Shopify tutorials are not as complicated as you think, and so is learning how to build your own eCommerce website. Shopify has impacted the businesses by leaps and bounds as it is a one-stop e-Commerce online service that lets business owners set up a complete online store to sell their products and services without difficulty. Merchants can also choose to sell their products in person with Shopify POS. There are many ways to grow your business in 2020, but with your own Shopify store, you drive harder towards success.
What is Shopify and How Did it Start?
Shopify is now the leading eCommerce platform built for businesses of all sizes. It began more than a decade ago when its founder wanted to sell snowboards, who realised online selling is difficult without an eCommerce platform. Shopify became that platform.
Since then, Shopify has improved the way e-Commerce websites are built, sustained, and improved, both from the front-end and back-end. It is no longer difficult to bring your business online and make it available to your market in real-time. Entrepreneurs can access their site’s admin panel easily to add products, enter store data or customer’s data, and most importantly, promptly process orders. Shopify even handles marketing and secured payments, speedy checkouts, and streamlined shipping.
Even beginners in building an e-Commerce site will quickly get the hang of using this Shopify tutorials. Shopify has a wide range of customisable templates that makes the setup process light and easy. Shopify also has lots of resources, like helpful articles for your reference, and better team support and collaboration through employee room chats.
Is Shopify the Best Option?
Shopify is an excellent platform for a lot of e-Commerce businesses because it is easy to use. Other competitors like Squarespace may have stronger design flexibility and value for money, but in terms of sales features, customer score, ease of use help and support and overall website feature, Shopify does better than Squarespace.
Different kinds of sellers go to Shopify to sell products and services like physical products, digital products, services, consultancy, memberships and subscriptions, ticketed experiences and activities, classes and lessons, and rentals.
If you are a first-time e-Commerce site builder, here are seven steps that can guide beginners to create an online store using Shopify:
- Start with Your Shopify Sign Up
First things first in this Shopify tutorial is to create a Shopify login account. Go to Shopify.com and follow its simple signup instructions to create your account. Select “Create Your Store,” where you will need to enter your business email, uniquely complex password, name, and store name. The next to create is the “Tell Us a Little About Yourself” page. Your answer in this portion affects the kind of advice emails you will receive from Shopify through its newsletters. After you have accomplished that, click “Enter My Store” to begin your Shopify success journey.
- Choose A Catchy Name for Your Store or Brand
You need to have a domain name for your store that is memorable, catchy, and easy to write to your customers. If your domain name is complicated and hard to remember, you would hardly increase your site’s organic search rating because it is based on what people write on the search bar or the browser’s URL bar. Your domain name must have an impact and can be easily identified to what your store or brand is all about.
For instance, choosing a domain like “charliesangels.com” might be a bit vague. What is your business about? Are you selling religious figurines? Are you selling clothes? Is your main product of your service? It is hard to tell just by that domain name what the nature of the business is.
You can be unique and creative with your domain, but it needs to be clear and specific as well. I just randomly typed “OrganicforBabies.com” and got led to a website that sells organic products for babies. Its domain name is also its keyword, both for search intent and for exact match keywords or key phrase. That is one, efficient domain.
Once you have determined what your store’s name or brand’s name will be, register your domain name either through Shopify or a third-party hosting site like GoDaddy or BlueHost. These are two of the most popular among website newbies and experts alike because both are easy to use as you build your own eCommerce website from scratch. Prepare at least three domain names so you have a back-up in case your first choice is no longer available.
- Customise Your Online Shop
After you have signed up your Shopify account, you will be directed into your store’s admin screen that serves as a dashboard. Here, you can customise elements of your Shopify store, upload your product images and descriptions, and determine the setting for payments and shipping. Shopify tutorials also teach you how to do this further.
- Select a Shopify Storefront Theme
Now that your web store is set up, you can select an appropriate theme from Shopify’s vast library. What is great is that you can change and adjust themes without having to tweak a line of code. It is why even beginners can build a Shopify store. For experts who want more, premium themes come with more modifications. There are over 180 million themes for you to choose from. You can click on the theme’s sample image to get more information before you choose one. Once you have identified the theme you like, drop your logos, fonts, product images, videos, and other personalised content for your brand.
- Create Your Essential Pages
When your settings are put together, add these three pages every e-Commerce store should have.
- The Contact Us Page
- The About Us Page
- Shipping Policy Page
You can create your “Contact Us” page by clicking, “Add page,” and in the drop-down menu (under the template section), choose “page.contact.” You can leave a text that has some explanation as well.
The “About Us” page is one of the best ways to build trust with your customers and be more personal. Here, you can tell your brand’s story. People relate more to stories so you can talk to them about why you started the store, what was the journey like, and where you are now as a company. Be compelling and authentic and write in a way readers will distinguish you apart from other brands.
Lastly, the “Shipping Policy” page makes it clear with customers how long shipping will take. All you must do is create click Online Store > Navigation. You can also select “Main Menu” to tweak your main navigation menu.
If you are trying to add a page, click “Add Menu” > Pages > Contact Us. After that, return to your navigation settings and click the Footer menu.
Always preview with the “Eyeball button,” which will let you see the navigation links you have added.
- Add Products to Your Store
To add products into your store, click Products > Add Product. Enter your product’s title and description first. Mention the different benefits of your product or service relevant to your target market’s needs.
Adding an image is exceptionally essential as well. Use high-quality images so you will not lose credibility and sales because of unappealing images. Always include the type of product you are selling. It is easier to create product collections when you include product type. Collections settings let you manually add the product to a collection of products.
Tags are also used to organise products into collections and improve your site’s search function. Lastly, you should include the price, inventory, variants, meta title, and a description.
- Set Up Payments
When your Shopify store is all set up, do not forget your payment gateway. It allows your customers to make storefront purchases on your Shopify. Add the price, commission rate, product features. Other information that you should include in your Shopify Storefront is transaction fees, card types, and offsite checkout. When you opt for a third-party or external payment gateway, there will be an additional fee of 2%, 1%, or 0.5% for Basic Shopify, Shopify, and Advanced Shopify plans, respectively.
Conclusion: Shopify is a Great Option for Your eCommerce Business
With Shopify, clearly the customer is king. It made its platform simple to use so businesses can truly get up and running in no time and start serving people’s needs. It is a great choice for eCommerce businesses because you can sell such a variety of products and services. It is a multi-product eCommerce store that puts products, inventory, marketing tools, and customer records all within reach of each other. You can also sell products through multiple marketplaces aside from your website and social media platform. No wonder 88% of users highly recommend it, receiving 4.7 ratings from among the 800,000 businesses using it. It is time your eCommerce website gets powered by Shopify today.