Online Stores
The complete guide to your ecommerce store — set up your catalog, add products, design your storefront, run checkout & discounts, and manage everything from one dashboard. 0% commission, unlimited products.
This section covers everything you do inside a SitesPlaced online store — from the moment you create it to the day-to-day work of adding products, running offers, answering customers and keeping the storefront looking right. A store is free to build and free to publish. There is no commission on your sales, no limit on products or orders, and online payments through Razorpay, cash on delivery and WhatsApp checkout are all included on the free plan. You pay only if you want your own domain, the SitesPlaced badge removed, AI-written copy, analytics or the paid marketing integrations.
How the pieces fit together
Your store dashboard has eleven tabs: Home, Orders, Products, Messages, AI Co-founder, Loyalty, Reviews, Subscribers, Analytics, Design and Settings. Think of them in three groups. Products and Settings are where you set the store up. Design is where you control what the storefront looks like — the sections on your Home, About and Contact pages, plus your blog. Home, Orders, Messages, AI Co-founder, Loyalty, Reviews, Subscribers and Analytics are where you run the store once it is live.
Settings is one long, searchable list with seventeen sections: Store details, Branding, Navigation & menu, Catalog & fields, Categories, Discounts, Sales boosters, Email list, Checkout, Shipping, Payments & invoices, Pages & policies, SEO & sharing, Tracking & code, Integrations, Developer & connected shops, and AI co-founder. Every change you make in Settings sits as a draft until you press Save in the bar that appears at the bottom, so you can move between sections freely and save once.
The order to do things
- 1Create your store — pick the template that fits what you sell, and name it. If you already sell on Instagram, a website, a PDF or another platform, the Importer builds the store for you.
- 2Set up your catalog once — pricing model, stock tracking and the fields your Add Product form asks for.
- 3Define your categories, then add products.
- 4Decide how customers order in Checkout, set delivery charges, and connect Razorpay if you want instant UPI and card payments.
- 5Make it yours — branding, storefront sections, menu, policies and SEO.
- 6Press Publish. Share your link on WhatsApp and Instagram, then manage orders and messages as they come in.
- 7Once you are live, the optional extras. Sell files rather than parcels with digital downloads.
- 8Take a photo and a note from the buyer on made-to-order items with product personalisation.
- 9Let shoppers save their details and see their orders with customer accounts. Guest checkout stays either way.
- 10See where your visitors come from and what they look at in store analytics.
- 11Lift the average order with the sales boosters: popups, a slide-out cart, bundles and Buy X Get Y.
Who this is for
These guides are written for the person actually running the shop — a boutique owner taking orders on WhatsApp, a home bakery, a jewellery brand moving off Instagram DMs, a D2C brand that wants UPI, COD and Shiprocket without paying a monthly platform fee. You do not need a developer. Every label in these articles is the exact label you will see in the dashboard, so you can search Settings for the word and land on the right field.
Money-related topics — connecting Razorpay, handling orders and shipments, invoices and WhatsApp order alerts — live in Payments & Orders. Custom domains have their own section at Custom domains. Plan prices are in Plans & billing and on the pricing page.
Is a SitesPlaced store really free?
Yes. Building and publishing a store costs ₹0, with unlimited products and orders and 0% commission. The free plan includes Razorpay, COD and WhatsApp checkout, Shiprocket and Shipmozo, coupons, offers and PDF invoices, with 500 MB of storage and a small SitesPlaced badge on the storefront. The Starter plan (₹199/month) adds a custom domain, branding removal, AI copy, analytics, custom head code and Meta Pixel + CAPI; the Growth plan (₹499/month early-bird for the first 50 stores, ₹999 after) adds WhatsApp Business API alerts, the sales boosters, product reviews and 1-click checkout on top.
Where do I change something — Design or Settings?
If it is about what a page says or which sections it shows, it is in the Design tab. If it is about how the store works — name, link, logo, colours, menu, catalog, categories, discounts, checkout, shipping, payments, policies, SEO, tracking or integrations — it is in Settings. Type a word like 'coupon' or 'delivery' into the search box at the top of Settings to jump straight there.
Can I change the template later?
No. The template is chosen when you create the store and is fixed afterwards, because switching would wipe your section content. You can recolour, restyle and rewrite every section of the template you have. To use a different template, create a new store — a free account can hold up to 5 sites.
Do I need to add products before publishing?
Technically no, but there is nothing to buy until you do. The usual path is: set up your catalog, add at least one product, then press Publish. Everything else — branding, policies, discounts — can be tuned after you are live.
Articles in Online Stores
Tour your store dashboard
A quick map of every part of your store dashboard — the eleven tabs, the Home overview, the phone layout, and how to publish, preview and go live.
Create & publish your store
Create a 0%-commission online store in minutes — pick a template, name it, publish free on a sitesplaced.com address, and share the link.
