Best approach in building online store?

Reason I ask this is because it can be confusing with tutorials all over the place on the site at times some are different to current extensions.

I have the Dynamic Suite, loaded ecommerce database from Webassist (i.e. wa_ecommerce_20091112.sql) into Mysql database, established successful connection to database via dynamic site defined in dreamweaver and used Security Assist to setup login features.

Aim is to create fully functional online store to sell products that are grouped into different categories.

Should I do things in this order:

1. create admin section to - load thumbnail, large images, price, short + long descriptions.

2. Use my custom detail page to insert corresponding recordsets (e.g. thumbnails binded with thumbnails column create in database)

To be honest unclear as to where i go from here.

I have a template for how I want categories to display I want to be able to click a category on my navigation and display those products and further selection should lead to detail page previously mentioned.

Could someone tell me:

What am I missing in this approach for it to be successful?

How would a simple search for products feature fit into such a approach in regards to results displayed from customer view point?

or

Set out a brief framework how they developed their online store with the Dynamic Suite from webassist?