Are you planning to build a Shopify website for your business but are confused about how to do it? In this article, you will learn how to create a completely responsive Shopify website from scratch. By the end of this article, you’ll have your Shopify website up and running, filled with products.
Since its release in 2006, Shopify has been a leading eCommerce website for small and medium-sized business owners who want to quickly create an online store and begin selling their products having no web development experience. The process of creating an eCommerce site is virtually automated with Shopify. There are over 70 trendy models to choose from, all of which can be personalized with just a few mouse clicks. Therefore Shopify has become one of the most successful e-commerce platforms in the world. It’s an easy, plug-and-play website builder with integrated e-commerce features. However, there is a learning curve if this is your first time using Shopify or creating a Shopify website in general.
What is Shopify?
Shopify is a subscription-based software service that gives online merchants a platform to create a fully functional online store. When we say fully functional, we mean a responsive website with website hosting (including SSL) and shopping-cart solutions that let you manage, market, sell and ship a single or multiple items. When you sign up for a Shopify account, you’ll be able to:
- You can create your online shop.
- Choose a style that meets your requirements.
- Pick a unique name and domain for your store.
- Add your products and their details (price, description, etc.).
- Take care of the customers’ orders.
- Handle online payments with the aid of services such as PayPal and others.
- Run exclusive sales, discounts, and promotions.
How Shopify Works?
Shopify is easy to use. choose a subscription plan, pay a monthly fee, gain access to the e-commerce platform and its resources, set up your account, and begin selling items. Unlike all in one e-commerce platforms like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy, Shopify lets you create a separate website with its domain and URL. It also does not cause you to be clustered with other e-commerce firms or rivals, unlike the above.
Is Shopify the E-commerce platform you need?
If you’re a small business owner looking to launch your e-commerce platform, Shopify is a good option. However, before you spend the time and effort required to program and use Shopify, make sure it has all the features you need. For example, Shopify has restricted content development and layout choices, so if you want to create a blog that is equal parts shop and editorial, you may be better off using WordPress and looking into e-commerce plugins like Shopify Lite or WooCommerce.
Also Read: How to create an E-commerce website in 2022?
How To Create A Shopify Website? Step By Step
Things to do before signup:
The method of creating a Shopify website is easy and intuitive. You can develop your eCommerce site in as little as an hour if you have a rough idea of how you want it to look before you start. So, before you sign up for Shopify, do the following tasks:
Map A Design
think about what colours and fonts go well with your brand. Make a mood board with other trendy websites that you admire and want to emulate. When Shopify provides you with a prototype, colour palette, and font options during the web building process, you’ll already know which one suits your brand’s identity.
Pick A Domain
It’s also crucial to pick a suitable domain name for your shop and double-check that it’s available. We suggest using the words “store” or “shop” because you’ll need to locate an accessible internet address (domain), and it’s easier to do so when the name contains several words.
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Prepare A Logo
Prepare an attractive logo for your brand. Either you can hire a designer to make it professional or try to design yourself also to save money.
Products To Sell
You can’t open a store unless you have anything to sell, so make sure you start with some inventory, whether it’s digital items, physical goods, services, or a combination of all three. You can and should adjust your offerings in response to customer demand, but you must start somewhere!
Sign up and Setup your store
So once you have mapped your website, it’s time to implement it. The first step is to create a Shopify account. Before you agree to a pricing plan and begin making monthly Shopify payments, you can try it out for free for 14 days. Follow the prompts after clicking the “Start free trial” button in the upper right-hand corner of the page. You’ll be asked a few questions and given the option to name your shop. The name is unchangeable once committed. You may, however, purchase it and later replace it with your custom domain name. At any time, you can upgrade from a simple plan or downgrade from a more costly plan.
Choose a theme
Shopify has over 70 theme templates to choose from, all of which can be personalized to match your company’s style and vision. Some themes were created with single-product eCommerce retailers in mind. While they can be customized, this can take a long time, so it’s best to choose one that already suits your inventory size. Themes are available for free or for a fee. Choose a style based on its characteristics rather than its colour and font. Stylistic elements are simple to change, but if you don’t have a search bar, for example, you’ll find it difficult to adapt your chosen theme to meet that requirement.
Add Products To Your Shopify Shop
To build the first listing, go to Products and press Add Product from the dashboard. To show off your offering, upload a picture (and/or a video ad, if you have one). Write a catchy title and a product overview that provides all relevant information for your target audience. If you’re a dropshipping or print-on-demand service, you won’t need to do this). When you’re adding the product, decide how much stock you have in the CMS so that if the product sells out, it won’t be advertised on your site.
Finally, decide how you want your product to be delivered if your product has several variants. Moreover, try to keep in mind one thing. When you build a website with Shopify, your products should be updated, well-researched, and more informative than your competitors.
Create Collections
A set is a group of items that are identical in terms of tags, sizes, vendors, and so on. They assist your customers in locating similar products. Men’s Shoes, for example, maybe a set. To make one, go to Collections and then to Create a collection. Your collection pages, like product pages, have a title and a summary. A summary is simply a paragraph that appears above your items. A summary is not required. It can aid SEO, but it can also be a source of diversion. It is best to do this after a range has at least two items. By clicking the collection, searching for the product under the Items section, and selecting the products to add, you can manually add products to your collections.
Alternatively, you can add items automatically by changing the Collection form to “Automated” and specifying the conditions (for example, Product Tag = “Tea”). Any product tagged with “tea” will be automatically added to this list when this tool is used.
