How to start online before you rent premises

Step 1: Decide exactly what you are selling

Write down the two or three things you will sell first and what each one costs. Vague offerings are hard to buy and hard to market. You can widen the range later.

Step 2: Set up WhatsApp Business

It is free, and it is where most Zimbabwean customers already are. Add your business name, hours, a short description and a catalogue so people can see what you sell without asking.

Step 3: Take proper photographs

Good daylight, a plain background, and real work rather than pictures pulled off the internet. Photos of your actual products or finished jobs do more selling than any wording.

Step 4: Build a simple website

One page is enough to start: what you do, prices or a price range, photographs, proof from past customers, and a WhatsApp button. Designing it with MatSiteBuilder is free, then $15 a year for the domain and $10 a month for hosting.

Step 5: Make yourself findable

• Create a Google Business Profile if you serve a specific area
• Put your website link in your WhatsApp profile and social bios
• Ask your first customers to send you a short review

Step 6: Sell, then listen

Track which items people ask for, which they buy, and what they complain about. Three months of that tells you more about your business than any plan written before you started.

When the orders are regular and your margins can carry an overhead, that is the moment to look at premises.

Common mistakes

• Waiting until everything looks perfect before telling anyone
• Publishing no prices, so people have to ask and often do not
• Using a personal WhatsApp with no business name or hours
• Expecting a website to bring customers on its own without any promotion