Shopify Tutorial 2021: How to start a successful Shopify store?

Getting started to build a Shopify store is a big challenge for all the newbies out there, fumbling to get an idea of a sellable product and generate sales.

Luckily, with Shopify, a powerful eCommerce platform, merchants can easily set up and start selling your products there.

Are you ready to know how to build a Shopify store professionally? Well, you’re in luck, because you no longer have to be an amateur in building a Shopify store after reading this article. Let’s dive in!

Here are 4 steps to get started to build your Shopify store as soon as possible:

1. Planning out
2. Signing up with Shopify
3. Setting Up Your Online Shop
4. Launching Your Store

⭐ Before we start, you should learn some basic knowledge about Shopify like its features and pricing by reading our last article!

Step 1: Planning what you need to build your Shopify store

If you might already have your store planned out, then feel free to skip this step. Conversely, then grab a pen, papers and spend some time to ask yourself about how to build a professional Shopify store.

• Write down your product, name, logo design, and income goal.
• Speak with your business partner to hash out the logistics.
• Determine how much time and money you have to give this project.
• Create your website mindmap for how things will be organized.

Step 2: Signing up with Shopify

At first, please visit this link: www.shopify.com

Click to Start a free trial, a registration form will appear then.

All you have to do is fill in your information there. After this initial screen, you’ll be asked for a few more details, including your name, address, country, postal code, and contact number, etc.

You will also be asked if you have products and, if so, what you are going to sell. If you’re just trying out Shopify to see if it works for you or not, you can select ‘I’m just playing around’ in the ‘Do you have products?’ dropdown, and ‘I’m not sure’ in the ‘What will you sell?’ section.

Once finished, click ‘I’m done’.

Note: You can’t change your store name unless you have a different domain. So please think thoroughly before labeling!  

Step 3: Setting Up Your Online Shopify Store

After you have signed up, you will be directed straight to your store admin screen. Now you are ready to start customizing your store, uploading products, and setting up payments and shipping.

1. Orders

Create your very first order by selecting the product and filling the necessary information, then click Save.

2. Products 

Navigating the category on the left select ‘Products’. You will then see the ‘Add a product’ button in the middle of the page.

In the following screen, add as much detail as needed about your products.

You can optimize SEO for your product page by filling in name, description, and URL.

This is the screen where you upload product pictures. Once the images are uploaded, you can rearrange them later.

There are some important variants that you will have to notice:

• Title: Your product title (brand name, kind of product, color, & anything you want to describe it)
• Description: Describe your product better: features, origin, weight, etc.
• Images: Product images. You can upload multiple images (All the images should be used in the same size)
• Product Type: Type of your products
• Vendor: Name of the product’s brand
• Tags: You need to add tags as they are very important, involving creating collections.
• Price: Official sale price (sometimes it is sale off price)
• Compare at Price: Original price ( price before sale off) 
• Inventory Policy: Select Shopify tracks this product’s inventory if you want to manage the inventory of this product, select “Quantity” to set the number of products you have in stock.
• Weight: The weight of the product, required if you charge ship based on weight.

You can also add options by “Add variant” if your product has different options such as “Size”, “Color”, …

3. Collections

You need to create collections for products of the same category, the same brand, etc. The Collections section is directly below Products.

You need to upload an image to set the collection’s thumbnail.

There are some important sections that you will have to choose:

• Collection Type section:
  • Manual: Manually adding products to the collection
  • Automated: Automatically add products to the collection
• Conditions: The conditions you can choose include: Product Type, Vendor, Tags, Title, Price, Weight, etc.

4. Apps

We know that your revenue can’t grow without the right tools. These apps will help you promote your store, sell your products, reward your customers, and handle inventory and shipping so you can earn more revenue.

And many of them are free! 

Click Visit the Shopify App Store for more apps. Your installed apps list will show up there.

There are many apps categorized by usage and user needs. You can choose to download some reputable apps, which have many good reviews.

5. Online Store

The Online store module is where you customize the theme, posts, blogs, domain names, etc. However, because theme customization is important, there will be a separate module for this section.

#Blog Posts

You do not have to set up the blog section, but it will help a lot with SEO optimization.

At Blog posts, select Create blog post to post your articles.

There are some important variants that you will have to notice:

• Visibility: Select Visible to publish the blog post after finishing.
• Blog: Select the blog entry to publish, you can choose the default blog as “News” or create a new blog.
• Featured image: Need to use horizontal images and use the same size for all blog posts.
• Tags: Tag related tags for each post.
• URL and handle: For example: /about-allfetch

#Pages

This is where you will write some information about your company, policies & terms, guidelines, recruitment, etc.

Select Add page to add the article.

This section is similar to uploading products, with titles and descriptions, as well as SEO optimization at the end of each article.

#Navigation

Go to the Main Menu to customize the main menu.

You can link each menu item yourself with collections, pages, or blogs.

#Domains

There will be a default domain name store-name.myshopify.com. You can buy other domain names directly through Shopify, or buy from the domain name providers.

To buy a domain name directly through Shopify, select Buy new domain.

Enter the domain name you want to buy and click Buy, you need to enter credit card information at the next step to buy the domain.

If you already have a domain name purchased from elsewhere, select “Connect existing domain”.

Choose Verify connection to confirm domain connection.

#Preferences

At Preference, you have to edit the following variants:

• Homepage title: The title of the entire website, (greatly influencing SEO)
• Meta Description: Describe your entire website, write down to describe the product or service, remember to include your most important keywords.
• Google Analytics: You can install Analytics and paste the script code into this box.
• Facebook Pixel: Used to attach pixel Facebook ads
• Password protection: You can turn it on and off to set password protection during the construction of the web or every maintenance.

#Shipping and Payments

Shipping

You can customize at Settings > Shipping and delivery

• Local delivery: the address where you will start shipping, should be your company or warehouse address
• Shipping zones: you can divide them into different areas to charge different shipping fees, such as the United States, EU, or Asia. If you only sell in one market, you can keep Domestic and Delete the rest.

Payment Gateway

You can customize at Settings > Payment

Paypal is one of the popular payment gateways on Shopify.

PayPal payment gateway has these following conditions:

• Applicable currencies: USD
• Must have a PayPal Business account

Connect to your PayPal account, then continue. 

#Themes

From the outset, the ultimate goal of posting your products, articles, blogs, menus, etc. is to make them appear on your website homepage. The purpose is to customize the theme/website interface.

Shopify has 2 types of themes:

• Free: there are currently more than 10 free themes available by Shopify, you can view here.
• Paid themes: you can buy premium themes on the Shopify Theme store or at Themeforest.

At the start, your store will default to use the free theme, Debut.

In case you want to try another theme/template, you can select “Visit Theme Store” and explore yourself.

After completing all the setup steps above, your store is now ready for the very first order. Take a look at your results and share them with us!

Conclusion

It’s a complicated time for all business owners while the COVID-19 outbreak is ongoing. However, you don’t have to wait until the pandemic is over before you begin building an online store. Hopefully, after this article, you will be able to quickly build a professional Shopify store for yourself. Let’s get started today!