Much of the advice given about running an online store discusses issues related to providing attractive, secure, reliable and trusted online presence. It doesn’t include advice about selling. That’s because it is assumed that people selling products online already know about selling offline, using traditional outlets. Because building a website does not automatically build a business.

When setting up a physical store one has to:

• determine if a market exists for your products or services
• tell your market that you exist
• get people to choose you over your competitors
• set the prices
• determine the shipping methods and prices
• staff the store
• define the policies to you apply to the store, staff and customers
• present and describe your products
• achieve a sale in the easiest way possible
• encourage related and repeat sales

Each consideration in the above list is about persuading people to buy. There’s no other reason for a store to exist, except to sell stuff.

Building an online store only provides the basic mechanism for a store. A website does not find customers and does not force people to buy its products or services. It cannot be built and forgotten about, whilst you wait for the orders to magically arrive. It requires work and commitment.