Shoptet from A to Z: the complete technical setup of your store, step by step

There's one thing about Shoptet you only learn once it's too late: there's an order to the steps, and if you skip it, you'll spend hours fixing things in Excel. The classic example is VAT. Set it up after you've added your products and you'll have to recalculate every single price by hand. With 50 products that's a few hours; with 800 products it's an entire weekend and a couple of minor breakdowns.

This is the guide I wish I'd had when we launched our first client store. Not a marketing blog post, not a generic tutorial, but the exact order of steps from "create your account" to "first test order", with warnings about the things that would otherwise cost you hours of manual fixing.

If you're reading our pillar guide to starting an online store, this is a deep dive into Phases 3 and 4. If your Shoptet store is already live, run through this as a checklist — chances are you're missing a few things.

Before you even sign in: three decisions you need to have made

The worst thing you can do is open Shoptet and start clicking. Before you sign up, you need to settle:

1. VAT-registered or not? — this determines how you'll enter prices. Changing it retroactively is hell.
2. How do you want to enter prices — with or without VAT? — Shoptet handles both, but you have to decide at the start.
3. Which countries do you sell to? — if you sell outside the Czech Republic, you'll set up the OSS scheme and VAT rates for each country separately.

Without these three answers, go only as far as Step 1 (registration). Don't go any further.

Step 1: Registration and choosing a plan

Setting up a trial account

Go to shoptet.cz and register a trial account. You get a full-featured admin panel for free, ready to work with from the first minute.

Practical tip: Start on the trial account, set up absolutely everything (products included), and only switch to a paid plan right before you go live. You'll save a month of subscription fees while you're just clicking around.

Choosing a plan (from 1 September 2025)

In September 2025, Shoptet renamed and restructured its plans. The current lineup is: Free, Basic, Business, Profi, Enterprise. Each plan has a different product limit, a different number of add-on features and different terms. Check the current pricing and exact limits on shoptet.cz/ceny-a-novinky-od-01-09-2025 — the figures change, and there's no point quoting specific numbers here that could be different tomorrow.

For most new stores the rule is simple: start on the plan that matches your real product count. Free is genuinely only for a tiny launch (up to 10 products). Basic is the classic starting point for a small store of up to 100 products. Business handles a thousand products and significantly expands functionality. Profi is the one Shoptet labels "most popular" and targets growing stores of up to 5,000 products. Enterprise is for large catalogs.

There's a psychological angle here that rarely gets mentioned. When you see the cheapest possible plan on your invoice every month, you tend to treat the store as "that little side project" and act accordingly. Paying for a realistic plan puts you in the mindset that this is a business, not a hobby. It's not an argument against frugality — it's an argument for making your working identity match what you're actually building.

Step 2: Domain and hosting

Don't skip this! This is the thing people leave until last, then wonder why it takes a week to get the store running on their own domain.

What to do right away

1. Register a domain — .cz for the Czech market, .com for international. Register it directly with a registrar (Wedos, Active24, Forpsi), not through Shoptet — you keep more control, and if you ever leave Shoptet, the domain stays with you.
2. Set up DNS — if your nameservers point to Shoptet, you manage the DNS records (A, CNAME, MX, TXT) straight from the admin under Settings → Hosting → DNS. Otherwise you set the records at your registrar and Shoptet takes over according to the instructions in the "Launching your store on your own domain" subsection.
3. SSL certificate — Shoptet deploys it automatically. Once it's live, check that the HTTP-to-HTTPS redirect works. HTTPS isn't just a recommendation, it's a basic trust signal — otherwise browsers explicitly warn users that the page is "not secure", and trust is gone.
4. Set up email addresses on your own domain: info@, orders@, complaints@, support@. If you use Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, you'll find the mail DNS settings in their documentation.

⚠ DNS propagation can take up to 48 hours. Don't do this the day before launch. Plan it a week ahead.

Why be this meticulous: A customer forms a first impression of your store's credibility in tens of milliseconds, before they've read a word of the content. And small signals like "not secure" in the address bar or a @gmail.com email address are red flags to a brain in the processing fluency stage. The brain thinks "something's off" and, without analysing what, lowers its trust. The customer leaves and doesn't even know why.

Step 3: Look and template

Path in Shoptet: `Settings → Appearance` (subsections Template Designer, Templates, Menu, HTML codes, Layout)

Choosing a template

Shoptet offers free basic templates and paid premium options from partners (Bluefox, Goodweb and others). The basic templates are functional, but they typically lack the refinements that move the conversion rate. Premium templates are a one-off purchase (or bundled into a partner's monthly plan) and usually convert better thanks to more polished UX, mobile-first design and better use of trust signals.

Recommendation: Unless you're starting on a zero budget, go for a premium template. Skimping on the template is like skimping on your shop window.

