Prepare to fulfill your first order and build your customer base.

Your first sale is an exciting milestone for your business. You’ve registered a domain, set up your store, and published your site. Now it’s time to accept and fulfill orders. Each order is an opportunity to connect with your customers and build trust in your brand. Clear communication, timely fulfillment, and strategic use of our built-in marketing tools can turn a first-time buyer into a regular shopper.

Prepare for your first sale

Ensure you’re ready when customers start shopping. These steps are essential for collecting payments, including what you’ll need to cover the cost of sales tax and shipping.

1. Connect a payment processor to accept purchases and receive payouts.
2. Set up tax rates to ensure you charge the correct sales tax on every purchase.
3. If you sell physical products, set up shipping rates to cover the cost of shipping, including an optional markup. This is a good option if you want to offset the cost of additional tariffs.
4. Customize your store’s email notifications.
5. Place a test order to confirm your checkout and notifications work as expected.

Tip: If you want to gauge interest and raise funds for production before manufacturing your products, you can accept pre-orders.

Keep track of your customers

Each sale can help grow your base of repeat customers. Consider using these features to stay in touch with customers from the beginning:

• Product reviews - Send an email to customers 14 days after their order fulfillment to ask for a product review.
• Product waitlists - Collect email addresses when a product is sold out so you can let customers know when it’s back in stock.
• Customer accounts - Allow customers to save their details for faster checkout in the future.
• Mailing lists - Add a newsletter subscribe option to checkout.
• Meta Pixel - Place targeted ads to encourage shoppers to return to your site.

Fulfill your first order

When a customer places an order, you both receive a confirmation email with the details. The steps you take next will depend on what you sell.

Service products

Service products, like classes, consultations, and events, don’t require shipping. Mark these orders as fulfilled after the service is completed.

1. Review the order in the orders dashboard.
2. Complete the service.
3. Mark the order as fulfilled.

If you need to contact a customer, you can find their details in the order confirmation email and the contacts panel.

Tip: If you sell services, you may also be interested in Invoicing.

Physical products

It’s best to mark orders for physical products as fulfilled when you’re ready to ship them. When you have a pending order:

1. Review the order in the orders dashboard.
2. Package the item.
3. Buy and print a shipping label.
4. Mark the order as fulfilled and add tracking details.

Unless you opt out, your customer will receive an email letting them know their order is fulfilled.

Tip: If you offer local pickup, learn more about fulfilling these orders in Local pickup and delivery.

Digital Products

When you sell digital products, visitors sign up for access to your gated content by creating an account and purchasing a pricing plan. Customers gain acces to your content as soon as their payment goes through. They receive an automated email letting them know how to access your content, and you don’t need to take steps to fulfill these purchases. You may want to review and manage pricing plan purchases after customers sign up, or customize the emails your customers receive from your store.

Grow your business

After your first sale, you can turn your attention to building momentum. Squarespace’s marketing tools help you reach new customers through Email Campaigns, social media integrations, and SEO. You can create discounts, promote products, and track performance from your analytics dashboard. As you grow, you can also explore other inventory and fulfillment options suited for high-volume businesses. For more tips, visit Increasing your store's sales.

Your first sale is just the beginning. With consistent marketing and customer engagement, you can build your online store into a thriving business. Learn more about what other entrepreneurs have built on Squarespace.