Starting an online store means making a handful of early decisions that you’ll live with for a long time: Where you build, who hosts your site , and how you take payment. Get them wrong and you’ll have to rebuild under pressure. Here’s how to get them right the first time. You have three options for where to sell online: marketplaces like Amazon or Etsy, social commerce on Instagram or TikTok, or your own ecommerce website. Marketplaces and social media are distribution channels. Someone else sets the rules, controls the algorithm, and owns the customer relationship. When someone buys from you on Amazon, Amazon knows who they are. You don’t. You can’t email them, bring them back, or build anything durable on top of that transaction. Your own store is yours: Your customer list, your brand, your data, your pricing decisions. 1. Choose your domain name Your domain is your online address. It should match your business name and be easy to spell and say out loud.…