Merchant quickstart

Get from signup to a live online store. Budget 30–45 minutes, most of which is you deciding on wording and photographs.

New to our terminology? Keep the glossary open.

Also supply other businesses? Do this guide first, then the supplier quickstart. Both sides share one catalog and one stock list, so the order matters less than finishing one of them.

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Step 1 — Create your account and organisation#

Sign up, then create your organisation — your business in KwikNest. The name and web address you choose here identify your workspace.

When asked what your business does, choose Merchant if you sell to end customers. Choose both Merchant and Supplier if you also sell wholesale; you can change this later in your settings.

Step 2 — Business details#

Enter your legal business name, address, country and currency. This is used on orders, invoices, tax handling, and shipping calculations, so get the address right.

Step 3 — Brand#

Add your store name, a one-line tagline, your logo and a favicon. If you have brand colours, set them here.

You can skip this and let the storefront builder propose a palette — but if you already have a brand, entering it now means everything downstream matches.

Step 4 — Add your first products#

Three ways in:

Manually. Create a product, add variants (sizes, weights, pack counts) with their own prices and stock, upload photographs, and publish.

From a photo. Upload one to five photographs and KwikNest drafts the name, description and a suggested price. You review and edit every field before saving. Fastest route if you have product photography but no written descriptions.

Import. Bring a CSV — download the template so your columns match — or import products from an existing Shopify store (URL crawler) or WooCommerce (Products → Export CSV or ZIP). All paths preview before committing. Platform imports copy catalog data (products, variants, images) — not your theme, plugins, customer passwords, or gift cards. Live inventory and order sync with Shopify or WooCommerce is a separate step under Settings → Channels once you are ready to cut over.

Start with a handful of real products rather than your whole catalog. You need enough to see the store working; you can bulk import afterwards.

Step 5 — Choose how customers get their orders#

Turn on the methods you actually offer:

• Pickup — set your locations and collection times
• Local delivery — set your delivery days, notice, optional windows, zones and charges. Shoppers pick a day (and window) at checkout; you plan the van on Local Delivery. See Local delivery
• On-demand — same-day courier via DoorDash, Uber, and similar when coverage allows. Turn the method on; KwikNest quotes and dispatches. See On-demand couriers
• Shipping — flat rates by zone, or live carrier rates and printed labels through KwikNest's carrier accounts

Set your ship-from address in settings. Carrier rates, labels and courier pickup are wrong without it, and it is the one part we cannot fill in for you.

Step 6 — Tax#

Choose whether your prices include tax and set your tax configuration. If you are unsure, take advice — this affects every price a customer sees.

Step 7 — Connect payments#

Connect your payment account so you can take card payments (and, for wholesale, Link and bank debit where enabled). This runs a standard identity verification, so have your business details and bank account to hand.

Payments settle into your account. KwikNest takes a transaction fee on payments that settle through KwikNest rather than charging you a monthly subscription — live rates are on the public pricing page.

You cannot publish a store that takes card payments until this is connected.

Step 8 — Build your storefront#

Two routes.

AI setup (recommended)#

Open the AI storefront setup and answer one page of questions:

• What you sell, in your own words
• Who you sell to
• What the store should achieve — sell online, drive people to your shop, take enquiries, or wholesale
• The look you want
• Which extra pages you want (About, Contact, FAQ, Locations)

KwikNest then picks a designed blueprint for your industry, selects a page recipe based on your answers, applies your visual style to every section, and writes the copy.

You get a complete draft store — home page plus the extra pages you asked for.

Manual wizard#

Prefer to choose everything yourself? The manual setup walks you through a theme, your brand, and your sections.

→ Detail: Storefront builder

Step 9 — Review and edit#

Open the page editor. Everything generated is now ordinary editable content:

• Change any wording
• Reorder, hide, add or remove sections
• Swap images — your own uploads, curated professional photography, or AI-generated
• Regenerate a single section, optionally with an instruction like "make this shorter and mention same-day pickup"

Your changes are a draft. Customers still see the previously published store, or nothing if you have not published yet.

Step 10 — Check the details that get skipped#

Worth ten minutes now:

• SEO — page titles and descriptions for your store, pages and products. AI can suggest these
• Legal pages — privacy, terms and refund policy
• Contact details — opening hours, address and phone actually appear on your pages, and empty rows do not render

Step 11 — Publish#

Publish to copy your draft to the live store. Every publish is saved, so you can roll back if you change your mind.

Then place a real test order yourself, start to finish. Check that:

• The order appears in your order queue
• The confirmation email arrives
• Stock decreased
• The amount is what you expected

Step 12 — Your own domain (optional)#

Add your domain and KwikNest gives you the DNS records to enter with your domain provider. Once verified, your store serves on your own address.

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Then what#

Common questions#

Can I change the design later? Yes. Edit sections any time, or re-run AI setup for a fresh draft. Nothing goes live until you publish.

Will my store look like other KwikNest stores? The blueprint is shared, but your palette variant, page recipe, visual style, imagery and words are not. Two businesses in the same industry come out looking different.

Do I have to use the AI? No. Every screen the AI fills in can be filled in by you.

What if I do not have product photos? Curated professional photography relevant to your industry is used as a floor, so your store never shows an empty box. Replace it with your own photographs as you get them.