And this isn't a subjective feeling. Nielsen Norman Group studies of reading behaviour repeatedly show that users don't read, they scan, following predictable patterns (the F-pattern on text-heavy pages, the Z-pattern on landing pages and homepages). A well-designed template respects these patterns and places key elements where the eyes naturally look first. The default template is usually designed for function, not conversion, and tends to put its key buttons where the customer never reaches.

What to set up in the Template Designer

In the Template Designer (Settings → Appearance → Template Designer) you click through:

• Logo — variants for the header, footer and mobile version.
• Favicon.
• Template colours — primary, secondary, accent. Stick to your brand guidelines and don't forget contrast: purchase buttons must contrast sharply with the rest of the page. This is the Von Restorff effect (Hedwig von Restorff, 1933), and it captures a simple truth: an element that stands out visually from its surroundings is automatically remembered and attended to by the human brain. A "Buy" button in the same colour as the rest of the site simply disappears. A button in a contrasting colour catches the eye in milliseconds.
• Store background and header.
• Page layout — the order of sections on the homepage, in categories and on the product detail.
• Banners.
• Typography — fonts. Choose a legible sans-serif for body text. The reason isn't aesthetic, it's psychological: the easier the brain processes text, the more positively it judges it. This is called processing fluency, and it explains why ornate fonts on a website actually lower trust in the message itself.
• Mobile version — go through the template on a phone. Mobile now typically drives 60–80% of visits to Czech e-shops, often more.

Step 4: Categories and structure (before products!)

Path in Shoptet: Products → Categories

Rules for category structure

1. Logical hierarchy — main category → subcategory. Three levels maximum, ideally two.
2. SEO-friendly URLs — short, no diacritics, descriptive. "matrace-100x200" is better than "matrace-do-postele-100-krat-200-cm".
3. Category descriptions — at least 200–300 words of unique text. This is one of the biggest SEO boosters that stores neglect, because it looks like extra work.
4. Banners for your key categories.
5. Filters and sorting — set up your filter parameters (colour, size, price, material) before adding products, so you know what to fill in on each product.

Watch the number of categories. In their classic jam-tasting study (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2000), Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper showed that a stand offering 24 kinds of jam attracted more people but sold ten times less than a stand with 6. Too many options triggers the paradox of choice in the brain and leads customers to choose nothing at all. When you design 14 main categories, you feel like you're giving the customer "the full selection". In reality you're paralysing them. Clear, limited navigation with roughly 5–8 main categories converts better. Less is more.

Practical tip: Open Marketing Miner or Google Keyword Planner and find out which keyword has the highest search volume for your category. Use it in the category name and the URL.

Step 5: ⚠ VAT and taxes BEFORE products

This is the one step you cannot afford to skip. If you set up VAT after adding your products, you'll be recalculating every price by hand. With 50 products that's an hour; with 800 products it's a weekend.

Path in Shoptet: `Settings → Basic settings → Taxes`

What to set up:

1. Registered / not registered — the option "I am not VAT-registered" or "I am VAT-registered".
2. Tax zones — the countries and regions for which specific rates are set. For EU countries the rates are filled in automatically.
3. Tax rates — Czech ones: 21%, 12%, 0%. Specific goods have their own regime — work it out with your accountant.
4. Price display — with VAT, without VAT, or both.
5. Default price entry — with or without VAT (Shoptet automatically recalculates the other option).
6. OSS registration — ticking this activates the One Stop Shop scheme for selling into the EU. You then manually set the tax rates for every country you sell to.

💡 Rule: If you're unsure about your VAT status, consult your accountant before you click anything. Retroactively fixing 200+ products in Excel is no fun.

Step 6: Adding products

Path in Shoptet: Products → Add product

What to fill in for each product (skip nothing)

Basic details:

• Name — SEO-optimised, max 70 characters, keyword and benefit.
• Product code (SKU) — internal; you can set your own rules (e.g. CAT-VAR-001).
• EAN — MANDATORY for Heureka, Zboží.cz and Google Shopping. Without an EAN, your products don't exist on comparison sites.
• Default category + additional categories (a product can sit in several).
• Variable products — sizes, colours, variants (Shoptet supports variants with their own SKUs and prices).

