Are you searching hard for a guide to set up a Shopify store and not just a store but a successful leading one? You might be wondering why there is only a Shopify name at the top of the e-commerce stores. As a beginner in the business world, you might find difficulties in establishing your business idea on an online platform. Therefore, we are here for you to provide a perfect guide that will help you in setting up your online Shopify store.
Now tag along till the end, get to know some facts about Shopify, start setting up a store on this e-commerce platform, and reach the top!
Table of Contents
Shopify – An Ecommerce Platform
I bet whenever you search for the top e-commerce platforms, you will find Shopify in the top ones, including the shopping cart software! Now the question of every newbie is, what exactly is the Shopify online store? Shopify store is the single-stop store providing everything from the start and enables everyone to set up a Shopify store with the ease of cloud-based software for the services.
Shopify services allow you to manage a range of options like customizing the themes and choosing the drop-shipper to deliver your clients’ products. In short, when you opt for Shopify, you subscribe to the software that generates your web and shopping cart software and enables you to manage, sell and ship the products.
How Much Shopify Costs?
Besides the easy-to-use feature, the starting up cost for the store is also less. Good news – you don’t have to sign any contracts for generating the store or recompense any transaction amount. The initial cost to set up a store on Shopify is from $29 per month to $299 per month for the regular plans.
You can conveniently save up to 10% to 20% if you opt for paying a straight, solitary year, or double year plan. Shopify offers three plans to generate a store; basic Shopify, Shopify, and Advanced Shopify. It depends on you which plan you choose, but we will advise you to opt for the Basic Shopify plan as you are a beginner. The plan will help you understand the needs, and when your store starts to grow, you can switch your plans.
Top 4 Reasons To Choose Shopify
1. Sell Anytime, Anywhere And To Anyone
Many selling platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, and more, but many of them are limited to specific countries or states. You can sell your products on Shopify to anyone, anywhere, and anytime and can easily extend your selling cycle.
2. Marketing Tools
Secondly, Shopify offers market-friendly tools and helps you to generate and increase the audience in your store. The SEO tool also allows you to show your domain from the ranked one when searching for the product related to your domain. Shopify applications can also be used to enhance your store’s marketing and offer to go back time and make changes.
3. More Things One Place
Isn’t it so cool to have everything managed at the same place? Shopify offers you a versatile option of the dashboard that can be used on your mobile and laptop. The dashboard of Shopify includes analytics, settings, payment method, and others. You can reach anywhere from your dashboard without any burden, whether you want to check your sales or change the settings.
4. Represent Your Product Attractively
You know that you are promoting a top-quality product, but how will you prove it to others? Shopify helps you prove your product professional by offering many themes that reflect your product as engaging and high-quality to magnetize more customers.
12 Simple Steps For Beginners To Build Shopify Store
Since you acknowledged all the minor to major points about the Shopify store now, we may come to our key topic to set up a Shopify store for you with simple steps that help to make your eCommerce store successful! Starting with the first step that is:
1. Choose Your Niche
Firstly, you have to pick your niche; this is not any time-consuming step to generate your Shopify store. When you select the product type you want to sell in your store, then it would be easy for you to spend time on your guidance’s desired product pages. Here are some niche examples so you can get ideas for yours.
Before starting your store, you may think about whether you are setting up the store for fun or replacing your job. After considering this question, make sure you note your goal for the income to struggle hard for achieving the goal. You may think about the amount and time you need to spend on your store a day. This will help you prevent from vanishing into your shop the whole of the day.
2. Register With Shopify
Not to mention, you cannot build your store without registering with Shopify. Shopify is the most efficient platform to create a discount, adding products, and selling. To register, first, go to the Shopify web and enter your email but wait! As you are a beginner, you should start with the free trial first, click on the ‘start free trial’ option, and enter the email option.
Now enter your email and password; later on, add the name of your online store. After fulfilling all the requirements, click ‘create your store.’ Afterwards, a form will appear in front of the screen asking general questions if you were already a seller about your revenue and niche.
3. Create Your Shopify Store
As we advised you to work with the trial account to understand the terms and conditions, you will not be asked for the credit cards. After completing the trial period, the account will be deleted itself, and to reactivate, you will be needed to pay for the Shopify plans.
To create your store, you will be asked about the basic information about yourself to enter the store. Type in your name and default address to get paid; when you complete all the requirements, your store will be created. You will be welcomed on the first page by asking about your theme, products, and domain.
4. Mark Your Domain Name
As you are a beginner, we advise you to start by adding your domain. The domain is nothing but a URL to connect your site with your store. Your clients will look for your store by typing your domain. When you start a store on Shopify, you are provided with the primary domain shown in the address bar to the visitors when they search your store.
Your primary domain will be mentioned as your default setting; you can also purchase a new domain or connect the already generated domain with your store. Whenever you create your name, make sure you:
- Select a word or acronym that is less than or equal to 10 characters to be remembered easily by the visitors.
