you late-dispatch penalties from week one.
2. Shipping templates: configure regions you genuinely serve. Excluding remote regions you can't affordably ship to is better than cancelling orders, which damages your rating more.
3. Free vs. paid shipping: on social commerce, free shipping baked into the price almost always converts better than a cheap price plus a shipping fee at checkout.
4. Tracking: only use carriers whose tracking the platform recognizes. Untracked orders count against you in disputes — you'll lose every "item not received" claim.

Step 4 — Policies that protect you

• Returns: match or slightly exceed the platform minimum (often 14–30 days). Fighting the platform's buyer-protection culture is unwinnable; price the return rate into your margin instead.
• Product compliance: before listing, check the platform's restricted/prohibited categories list for your product type. "I didn't know" does not reverse a suspension.
• Tax settings: most platforms collect sales tax/VAT automatically for marketplace orders, but confirm what's handled for you versus what remains your responsibility in your country. When in doubt, ask a local accountant — this guide isn't tax advice.

Step 5 — Pre-launch dry run

Before going live, walk through your own store like a suspicious customer:

1. Open your store page on a phone. Does it look like a real business — name, logo, about, policies all present?
2. Check every listing for placeholder text, wrong prices, or supplier images you meant to replace.
3. Verify the shipping estimate a customer sees matches what your supplier can do.
4. Place a test order if the platform allows it, and cancel it properly, to learn the order flow before a real customer is involved.

The mistakes that get new stores flagged