Starting an online store in Greece: what to plan first

Building an online store is no longer the hard part. You can have a shop with a theme and a few products running in a weekend. What decides whether it actually sells, and whether running it is easy or a daily headache, is everything around it: how customers pay, how orders reach the courier, how receipts reach the tax office and how your stock stays correct. This guide covers what to decide before you build, with the details that matter for a store selling in Greece.

Start with how you sell, not with the platform

Before you compare platforms, write down how your business works today. Do you also have a physical shop that shares the same stock? Do you sell to businesses at different prices than to consumers? Do your products come in sizes, colours or custom options? Do you ship only in Greece or abroad too? The answers rule out some options straight away and save you from moving platforms a year later.

Shopify, WooCommerce or custom

Shopify is a hosted platform: you pay a monthly subscription and the platform takes care of hosting, security and updates. It is a good fit for most stores that sell physical products in a standard way, and it lets you start quickly. The trade-offs are the ongoing fees, the extra cost of apps for features it does not include, and less freedom when your process does not fit its model.

WooCommerce runs on WordPress on your own hosting. It has no platform subscription and a huge range of plugins, which is why it is so common in Greece. In return, you are responsible for updates, security and speed. A WooCommerce store with too many plugins and no one maintaining it tends to get slow and fragile over time.

A custom store makes sense when your selling model is the product: wholesale portals, configurable products, subscriptions, or deep connections to an ERP. It costs more up front, but you are not paying for workarounds every month. We help clients choose between these on our online store page, and when a store needs logic that no platform offers, we build it as custom software.

Payments Greek customers expect

• Card payments through a payment provider such as Viva, Stripe, Everypay or your bank, with Apple Pay and Google Pay on mobile.
• Cash on delivery, which is still popular in Greece, especially for first orders from a store people do not know yet.
• Bank transfer or IRIS for customers who prefer to pay from their bank app.
• Instalments on cards for higher-priced products, if your provider supports them.

Every method has its own fees and its own risks. Cash on delivery brings in orders, but it also brings parcels that come back unpaid, so many stores add a small charge or limit it to certain order values. Decide this early, because it affects your prices and your shipping setup.

Shipping, couriers and lockers

Pick your courier before launch, not after the first orders arrive. ACS, ELTA Courier, Geniki Taxydromiki and Speedex all offer business accounts, and parcel lockers like BoxNow are now a choice many customers look for at checkout. The important part is the connection: your store should create the shipping voucher and send the tracking number to the customer automatically, so no one has to copy addresses by hand.

Set your shipping rules clearly too. Show the shipping cost before the last step of checkout, decide whether there is a free shipping threshold, and account for the extra charges couriers apply for islands and remote areas. Unexpected shipping costs are one of the most common reasons people abandon their cart.

Receipts, invoices and myDATA

Every sale needs a legal receipt or invoice, and in Greece that document must be reported to the AADE myDATA platform. An online store should not leave this to someone typing orders into invoicing software at the end of the day. The usual approach is to connect the store to your invoicing software, your ERP or a certified e-invoicing provider, so that each paid order produces the right document automatically. Talk to your accountant before you build, because the right setup depends on how your business is registered.

• Clear terms of sale, including the 14-day right of withdrawal that EU consumers have for online purchases.
• A returns process that you can actually follow, with the cost of return shipping stated up front.
• A privacy policy and cookie consent that match what the store really collects.
• Your company details, tax number and contact information visible on the site.

Product data is your real content

For an online store, the product pages are the pages that bring visitors from Google. Each product needs its own description written for people, good photos, correct variants and the details customers ask about before buying, such as dimensions, materials or compatibility. Copying the manufacturer description onto hundreds of products gives Google no reason to choose your store over everyone else selling the same thing.

Plan for comparison sites and shopping ads from the start. Skroutz and Google Shopping both read your products from a product feed, so categories, prices, stock and identifiers like EAN codes need to be correct in the store. And make sure your store search understands how Greek customers actually type: with or without accents, and sometimes in Greeklish.

Running the store after launch

• Stock that stays in sync with your physical shop or warehouse, so you do not sell what you no longer have.
• A daily order routine: payment check, document, voucher, dispatch.
• Updates and security fixes for the platform, theme and every plugin or app.
• Speed checks, especially on mobile, where most Greek shoppers browse.
• Analytics that show where orders come from and where people drop off in checkout.

A store is never really finished. The ones that grow are the ones where someone looks at the numbers every month and keeps improving checkout, product pages and speed.

A checklist before you ask for quotes

• How many products you have, and whether they have variants or custom options.
• Which payment methods and couriers you want to offer.
• Which invoicing software or ERP the store must connect to.
• Whether you have a physical shop that shares the same stock.
• Whether you sell only in Greece or abroad, and in which languages.
• Who will write product descriptions and take photos.

With these answers on paper, agencies can quote the same thing and you can compare them properly. Our guide on how much a website costs explains what else to look for in a quote. If you already have a store that is slow or hard to run, a redesign can move you to a better setup without losing your products or rankings. Tell us about your store and we will get back to you with a clear plan and a fixed written quote.