- Don’t use repetitive letters in your domain. Keep your domain name easy to spell by preventing punctuations.
- You add a keyword related to your products; this will help you by showing your store in the buyer’s search bar even if they don’t search for your site.
5. Organize Your Online Store
Your store theme plays a huge role in attracting customers to your store. Ensure that your Shopify theme is highly attractive and should reflect the idea that you are selling out premium-quality, professional and trending products. You can also:
- Choose Pre-designed Theme
Shopify comes with a range of already designed themes that are free. You can go for it to save money. You can find also the best themes for your shopify store here to make it engaging!
- Customize Your Own Theme
Shopify offers you the functional and fundamental look of your theme, but all planning will be yours. So create your attractive theme and enhance your store to the sky.
After creating your theme, ensure your store theme looks great on laptops, desktops, and mobile because you don’t know about the customer’s device. Your theme looks different on mobile from the computer.
6. Add Products To Your Store
Now it’s time to add your products to your store as you cannot work on Shopify without selling anything. When adding products, you are needed to offer complete attention because your products decide your revenue. Make sure you add the finest quality of the products to your store to attract more patrons and build a reputation among the sellers. This is how you can add your products:
- Add Products Manually
You can add your products manually without any burden if you offer five or fewer than five products in your store—just fill-up the description, name, and other information one by one of all the products.
- Import Products From CSV File
Alternatively, to manually add products, you can import your products from a CSV file if they are large.
7. Change Your Store’s Settings
While your Shopify store’s default settings are fantastic, it would be great if you optimize your settings a little bit more. Go to settings by selecting on the bottom left of the Shopify dashboard. Here are some important settings, which store owners should pay attention to.
- General Settings
It’s ok if you didn’t change your store name, address, and email address when you signed up to the store; you can also upgrade them now in general settings.
- Legal Settings
As every store needs a privacy policy and refund policy, so does Shopify. You can build one for your store, too, according to your settings. Disclaimer: this advice is not legal because any lawyer does not recommend this.
- Account Settings
If you are assisted by a virtual agent or have any partner, you can offer them an account on your store by clicking ‘Add staff.’
8. Choose Payment Gateways
Your payment gateways allow you to charge your customer through your site. The commission and amount rate is essential, but you are also needed to look through the features your client offers. Look through the following to consider the best payment gateway:
- Types Of Cards
Get informed about the card types received by your selected gateway of payment. Almost everyone accepts American Express, where many ask for Master and Visa cards. You can also go for Paypal as it is the growing method of sending and receiving money online.
- Transaction Fees
Compare the flat fees or small percent of money kept by the gateways when you make any payment, according to your expected sales.
9. Launch Your Store
Now that you have followed all the above steps, you are ready to launch your store on Shopify. But before sending it to live, make sure you have upgraded your business settings. Decide if you charge taxes or not, the taxes are not charged on the digital goods, but manual products like T-shirts or handicrafts will charge taxes. Now you are ready to launch your Shopify store and make it live.
10. Review Your Analytics
After launching your store, you can check your analytics mentioned on your dashboard if you want to. It will show you the total sales, returning customer’s rate, and the total online Shopify store sessions. You don’t have to do anything now as you have launched your store right now. Set your Google analytics to get more information about your visitors.
11. Take Support Of Shopify Applications
You may have acknowledged all the steps up until now that was discussed. Now it’s time to expand your store with the support of Shopify applications. Shopify is an easy to use e-commerce store with flexible features. You can expand your Shopify store and grow it rapidly with a range of various Shopify applications especially many of them are free or give a free trial. These applications will help you hold recent technological trends and enhance your store to make it reach the sky and be reputable.
12. Promote Your Store
We are at the last step of building a successful Shopify store. Now that you have all the points to build your success and as we don’t only want you to generate your online store but also make it successful. Therefore, it is advised to you newbies that don’t just sit waiting for the sales because for sales, you’ll have to make some efforts, you will be needed to promote your Shopify store on various platforms like social media or through the email address.
- Create Email List
In this world full of various communication applications, you will always find the email at the top of the promotions list. You can add your email subscription form to your Shopify store to catch more customers.
- Publicize On Social Media
If you are interested in mounting your Shopify online store, then you can post ads on Facebook and Google to publicize your store. Paying less money for ads to earn double money from an online store is a reasonably good idea.
Conclusion
From a range of e-commerce platforms, Shopify will always be at the top of the list. You can manage everything with your Shopify, even its management, payment gateways, or anything you can set up in just an hour. Shopify will help you to sell your products around the world and extend daily sales. This article was all about generating a Shopify store and making it successful. We hope this article helped everyone if you are a beginner or already have been in the market for a short time. You can easily set up a Shopify store to sell your products and increase your revenue. Go and generate your Shopify store, if you need any help feel free to contact us and don’t forget to leave the comments down below to support our services!
