What to prepare before designing a Salla store
The fastest store projects are the ones where the owner arrives prepared. If you plan to design a Salla store, these are the things worth having ready before the first conversation with a designer.
Whose name should the store be under?
Yours. Open the store account yourself, with your own email and phone number, before any design work starts. Salla is a hosted platform, so the account is the store: whoever holds it holds the products, the orders and the customers. Platforms usually ask for business details before they switch on online payment, so check in your dashboard what is required from you and start early. That part depends on you and not on the designer.
What does a designer need from your brand?
A logo in a clean file, not a screenshot of it, and the colours you already use. If you have a brand guide, send it. If you do not, send what exists: packaging, your social accounts, the sign over the shop. Add two or three stores whose look you like, and say what exactly you like in each. That tells a designer more than any adjective, and it keeps the first design close to what you had in mind.
How should the product information be prepared?
In one sheet, one row per product: name, price, short description, category, options such as size and colour, and the stock of each. Put the photos in folders named after the products. This sounds like office work, and it is, but it is the work that delays most stores. A design can be finished long before the products are ready, and a store with a beautiful front and half its products missing cannot open.
Which decisions belong to you, not to the designer?
How you deliver, where you deliver to, what delivery costs the buyer, which payment methods you accept, and what your return policy says. A designer can show you where each of these appears in the store, but cannot decide them for you. Write the policy pages in your own words first, then have the legal wording confirmed by a qualified professional in your country. The store only needs somewhere clear to show them.
What can wait until after launch?
More than you think. A blog, a loyalty scheme, a second language, every product you might sell one day: none of these has to be there on the first day. Decide what the store must have to take its first order properly, and list everything else as later. A short list that is fully ready opens sooner and looks better than a long one that is half done.
How I handle it
Bring whatever you have from this list. I draw the store in Figma first and you approve the design before the build starts. The store stays on your account, and at handover the dashboard is yours: you edit text, images, products and prices yourself. For the first seven days of the project you can stop it and get your payment back in full. Send me what you have ready, even if the list is incomplete, and we start from there.
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