News & Articles Hub
HGA Takeaway: Launching Your Online Business
HGA Takeaway
Launching Your Online Business
From understanding your customer and getting your pricing right to building a recognisable brand and planning your launch, here are the foundations worth getting right before you start chasing online sales.
Launching online has never been easier. Building an online business that people actually want to buy from is a little more complicated.
We recently joined a Department for Business and Trade Business Academy webinar led by Michèle "Mish" Poynter, founder of The Retail Fixers and Mish, looking at the foundations businesses should have in place when launching online.
Mish brought nearly two decades of experience building and running online and multichannel retail businesses to the session, covering everything from customers and branding to intellectual property, competitor research, pricing and marketing.
A beautiful website isn't the starting point. Before worrying about how your online shop looks, you need to know who you're selling to, why they should choose you and whether every sale actually makes commercial sense.
For Home & Gift businesses, particularly independent brands building direct to consumer sales alongside wholesale, there was plenty to take away. So, we've pulled together the points we think are most useful and what they could mean in practice.
Takeaway 1
Your customer can't be "everyone"
This sounds obvious, but it's an easy trap to fall into, especially in Home & Gift.
You might sell candles that technically anyone could buy, mugs that could work for hundreds of gifting occasions or home accessories that could appeal to all sorts of households. That doesn't mean you should market them to everybody.
The webinar suggested looking at your target customer through five simple questions:
| Situation What's happening when they need or want your product? |
|
| Priority What matters most to them? Price, quality, convenience, confidence, speed or something else? |
|
| Barrier What could make them hesitate or leave without buying? |
|
| Language How would they describe what they're looking for in their own words? |
|
| Evidence What would they need to see before they believed your promise? |
What we'd do
Pick one of your bestselling products and describe the person most likely to buy it, why they're buying it and what might stop them. If your answer is still "anyone", keep going.
Takeaway 2
Give people a reason to believe you
Getting someone's attention is only the beginning.
The session broke the buying decision into three parts: trigger, need and proof.
Trigger: Why now?
Something has happened that starts the search. Maybe they need a birthday present, have just moved house or want to refresh a room.
Need: What must be true?
Your product has to solve the practical need. Does it suit the occasion, budget, recipient, space or deadline?
Proof: Why should they believe you?
Reviews, detailed information, guarantees and visible expertise can all reduce the perceived risk of buying from you.
A useful reminder
Marketing gets attention. Proof creates confidence.
Great photography might get someone onto the product page, but it's the information they find when they arrive that can give them the confidence to actually buy.
Takeaway 3
Your brand is much more than your logo
In an industry as visual as ours, it's easy to think about branding in terms of colours, packaging, photography and logos.
They're important, but they're only part of it.
The webinar broke a brand down into four areas:
| Promise What customers can expect from you every time. |
|
| Voice How your business sounds and explains what it does. |
|
| Visual cues The things that help people recognise your business quickly. |
|
| Delivery The actual customer experience that proves your promise. |
That experience should feel recognisable wherever someone meets you.
Your website, social media, marketplace listings, packaging and customer service don't need to look identical, but they should feel like they're coming from the same business with the same standards and promises.
Takeaway 4
Check and protect your brand before you invest in it
Falling in love with a business or product name is one thing. Printing thousands of boxes with it before checking whether you can actually use it is another.
Before investing heavily in a name, the webinar recommended checking:
Can people say, hear, remember and spell it easily?
Are there confusingly similar businesses or products?
Is the company name available?
Are suitable domains and social handles available?
What already exists on the UK trade mark register?
It's also worth understanding what you're actually protecting. Trade marks can protect brand names, logos and signs. Copyright generally applies automatically to original words, photography and artwork. Product appearance may have registered or unregistered design protection, while patents relate to qualifying inventions and involve a specialist process.
And don't forget the less glamorous side of protecting your business. Keep originals, licences, passwords and clear ownership records somewhere safe.