Pricing and stock:

• Purchase price — for calculating margin.
• Selling price with/without VAT (Shoptet recalculates).
• Reference price — this is the key field for lawful discounts. Under the guidance of the Czech Trade Inspection (ČOI) and the EU directive, Shoptet's "reference price" must contain the lowest price at which the product sold in the 30 days before the current discount. Not the RRP, not a fictitious higher price. The displayed discount is calculated automatically from this value. The anchoring effect (Tversky & Kahneman, Science, 1974) works psychologically: when a customer sees an "anchor" and the current price, they perceive the current price as a good deal. But the anchor has to be real — otherwise it's a deceptive practice that the ČOI fines you for.
• Sale price — the price the customer pays right now. You can time-limit it (Sale from / Sale to). You have to keep the reference price current manually; Shoptet doesn't recalculate it from sales history automatically. If you want more advanced discount handling without manually policing the 30-day window, there's a Dynamic promotions and discounts add-on in the Shoptet Market.
• Stock level — units, quantities.
• Weight — for calculating shipping.
• Availability — in stock / to order / sold out.

Parameters:

• Material, dimensions, colour, size, brand.
• Custom parameters by category.
• Special parameters for comparison sites: GLAMI_CPC for Glami, SIZE, COLOR.

Bulk-adding products

If you have more than 30 products, don't add them by hand. Shoptet has CSV Export/Import:

1. Under Products → Export, download a sample XML/CSV export.
2. Fill in the columns in Excel / Google Sheets.
3. Under Products → Bulk operations (or Import), upload it back.

You'll save hours and keep everything consistent.

Step 7: SEO optimisation of products and categories

For every product and category you fill in the SEO fields in the detail view (name, meta title, meta description, URL, social-media preview image).

Checklist for every product

• Meta title (title tag) — max 60 characters, keyword + name + benefit. "Hyaluronic Acid Hydrating Serum | Beauty" (40 characters).
• Meta description — 150–160 characters, a compelling description with a CTA. "Deep skin hydration with visible results in 7 days. Free shipping over 1,000 CZK.".
• URL — no diacritics, short. "hydratacni-serum-kyselina-hyaluronova".
• Alt text on all images — a description of the image for search engines and screen readers (a legal requirement under the accessibility act from 06/2025).
• Structured data — Shoptet generates JSON-LD automatically, but check it with Google's Rich Results Test to make sure everything's fine.

Practical tip: With 200+ products, you won't be doing this by hand. The Shoptet Market has add-ons for advanced SEO (Basic SEO, Advanced SEO) that can automate meta tags from a template. They pay off the moment you have more products than you can cover manually.

Step 8: Content pages

Mandatory legal pages (from a lawyer, not a downloaded template!)

• Terms and conditions — tailored to your business, not a generic template.
• GDPR / Privacy policy — controller, processors, purpose, retention period.
• Complaints procedure — in line with the Civil Code.
• Cookie policy.
• Contact details including company ID, VAT ID and registered address — visibly in the footer.

Important marketing pages

• About us / About the brand — a brand story, not a dry company history. This is where the neuroeconomics of storytelling kicks in. In Cerebrum (2015), Paul Zak measured oxytocin levels (the hormone of trust and empathy) in people watching an emotional story versus dry information. The story dramatically raised oxytocin production, and higher oxytocin correlated directly with a greater willingness to spend money on total strangers. A brand story isn't a "bonus", it's the neurochemistry of the buying decision. A dry company history sells nothing. A story the customer can see themselves in sells a lot.
• How to shop — a purchase guide; it reduces frustration for new customers and, again, works with processing fluency — the clearer the path, the higher the trust.
• Shipping and payment — laid out clearly, not in fine print. Hidden shipping-cost information is the single most common reason for cart abandonment, according to long-term data from the Baymard Institute. When a customer only sees the shipping cost at the final step, they feel "tricked" and leave.
• FAQ — answers to the 10–20 most common questions. It cuts repeat queries to support and pays for itself within the first month.
• Contact — a form, phone, email and, ideally, live chat.

The small texts that stay silent — and shouldn't

Most stores ignore this. It's the copy in the cart, the info boxes above checkout, the error pages, the confirmation emails. In Shoptet these live in several places — some in the email templates (Settings → Email templates), some in Content / Pages, some as template elements via the Template Designer. If you're not sure where a particular text lives, the in-admin help desk will tell you the exact path for your current version of Shoptet (the interface is being modernised and the paths differ slightly).

Why not to put this off: In Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Daniel Kahneman described the peak-end rule — the memory of an experience is shaped by two points: the most intense moment and the ending. The end of checkout, a 404 page or a confirmation email are the "endings" of micro-interactions. When your brand speaks warmly and humanly here too, the resulting impression sets very differently than if the customer's last sight was a cold system message.

Texts worth focusing on:

• Info box above the cart — "Free shipping over 1,500 CZK".
• Checkout copy — in field labels and under the order button.
• 404 page — instead of "Page not found", write something more human + a link to your bestsellers.
• 500 error — witty, human.
• Order confirmation email — the template every customer sees, with the highest open rate of any email you'll ever send.
• Newsletter sign-up confirmation.

Step 9: Your first test order

Before you take the store live, place at least 5 test orders. Each one has to go through the complete flow.