Build Essential Pages
Customers look for key pages that help them understand your company and respect it as an authority, so these should come first. There’s an About Us tab, a FAQ page, a Contact Us page, and a Legal Policy (Shipping, Returns, and Other Policies) page. The Shopify dashboard has templates for these important pages that you can customize to suit your needs. Remember when you build a website with Shopify, it is e-commerce based obviously and your essential pages must be informative and updated.
Checkout Customization
Theme Settings is where you can personalize your checkout experience. You don’t have to customize it, but you can give it some love so that it reflects your brand and isn’t bland and generic. Customize stuff like if consumers should opt into newsletters (highly recommended!), need to build an account, or can checkout as a guest by adding your logo or going deeper into customization.
All of this can be done under Settings > Checkout. You can also set up an automatic alert for abandoned carts here (when customers bail before completing their purchase). This can mean the difference between no sale and money in your bank account.
Customize shipping and fulfilment
First, create shipping zones. Then provide information about where you’re from and where you want to ship to. Choose how much you want to charge for shipping goods, or use Shopify shipping to integrate your pricing with Canada Post and/or USPS pricing and availability.
Set Up Payment
This is the most important step in building up a website with Shopify. You’ll need to set up how customers can pay you, how you’ll collect payments, and more once your goods are listed and your e-commerce platform is up and running. You may use Shopify’s payment gateway or third-party payment solutions including Apple Pay, Paypal, and Visa. When choosing a payment gateway, make sure you understand the fees you’ll be paying per transaction, as well as the different types of payment forms, cards accepted, and other information. Start by carefully examining your user base and demographics, and then, if necessary, perform a survey to learn which payment methods your customers are most likely to use.
Establish tax region
It’s important to plan ahead of time for your tax situation. It means that to receive your bill and receive the sales tax you’ll need to report to the government promptly (if applicable; often there is no tax on digital items). If you do it wrong, you’ll be bogged down in paperwork and will have to pay out of pocket.
Taxes aren’t fun, but they’re necessary, and they’re best handled in advance with some clever automation. Fortunately, Shopify automates the process by adding default regional sales tax rates to all transactions made on your platform. So you have to be more careful when you build a website with Shopify.
Go to Settings > Taxes to see what’s what. Leave the default rates alone, or edit or bypass them if your area or goods have special taxes. If you’re up and running, talk and a tax professional to make sure you’re charging the right amounts. You won’t be surprised when it’s time to pay sales tax during tax season if you do it this way.
Set-Up and Review Google Analytics
You should familiarize yourself with your Analytics tab. You will see how much traffic your store receives, which pages users visit, which products sell the most, and more in this section.
Right now, there’s nothing you can do on this page except be conscious of it and familiarize yourself with it. Though you won’t be able to review Google Analytics from this tab, it’s still a good idea to set it up so you can get even more accurate details on your Shopify Website visitors.
Recommended Apps
Apps are pieces of software that you can download to enhance your store’s features, such as consumer feedback or coupon pop-ups. Some are accessible, while others are not. Their number maybe thousands. But there are four apps that we strongly urge you to download right now:
- OBERLO for dropshipping
- CRUSH.PICS for image compression
- SUMO for Email marketing
- YOTPO for customer reviews
Choosing Shopify Paid Plan
It depends on your business size and objectives. In the bar at the bottom of your dashboard, select a plan. There are three choices available to you:
- Basic Shopify
- Shopify
- Advanced Shopify
If you know you’ll make more than $20,000 per month in sales, we suggest starting with the Basic Shopify plan. The biggest difference between the plans is your cost of sale (2.9% vs. 2.6% vs. 2.4% of gross revenues) plus $0.30 per purchase. If you’re exclusively using Shopify Payments, you’re usually losing money on the standard “Shopify” plan before you reach $20,000 a month.
Launch Your Shopify Store
You’ll quickly discover that there’s an endless list of improvements you can make to your new e-commerce store. However, the beauty of online companies is that you can make changes on the fly whenever your entrepreneurial heart desires. But there’s no need to sweat the petty stuff to get your store up and running. Set it in motion instead.
Before launching your site to the public, you can want to submit a password-protected login to friends so they can search and proofread it and provide valuable input. After that, go to Online Store > Preferences and turn off the password protection.
Keep on Improving
Congratulations on your achievement! You’ve just finished laying the foundation for a great Shopify store, and it’s up and running. It’s time to pat yourself on the back, take a deep breath, and prepare for the next move. You’ve got inventory to manage and customer service to handle, and once you start tracking customer behaviour and developing a marketing strategy for your shop, you’ll undoubtedly come up with new ideas. If you want to push yourself anymore, there are several advanced Shopify tasks you can complete, including:
- As described at the start of this article, you can add a custom domain (your URL).
- Installing related distribution platforms, such as Facebook Shop, Instagram product links, Amazon, eBay, AliExpress, pop-up shops, and Shopify POS
- Add your social media icons.
- Add a Buy button to your blog or other pages on your website.
- Creating checkout links to send to customers that enable them to proceed to the checkout process immediately.
- Looking through the Shopify app store for new features and useful add-ons.
Conclusion
So now you are familiar enough with how to build a website with Shopify. Prepare for both short-term and long-term success when building your E-commerce website. You might strike it rich at any moment, but you’ll never know for sure. You may spend months, weeks, or even years. It may also occur on the first day.
Only keep driving and strike when the opportunity arises. If you miss out on a major opportunity and can’t fill the orders, your rivals will gladly pick up the slack. To put it another way, intend to scale from the start. Any company should have a scaling strategy in place. This does not imply that you should start your journey by renting a large fulfilment centre with 100 employees. However, you should have a plan in place to deal with a sudden surge in orders. Follow the steps defined to make a successful Shopify store
Read more: myshopify
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