The First 100 Orders: A Launch Playbook for New Webshops

Your warm network first

Your warm network converts at a rate no ad will match, because trust already exists. It is also where you get honest feedback on price, photos and delivery before strangers see the shop. Make a list, not a vague intention: everyone you can reasonably contact personally, grouped by channel.

1. Send a personal message, not a mass mailing, to the people most likely to buy or share. Ask for feedback as much as for an order.
2. Post the launch on your own social channels with a real story: why the shop exists and who is behind it.
3. Contact local partners who serve the same customers — a café, a gym, an association — and suggest something that benefits both.
4. Collect email addresses with consent from the first day. Marketing email to consumers requires prior consent under the Swedish Marketing Act, with a limited exception for your own existing customers and similar products.

Launch offers without discount addiction

A launch discount is tempting, but it teaches your first customers that your normal price is negotiable, and it attracts buyers who leave when the discount does. Offers that add value instead of cutting price protect both margin and positioning.

Search and Shopping basics

Organic search takes time, which is exactly why the setup should happen before launch rather than after. The basics cost almost nothing but hours.

• Connect Google Search Console and submit the sitemap, so you can see when pages are indexed.
• Set up Google Merchant Center with a product feed. Shopify and WooCommerce both have integrations, and approved products can appear in free listings on the Shopping tab.
• Write unique product titles and descriptions in the words customers search with, not internal product names; see product pages that sell.
• Build category pages around what people actually search for; our guide to SEO for webshop category pages covers the structure.
• Create or claim your Google Business Profile if you have a physical location or pickup point.

Small paid tests

Paid ads are a way to buy data before they are a way to buy sales. Run tests with a fixed budget and end date, one variable at a time, and decide in advance what result would make you continue. Make sure purchase tracking works first, including consent: without it, you are paying for traffic you cannot evaluate. The setup for Meta is explained in Meta Pixel and Conversions API, and for Google in Google Ads conversion tracking.

Judge each test on cost per order and on what those customers bought, not on clicks or likes. If a channel cannot produce orders at a cost your margin carries, stop and move the budget; small numbers mean you should look for large differences, not fine-tune decimals.

Learning from every order

At this volume you can look at every order individually, and you should. Tag links with UTM parameters so analytics can tell your channels apart, and add a single optional question after checkout: how did you hear about us? Customers answer it more honestly than any attribution model.

1. Every week, list new orders with source, products and order value.
2. Contact a few buyers and ask what nearly stopped them from ordering.
3. Check abandoned checkouts and fix what you can; see abandoned cart emails.
4. After the first hundred orders, rank channels by orders and margin, and put the next quarter's budget there.

When is outside help not what you need? If the shop is technically sound, Klarna or Swish and shipping work, and tracking is in place, the first hundred orders are mostly about your own outreach and product — no agency can do that part for you. We help when the foundation is missing: a store setup on Shopify or WooCommerce with payments, shipping, feeds and tracking ready from day one; see the pricing page and the webshop launch checklist, or book a short call to check your setup.

Frequently asked questions