What to test

1. Click from the homepage through a category to a product, add it to the cart.
2. Change the quantity in the cart.
3. Apply a discount coupon (create a test one).
4. Choose shipping and payment — try different combinations.
5. Fill in the details — once as a new customer, once as a registered one.
6. Complete the order — a test card payment in the payment gateway's test mode.
7. Check the emails — did they all arrive? Do they look good in both Gmail and Outlook?
8. Check the admin — is the order in the right state? Did stock go down?

Do the same on mobile. The mobile flow is completely different and you'll find things you don't see on desktop. A keyboard covering buttons, tap targets too small, forms that don't fit the viewport — all things GA4 will never show you precisely, but Microsoft Clarity or a simple manual test reveals within 10 minutes.

Bonus: Shoptet features worth knowing

• Bulk product edits — Products → Bulk actions. Change prices, categories and flags for hundreds of products at once.
• Product sets — bundles at a special price, a push toward a higher AOV. Bundling has been documented in the marketing literature for decades (Adams & Yellen, 1976; Stremersch & Tellis, Journal of Marketing, 2002) — combining several products into one bundle raises perceived value and reduces the pain of paying, because the customer doesn't compare the price of each item individually.
• Discount coupons — percentage, fixed, free shipping, or for specific products.
• Product ratings — customer reviews right on the product detail. Reviews are one of the strongest forms of social proof (Cialdini, Influence, 2006). Products with enough reviews convert far better than those without, and here's the surprise: a perfect five-star score often converts worse than a realistic four to four-and-a-half stars. The reason is psychological — a perfect rating looks suspicious, and experienced online shoppers subconsciously read it as manipulation. A realistic, minor imperfection paradoxically builds more trust.
• Cross-sell and up-sell — an add-on that usually pays back within 14 days.
• B2B module (Profi+) — special prices and terms for business customers.
• Multi-store (Profi+) — several stores under one admin.
• API — integration with external systems, automation.

Common mistakes I see on most new Shoptet stores

1. VAT set up after the products — hell on earth.
2. No category descriptions — SEO suffers and Google has nothing to index.
3. Default system texts — the brand stays silent where it should speak. A wasted peak-end moment.
4. Missing EAN codes — the products don't exist on comparison sites.
5. Unsecured payments (HTTPS missing on subpages) — customers see "not secure" in the address bar and trust vanishes instantly.
6. Migrated or custom-edited templates sometimes have an order button whose text doesn't comply with the "button" amendment — Shoptet implemented the amendment system-wide, but with legacy edits it's worth going through the entire checkout as a customer and verifying how the button actually reads.
7. A non-compliant cookie bar — a fine from the Czech data-protection authority (ÚOOÚ), and a topic the regulator is actively targeting these days.
8. No test of the mobile flow — customers are the first to see the bugs.

The full series: How to start an online store in 2026

This article is part of a seven-part series on starting an online store in 2026. The other parts:

• How to start an online store in 2026 — the complete guide
• Shoptet from A to Z — complete technical setup (you're reading it)
• E-commerce legal requirements 2026 — the complete checklist
• E-commerce tracking from scratch — GA4, Meta Pixel, GTM
• Shipping, payments and logistics for your store
• Social media and XML feeds for your store
• Post-launch growth and CRO for your store

FAQ

How much does Shoptet cost per month?

Shoptet is a subscription service with several tiers, from a free or entry-level plan for small stores up to Business and Enterprise for large catalogs. The price depends on the number of products, orders and integrations. Because the figures change, check the current pricing on shoptet.cz — for a new store, one of the lower-to-mid tiers is usually enough for the first year.

In what order should you set up Shoptet?

The right order: 1) plan and domain, 2) template and appearance, 3) categories (before products!), 4) VAT and taxes, 5) products, 6) SEO, 7) content pages, 8) test order. If you set up VAT AFTER the products, you have to recalculate every price by hand — with 800 products, that's a whole weekend's work.

How many categories should a small store have?

At most 7 main categories (Miller's magic number). Less is more. If a category hasn't sold in three months, merge it with another. Keep the tree to 3 levels max (main → subcategory → filter). Deeper trees are an SEO anti-pattern and customers get lost in them.

Do I need hosting with Shoptet?

No. Shoptet is a cloud service — hosting, security, backups and SSL are all part of the plan. The only thing you need on top is a domain (a small annual fee from a registrar such as Subreg or Forpsi). You just point the domain to Shoptet via DNS records.

What's the most common mistake with a Shoptet template?

People buy a paid template but never edit the small texts — a "Buy" button instead of "Add to cart", default text in the dispatch emails, generic About and Shipping pages. A template is just a skeleton — 80% of the work is in the copy, the photos and the details that Shoptet doesn't provide by default.