4.1 – Start a New Ecommerce Site with Hostinger AI Lesson

Lesson Overview

This lesson shows how to spin up a real ecommerce website using Hostinger’s Website Builder with the store feature turned on. The goal is to go from idea to a functioning storefront in minutes, with AI helping you generate the site structure and product details. You will see how to add a product, write or generate a description, set pricing, and organize items into categories. You will also see how to enable reviews, connect payments through PayPal or Stripe, and enter company and shipping information.

A key use case is prelaunch. If your product is not ready to ship, you can still publish a site, show concept images, and collect email signups so you have an audience ready for launch. The lesson also covers how the builder creates a shop page and product pages automatically, complete with related products and an email capture section you can customize. Everything is editable, including text, images, and buttons.

This lesson fits into the course as your first full ecommerce build. It is useful for creators, small businesses, or anyone validating an idea. Real-world outcomes include a live storefront, a prelaunch waitlist, and a clear path to activate payments when you are ready to take orders.

Who This Is For

If you want a fast way to build a store without complex setup, this lesson is a good fit. It also works if you already have a site and want to switch on ecommerce.

• Creators testing a product idea and collecting emails before launch
• Small businesses selling physical goods or digital downloads
• Solo founders building a first store without a developer
• Marketers setting up a promotional shop or gift page
• Educators or community leaders offering paid resources

Where This Fits in a Workflow

Use this lesson when you are ready to sell or to collect interest ahead of launch. You will start with a prompt that mentions selling, enable the store option, and let the builder generate a shop structure and placeholder products. From there, you can add your real items, turn on categories, and format descriptions.

Two common applications:

• Prelaunch validation: Publish a simple store with a form to capture names and emails. Share the URL, collect interest, and later turn on payments.
• Upgrade an existing site: If you already built a site in Hostinger, add a store to it, then manage products, orders, and customers from the same dashboard.

This lesson supports real work by giving you a publishable site, a basic catalog, mobile-ready pages, and the ability to connect payments when you decide to go live.

Technical & Workflow Benefits

The old way meant stitching together multiple tools, writing every product detail by hand, and building pages one by one. With Hostinger’s Website Builder in store mode, AI creates a first draft for your site and products, so you can edit instead of starting from zero. Placeholder products give you a complete look from the start, then you swap in real images and copy.

Two places this matters:

• Speed to market: You can publish a shop with email capture the same day, even if your product is still in development.
• Consistency and clarity: Product pages, related items, and the shop layout are generated with a unified design. You control categories, reviews, and pricing from one place, which reduces setup errors.

Payments, company info, and shipping details are handled within the store settings. You get orders and customers tracked in the dashboard once payments are connected. Mobile preview is built in, so the store looks good on phones without extra work.

Practice Exercise

Scenario: Create a small storefront for “cool tech gifts” that starts by collecting interest, then prepares for payments later.

• Step 1: Use an AI prompt to generate a short site description that mentions selling cool tech gifts. Start a new site in Hostinger’s Website Builder, make sure the store option is on, and let it draft the first version with a shop page.
• Step 2: Add one physical product. Upload a product image, use the AI writer to generate a title and description, set a price, and add weight or stock tracking if you plan to ship. Create a category such as Computer Gadgets and assign the product to it. Enable reviews.
• Step 3: Edit the homepage headline and button, confirm the email capture section is present, and customize the form fields. Preview on mobile, publish to a temporary URL, and share it with a few testers.

Reflection: If you already had a non-store site, how would adding the store compare to starting fresh with store mode on? Which path feels faster for your situation?

Course Context Recap

This lesson marks your first full ecommerce build in the AI Website Builder Crash Course. Earlier lessons covered building and editing sites with Hostinger’s tools. Here you activate store mode, add products, and set up key selling features. Next, the course moves on to another AI website tool called Lovable to show different ways to create sites from text prompts. Keep going to see how each tool fits different projects, and return to this lesson whenever you need a fast, store-ready setup.