Most offline businesses delay going online because it sounds like a project with no end: a website, photography for hundreds of products, descriptions, SEO, payment gateways, legal pages. It doesn’t have to be. A focused launch that generates enquiries — even before you enable online checkout — can be done in a week if the inputs are ready and the work runs in parallel.

This checklist is written for owner-run product businesses in India: furniture and home décor showrooms, jewellers, garment and footwear brands, manufacturers with a dealer network. It separates what must exist at launch from what can wait.

Decide the launch goal first: enquiries or checkout?

Many showrooms should start enquiry-first. It gets you found and generating leads this week, and checkout can be added once you see which products people ask about.

Before Day 1: gather these inputs

• Business details: legal name, trade name, GSTIN (if registered), registered address, showroom addresses and hours, phone and WhatsApp numbers
• Brand assets: logo files, brand colours, 5–10 photos that represent the look you want
• Product sheet: one row per product — name, category, dimensions or sizes, material, colours, price or price range, SKU
• Product photos: at least one clear, well-lit photo per product; phone photos are fine if the product fills the frame and isn’t blurred
• Policies: delivery areas and timelines, customisation, warranty, returns, payment options (UPI, cards, EMI, COD)
• Top customer questions: the 10–15 things your showroom staff answer every day

Day 1: set up the foundation

1. Domain: register a short domain in your brand name; keep ownership in the business’s own account, not a vendor’s.
2. Business email: set up email on the domain for enquiries and marketplace accounts.
3. Brand knowledge in one place: put policies, product information and FAQs in a single document or knowledge base. Everything written for the site, product pages and chat should come from this, so answers stay consistent.

Days 1–3: the website

At launch the website needs fewer pages than you think, but each must do its job:

Technical basics to check before going live: every page has a unique title and meta description, the site loads quickly on a mid-range Android phone over mobile data, and product pages include Product structured data (name, image, price, currency, availability). Google’s documentation lists the properties it uses for product results.

The legal pages Indian rules expect

If you sell online — including through your own site with checkout — the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020 apply. Legal advice for your specific setup is worth getting, but at minimum sellers are expected to clearly display:

• Total price including the break-up of charges
• Return, refund, exchange, warranty and delivery terms, including who pays for return shipping
• Country of origin where relevant
• The name and contact details of a grievance officer, who must acknowledge complaints within 48 hours and resolve them within one month
• Accurate descriptions — the product and advertising must match what is delivered

If you collect personal data through forms, chat or accounts, also prepare for the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025. They were notified in November 2025 with phased timelines; most consent, notice and data-principal-rights obligations apply from May 2027. Starting with a clear privacy notice and a consent checkbox on forms now avoids a retrofit later.

GST: what changes when you sell online

Until 30 September 2023, anyone selling goods through an e-commerce operator (a marketplace) had to register for GST regardless of turnover. Notification No. 34/2023 relaxed this from 1 October 2023: suppliers of goods selling only within their own state through e-commerce operators, with turnover below the normal registration threshold (₹40 lakh or ₹20 lakh depending on the state), can sell without registration, subject to conditions. Inter-state online sales still require registration. Selling through your own website is treated differently from selling through a marketplace, so confirm your position with your CA before launch.

Days 3–5: product content

This is where most launches stall, because traditional photography and copywriting are sequential and slow. Three rules keep it moving:

1. Launch the top sellers first. 30 well-presented products beat 300 half-finished ones. Add the rest weekly.
2. Standardise images. One clean primary image on a white or neutral background, plus at least one in-context image per product. AI product photography can produce both from a single phone photo; images cost about ₹15–₹50 each on Stuv.
3. Write for questions, not adjectives. A good description answers size, material, care, delivery and customisation. Avoid pasting manufacturer copy — duplicate text across many sites gives search engines no reason to rank yours.

Day 5–6: get found locally

For showroom businesses, Google Business Profile often brings more high-intent visitors than the website itself. Google says local results are based mainly on relevance, distance and prominence. You can’t change distance, but you can influence the other two:

• Claim and verify a profile for every showroom location
• Choose the most specific primary category (e.g. “Furniture store”, “Jewellery store”) and add products
• Keep name, address and phone identical to the website
• Upload real photos of the showroom and products
• Ask satisfied customers for reviews and reply to every review — Google notes that review count and rating contribute to prominence

Also verify the site in Google Search Console and submit the sitemap so new pages are discovered quickly.

Day 6: set up enquiry handling before you promote anything

Launching a website without a plan to answer enquiries wastes the launch. Decide:

• Where enquiries arrive (one inbox or CRM, not five phones)
• Who replies during business hours, and what happens in the evening and on Sundays
• What the first reply contains — a useful answer, not just “please call us”
• How quickly a salesperson calls back qualified leads

An AI chat assistant trained on your policies can answer routine questions immediately and collect contact details, and an AI first-call can reach leads within minutes. The goal is that no enquiry waits hours for a first response.

Day 7: launch — quietly, then loudly

1. Test every form, WhatsApp link and phone link on a real phone.
2. Send the site to 20 existing customers and ask what is confusing.
3. Fix what they found, then announce on Instagram, WhatsApp broadcast lists and Google Business Profile posts.

What can wait until after launch

• Blog and guides (start in week 3 with your most common customer questions)
• Online checkout for customised or high-ticket items
• Marketplace expansion
• Paid ads — run them only once enquiry handling works

The first 30 days

If you would rather not coordinate the website, content and follow-up across separate vendors, Stuv runs this launch end to end — website in about three days, catalog and content within a week.

Sources

• Khaitan & Co, “Stricter Regulations on E-Commerce: The Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020”
• PIB, “DPDP Rules, 2025 Notified”, November 2025
• TaxGuru, exemption from GST registration for small e-commerce sellers (Notification No. 34/2023)
• Google Business Profile Help, “Tips to improve your local ranking on Google”
• Google Search Central, “Intro to Product structured data”