Takeaway 5
Research competitors to find the gap, not to copy them
Competitor research is useful, but only if you know what you're looking for.
Instead of simply looking at another brand and thinking, "We should do that too", look at the bigger picture.
Look for the gap
What can you learn from the businesses already competing for your customer's attention?
Customer: Who appears to be buying?
Offer: What ranges, bundles, options and guarantees are available?
Price: What does the customer actually get for their money?
Channels: Where are competitors selling and attracting attention?
Proof: What reviews, expertise and trust signals are visible?
Gaps: What complaints, frustrations or underserved needs keep appearing?
The goal isn't to create another version of what's already out there. It's to find a meaningful difference that your customer actually values and that your business can genuinely prove.
Takeaway 6
Know what an order really costs you
This was one of the most important parts of the session, particularly for product businesses.
It's very easy to look at what a product costs you to buy or manufacture, compare that with the selling price and assume the difference is your profit.
In reality, the true cost of an online order can include:
| Product | Packaging | Payment fees | Channel fees |
| Fulfilment | Returns | Your time | Overheads |
Don't forget
Margin and markup aren't the same thing
The webinar used a simple example: if the true cost to serve an order is £24 and the selling price excluding VAT is £48, the £24 gross profit represents a 100% markup on cost but a 50% margin on the selling price.
VAT or other applicable taxes also need to be considered. The bigger point is simple: if your price doesn't account for the work and costs created by each sale, selling more can actually make the business weaker.
Takeaway 7
You don't need to market everywhere
Email. Reels. Stories. Blogs. Guides. PR. Paid advertising. Partnerships. Marketplaces.
The list of things a small business feels it "should" be doing can become exhausting very quickly.
The advice from the session was refreshingly practical: choose a small combination you can actually run consistently.
The question to ask
Which format suits the customer, the message and where they are in the buying journey?
One good idea can also work much harder than you think.
A useful buying guide could become a blog, carousel, short video, Stories, downloadable checklist and email sequence. AI can help with drafting and reshaping content too, but the webinar stressed the importance of checking facts, claims and tone before anything is published.
Takeaway 8
Don't make launch day the first time people hear about you
A launch works much better when there's some thought behind what happens before and after the big day.
The webinar shared a simple sequence:
| Help Around 7 to 10 days before launch, share genuinely useful advice around the customer's problem. |
|
| Introduce Around 3 to 5 days before, explain what's coming, why you've created it and who it's for. |
|
| Launch Clearly explain the offer, benefits and proof, then give people an obvious way to buy. |
|
| Reassure A few days later, answer FAQs, demonstrate the product or share reviews and customer stories. |
|
| Remind If there is a genuine deadline or limited availability, give people a final reminder. |
And once launch day is over, don't disappear. Follow up, ask for feedback and start building the relationship that turns a first order into another one.
The HGA Takeaway
Before you launch, get these foundations right
1. Define who you're actually trying to sell to and what triggers them to buy.
2. Make your offer easy to understand and give customers a reason to trust it.
3. Build a brand experience that's recognisable wherever customers meet you.
4. Check your name and understand what intellectual property needs protecting.
5. Research competitors to find opportunities rather than simply copying what's already working.
6. Work out the true cost of an order before deciding what you can afford to charge.
7. Choose a manageable marketing mix you can run consistently.
8. Plan what happens before, during and after launch day.
One final thought
You don't need everything to be perfect before you start
What you do need is a clear idea of who you're serving, what you're promising and whether the numbers work.
You can improve photography, refine marketing and add new channels as you grow. Getting the foundations right first gives all of those things a much better chance of actually working.
This HGA Takeaway is based on the Department for Business and Trade Business Academy webinar, "Launching Your Online Business", presented by Michèle "Mish" Poynter, founder of The Retail Fixers and Mish.
Home & Gift Association
Your Industry. Your Community. Your Growth Partner.