On this page
- Step 1: Validate what you will sell
- Step 2: Choose your platform
- Step 3: Payments — M-Pesa, cards and cash on delivery
- Step 4: Delivery across Kenya
- Step 5: Product pages and photos
- Step 6: Policies, eTIMS and data protection
- Step 7: Launch and your first customers
- Step 8: Running the store day to day
- What a realistic first budget looks like
- Where to go from here
To start an online store in Kenya you need five things working together: products people already want, a website that takes M-Pesa, a delivery arrangement that reaches your buyers, clear policies, and a daily routine for packing and answering customers. The website is the visible part, but most new stores that fail do so on stock, delivery or customer service, not design. This guide walks through each step in the order you should tackle it.
It is written for shop owners, Instagram sellers and small manufacturers who want to sell properly online, not for developers. Where a step involves a cost or a rule that changes, we tell you where to check the current figure rather than guess.
Step 1: Validate what you will sell
Before you spend on a website, prove that strangers will pay for your products at your price, delivered. Friends and family buying to support you does not count.
Cheap ways to test demand
- Sell ten units through WhatsApp or Instagram first. Post the product, quote a delivered price and see who actually sends money. Track every enquiry in a notebook or spreadsheet.
- Check search demand. Type your product into Google and note what autocompletes. If people search "school shoes Nairobi delivery" or "solar lamp price Kenya", there is intent you can capture.
- Look at who already sells it. Competition is not a bad sign. It proves a market. What you need is a reason to choose you: better quality, faster delivery, a niche size range, local stock.
Do the margin sum before anything else
Online selling has costs a counter shop does not. Work out your margin per order on paper. Here is a hypothetical example for a Nairobi seller of handmade leather sandals:
| Item | KES per order |
|---|---|
| Selling price | 3,500 |
| Cost of the pair (materials and labour) | 1,600 |
| Packaging (box, tissue, branded sticker) | 150 |
| Payment charges (check your own M-Pesa or gateway rate) | set aside about 100 |
| Share of ads and returns, estimated | 300 |
| What is left before delivery and overheads | 1,350 |
If you plan to offer free delivery, take that out of the 1,350 too. Many sellers discover at this stage that a KES 800 product cannot carry a free upcountry parcel. Better to know now than after you have printed flyers.
Step 2: Choose your platform
You have four broad options, and each suits a different stage.
| Option | Best for | Main drawback |
|---|---|---|
| Social media and WhatsApp catalogue only | Testing products, very small volumes | Manual payments, no customer data, every order is a chat |
| Marketplace (for example Jumia) | Reaching buyers who already shop there | Commission, little control over brand and pricing, no customer list |
| Hosted store builder (for example Shopify) | Quick start with minimal technical work | Monthly fees usually billed in dollars; M-Pesa needs an add-on |
| Your own store on WordPress and WooCommerce, or custom | Owning the platform, Kenyan checkout, room to grow | Someone has to look after updates, hosting and backups |
We compare the two most common website options in detail in WooCommerce vs Shopify for Kenyan stores. If most of your sales happen on Instagram today, read Instagram shop vs your own online store before deciding whether you need a website yet.
Whatever you choose, insist on three things: the store must work well on a cheap Android phone over a weak connection, you must be able to export your products and customers, and the checkout must handle M-Pesa without the buyer leaving the page to type a Till number.
Step 3: Payments — M-Pesa, cards and cash on delivery
Most Kenyan buyers will pay with M-Pesa. Some, especially corporate buyers and diaspora customers, want cards. A share will ask to pay on delivery. Plan for all three, then decide which you will actually accept.
M-Pesa
The smoothest setup is an STK push: the buyer enters their number at checkout, a prompt appears on their phone, they enter their PIN and the order is marked paid. This runs on Safaricom's Daraja API, documented at developer.safaricom.co.ke, either directly or through a payment gateway. You will need a Paybill or Till registered to the business. Our guide to M-Pesa integrated websites explains Paybill versus Till and what goes wrong when payments are not matched to orders.
Cards
Card payments come through a payment gateway. Gateways operating in Kenya typically offer M-Pesa, Airtel Money and cards in one checkout, and charge a percentage per transaction. Rates and settlement times differ, so request current pricing from two or three before you sign, and ask how quickly money lands in your bank.
Cash on delivery
Pay on delivery lifts orders from first-time buyers but brings failed deliveries, where the rider travels and the customer is "not around". A common middle ground is to take M-Pesa when the parcel arrives, or a small deposit for upcountry orders. Our article on cash on delivery vs M-Pesa prepayment covers those hybrid setups.
Step 4: Delivery across Kenya
Delivery is where online stores win or lose repeat customers. Decide your arrangement before launch, because it shapes your prices and your checkout.
- Within your town: your own rider, a trusted boda boda operator on a per-trip rate, or a delivery app. Same-day delivery in Nairobi is a strong selling point if you can keep it.
- Satellite towns (Ruiru, Kitengela, Syokimau, Ngong, Juja): usually next-day by rider or courier, with a higher fee.
- Upcountry: courier companies, Posta Kenya, the parcel desks of long-distance bus companies, or pickup-point networks where the buyer collects from a nearby agent.
Set these up as delivery zones in your store so the buyer sees the right fee before paying. Do not hide delivery until the last step; it is one of the most common reasons people abandon a cart. Our separate guide to ecommerce delivery options in Kenya shows how to set zones and fees without quoting courier prices that will be out of date next month.
