How to open an online store for a shop in Central America

Why the usual way fails

Global store builders are strong on tools but give you no local traffic, so a new store starts with zero visitors. Big marketplaces bring buyers, but the store is theirs, the customer relationship is theirs and the commission comes out of your margin on every order. Selling only through social media keeps things simple, yet there is no catalog, no cart and nothing that shows up on Google when someone searches for what you sell. Many small shops try one path, hit its limit and give up on online sales for a while.

How Towami helps

Towami is a store builder with regional marketplaces for Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and the USA. You build a branded storefront on your own web address and can publish products to the regional marketplace from the same workspace, choosing per product where it appears. Towami says it takes 0% commission on sales, and pays for itself with fixed subscription plans whose prices differ by country. You can start on the Free plan with up to 20 products and a Towami subdomain, then connect your own domain and move to larger plans as the catalog grows. The storefront is built to be fast on mobile connections, with server-rendered pages, sitemaps and structured data, so your products can be found on Google under your own domain. Design controls let you add a logo, pages and banners without a developer. The site and storefront can run in English and Spanish.

Step by step

1. Choose your country on Towami to see the local plans and prices.
2. Start a store on the Free plan with a Towami subdomain.
3. Add your logo, navigation and your first products.
4. Decide for each product whether it goes on your store, the marketplace or both.
5. Connect your own domain when you are ready to share the store widely.
6. Move to a larger plan when you need more products, online payments or reviews.

Tips

• Start with your twenty products that sell most, so the free store already shows what you are known for.
• Write product names the way local buyers search for them, including the words they use in Spanish.
• Keep large photos small in file size. Towami is tuned for speed, but the scores depend on what you upload.
• Check which plan includes online payments before you promise card payments to customers. It starts with the Business plan.

Questions