Choose a store template
Which store template fits what you sell, what the newer templates do for you, whether you can change it later, and what happened to the older designs. Every template is free.
Set up your catalog (do this first)
Tell your store how products are priced, whether you track stock, what the Add Product form asks for, and your default options like Size or Colour.
Add & manage products
Add products with photos, prices, sale prices, variants, stock and categories — and edit, duplicate, quick-edit or delete them anytime.
Categories & collections
Group products into categories so customers can filter and find things — and so offers and coupons can target a group.
Track inventory & stock
Turn on stock tracking so your store always shows what's available and never oversells, plus how to hide the stock badge.
Discounts, coupons & offers
Create coupon codes and Buy-X-Get-Y offers — scoped to categories, with expiry, usage limits and minimum-order rules.
Checkout: order methods & form
Choose how customers order — Direct Order, WhatsApp, COD or UPI — and control exactly what they fill in, the minimum order, trust badges and wording.
Set delivery charges
Add a flat delivery charge, offer free delivery above a threshold, give a heavy or bulky product a delivery fee of its own, and optionally let local customers waive the fee at checkout.
Design your storefront pages
Use the Design tab to edit, add, hide and reorder the sections of your Home, About and Contact pages.
Branding: logo, colours & fonts
Set your logo and favicon, pick a colour theme and accent colour, choose a brand font, and add an announcement bar.
Edit your store menu & navigation
Hide links you don't need, rename them, reorder them, or add your own — in the header menu and the footer.
Policies & products page
Write your store policies (returns, delivery), and control the layout and wording of your products page.
SEO & social sharing
Set how your store shows up on Google and the preview image when your link is shared on WhatsApp or Instagram.
Store details, WhatsApp & currency
Change your store name, your sitesplaced.com link, the WhatsApp number customers reach you on, your currency, and your custom domain.
Add a blog to your store
Write posts in the Design tab to share stories, launches and guides — great for SEO and bringing customers back.
Customer messages & enquiries
Read and respond to messages customers send through your store's contact form, all in the Messages tab.
Loyalty: QR stamp cards, scratch cards and locations
Put a QR at your counter, give every customer a digital stamp card on their phone (no app, no OTP), reward a full card, add scratch cards with your own odds, and run one programme across branches.
Sell digital downloads
Sell files instead of parcels: mark a product as a download, attach the files, and the buyer gets a private link by email the moment their payment clears.
Customer accounts on your store
Let shoppers create an account on your store so their details fill themselves in and their orders are in one place. Guest checkout never goes away.
Let buyers personalise a product
Take a photo and a short note from the buyer on products you print, engrave or make to order, see both on the order, and download the full-size image.
Store analytics: what the numbers mean
Visits, visitors, sessions, conversion, top products, traffic sources, cities and devices for your storefront, plus an honest account of what the numbers can and cannot tell you.
Sales boosters: the conversion tools
Social-proof and welcome popups, a slide-out cart, frequently bought together, a post-purchase upsell, Buy X Get Y offers and a WhatsApp bubble, plus the free shopping tools: quick add, the phone buy bar, card star ratings, the delivery line and the phone bottom menu.
Collect product reviews from your customers
Let buyers rate and review the exact products they ordered, approve each review in the Reviews tab, and show them on the product page with the star rating in Google.
Pause ordering on your store
Stop taking orders for a holiday, a stock count or a busy week without unpublishing your store. Shoppers can still browse, and your own message tells them why.
Close your store with an opening-soon page
Sold out, or not open yet? Replace your whole store with one page that shows your logo, your message and an email box, so shoppers can ask to be told when you reopen.
Collect emails on every page of your store
Switch on a small email signup box that sits above the footer on every page of your store, whatever template you use. Every email lands in your Subscribers tab.
Take orders on WhatsApp
The four WhatsApp tools on your store and when to use each: WhatsApp checkout, WhatsApp as the only way to order, a chat button in place of the cart, the floating chat bubble, and messaging a customer from an order.
Browse pages: Shop by brand, Shop by category
Build a page of picture tiles for a group of your categories, such as every brand or every product type. Plus the address every category already has, and how to hide the wall of category buttons.
Control how your products page looks and sorts
Choose what shoppers see first, what the sort menu offers, whether category buttons or a filter sidebar show, and how product photos and cards behave.
Wishlist, search and account icons
Add a search icon, an account icon and a wishlist to your store's header. What each one does, where the wishlist is saved, and how it looks on a phone.
Hero banner: phone image, fit and button links
Give phones their own banner image, show a whole banner without cropping, and point the hero button at a product, a category or any page.
Free store vs premium upgrade
What's included free (everything you need to sell), and what the upgrade unlocks — custom domain, branding removal and more.