Packaging matters more online than in a shop. A parcel that has sat on a bus roof from Nairobi to Kisumu needs to arrive intact. Budget for proper boxes or padded mailers and a printed slip with the order number and your WhatsApp contact.
Step 5: Product pages and photos
Online, the product page is the shop assistant. It has to answer every question a buyer would ask at the counter: is it genuine, what size, what colour really, when will it arrive, how do I pay, what if it does not fit?
- Photos: at least three per product, on a clean background, in daylight, including one showing scale (in a hand, on a person, next to a common object). A modern phone is enough; see our guide to product photos with your phone.
- Titles that match searches: "Men's leather sandals, brown, sizes 40–45" beats "Safari Classic".
- Descriptions in plain language: material, dimensions, what is in the box, care instructions and warranty.
- Delivery and payment line on every product: "Nairobi CBD same day if ordered by 1pm. Pay by M-Pesa at checkout."
- Accurate stock: nothing damages trust faster than taking money for an item you do not have.
Our ecommerce product page checklist goes through every element, including the product schema that helps Google show price and availability.
Step 6: Policies, eTIMS and data protection
This is the dull part, and the part that protects you when something goes wrong.
Return and refund policy
Write down what you accept back, within how many days, in what condition, who pays return delivery and how refunds are made. Kenyan buyers are cautious with new online shops, and a clear policy reassures them. Use our return and refund policy guide as a starting point, and confirm your obligations under the Consumer Protection Act with a lawyer.
Tax invoices and eTIMS
KRA requires businesses to issue tax invoices through its electronic Tax Invoice Management System (eTIMS). Business customers in particular will ask for an eTIMS invoice so they can claim the expense. Which eTIMS option fits you depends on your volume and whether you are VAT-registered, so check the current guidance on kra.go.ke or with your accountant. If your store will issue many invoices, ask your developer whether your order system can link to eTIMS rather than re-typing each sale.
Data protection
Your store collects names, phone numbers and addresses, which makes it subject to the Data Protection Act 2019. At minimum, publish a privacy policy that says what you collect and why, keep customer data secure, and do not add buyers to marketing lists without consent. The Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (odpc.go.ke) publishes guidance on who must register as a data controller.
Step 7: Launch and your first customers
Do not launch on the day the developer hands over. Spend a week testing as a customer: place real orders with real M-Pesa payments, try every delivery zone, process a refund, check every email and SMS that goes out. Our online store launch checklist lists 25 things to test.
Then find your first hundred customers deliberately:
- Tell your existing buyers. Message past customers on WhatsApp (those who agreed to hear from you) with the link and a reason to try it, such as free delivery on the first order within Nairobi.
- Move social followers to the store. Put the link in your bio, and link each product post to its product page rather than "DM to order".
- Set up Google Business Profile and Search Console. Free, and they help people searching nearby find you.
- Run small, targeted ads. A few hundred shillings a day on your best-selling product, aimed at the counties you can deliver to quickly, teaches you more than a large launch budget spread thin.
- Ask for reviews. A day after delivery, send a short thank-you with a review link.
Step 8: Running the store day to day
Once orders come in, the store becomes a routine. Sellers who keep going are the ones who make that routine boring and dependable.
A simple daily rhythm
| When | Task |
|---|---|
| Morning | Check new orders and confirm every M-Pesa payment has matched an order. Chase any "paid but not showing" cases. |
| Before noon | Pack and hand over same-day orders. Send each customer a dispatch message with rider contact or courier waybill. |
| Afternoon | Answer enquiries, follow up abandoned carts from customers who opted in, update stock for anything sold in the physical shop. |
| End of day | Book upcountry parcels, record deliveries done and failed, note returns. |
| Weekly | Review best sellers, slow movers, failed deliveries by area and which ads produced orders. |
Keep stock honest
If you also sell from a physical shop, the biggest daily risk is selling online something that walked out of the shop an hour ago. Decide on one place where stock levels live and update it every time anything sells. When that becomes impossible by hand, read how to sync shop and online inventory.
Watch the checkout
Look at how many people add items to the cart compared with how many pay. If the gap is wide, the cause is usually surprise delivery fees, a forced account sign-up or an M-Pesa prompt that timed out. Our guide on how to reduce abandoned carts deals with each one.
Look after the website
A store is not finished at launch. Plugins and themes need updates, backups must be tested, and payment integrations occasionally break when a provider changes something. Agree who does this, how fast they respond and what it costs before you go live.
What a realistic first budget looks like
Here is a hypothetical starting budget for a small store with around fifty products:
- Website build: an Edgecom online store starts from KES 45,000 plus 16% VAT, with M-Pesa checkout, delivery zones and order notifications, and usually takes four to eight weeks. See our website cost guide for what affects the price.
- Domain and hosting: at the time of writing, a .co.ke domain at HostingKE is KES 1,000 a year and starter hosting is from KES 1,500 a year. A busy store will need more than a starter plan.
- Payment charges: a cost per transaction, set by Safaricom or your gateway.
- Stock, packaging and photos: your biggest cash need, and the easiest to underestimate.
- Marketing for the first three months: a modest, steady ad budget beats one big push.
Keep three months of running costs aside. Stores rarely make money in the first month, and the ones that close are usually the ones that ran out of cash before word of mouth arrived.
Where to go from here
If you already sell and want a store built around how Kenyans pay and receive parcels, our online store web design page explains what we include, and our web development service covers the build itself. Bring your product list and delivery areas to the first conversation and we can tell you quickly what the store needs.
