How to Create a Shopify Website: E-commerce Store
Shopify is one of the world’s leading e-commerce platforms. It is a full-package platform that lets business owners start and grow their business.
With Shopify, you are getting a complete website store without worrying about upgrading your software or web server with unlimited ecommerce features.
If you are wondering how to create a Shopify website for your online store; this article will take you through the journey of creating a Shopify website from start to finish.
Why Shopify?
The following are the reasons why you should use Shopify for your e-commerce store;
- Free website designs that are easy to learn without any web development skills.
- You can sell a wide array of goods on Shopify like physical products, digital products and service.
- Shopify offers a lot of plug-in software that makes payment, shipping, inventory, and marketing easy.
How to Create a Shopify website
This is a step-by-step guide on the set of procedures that you will need to create your account and launch your store.
1. Sign Up for Shopify
To sign up, you have to goto Shopify’s website to create an account. First, click the Get Started or Start Free Trial button for a 14-day free trial from Shopify. This trial period gives you enough time to explore Shopify.
Enter the required information like your email address, password, and the name of your store. You will have to answer some questions about your business like the type of products you are selling, your locations, and business type.
2. Set up your Store
Once you have logged into your store, you will see a menu on the left side of your screen that includes the list of available tools and features on Shopify.
You have to start by navigating your way to settings to set up your time zone, currency, and other options. Once that is done the next things to set up in your store are theme and add in the important pages for your store.
To choose a theme for your store that is different from the default theme, select Online Store, and click on Theme. Under Theme, you get to explore free and paid options. It is up to you to pick the best for your store.
After selecting a theme editing it is the next thing to do. During the process of editing, you change the color, font size, and images to give it a professional look. Select Customize to edit the theme that you have picked.
Once you have picked and edited your themes the next is to create the essential pages like the home page, about page, product page, contact page, and policy page. All of these make it easier for your customers to navigate your store.
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3. Add Product
Adding your products on Shopify is very easy to do. You start by clicking Products on your dashboard, and then click Add Products. From Add product you can fill in your product’ s image, title, description, weight, and price.
If you have different products or services, you can also arrange your products into collections to keep them organized. To set this up select Products and click on Collections, once the collection page opens you click on Create Collection at the top right corner. From there you can add titles and all other necessary details.
4. Set up Shipping
Under shipping, you can set your shipment rate and zone for customers. You can also integrate the shipping carriers of your choosing for safe and accurate delivery of your physical products. To set this up go to Setting, then Shipping and Delivery.
5. Set up a Payment gateway.
Shopify allows you to use a large number of payment gateways such as PayPal, Stripe, Square, and so on for smooth transactions between you and your clients.
To set up your account for payment go to Settings and then select Payment. There are two payment options for you one is In-house payment which is the Shopify payment and the other is third-party providers like Stripe and PayPal
6. Test and Launch your Store
You must test your store before it goes online. Shopify offers a Test mode in the payment settings that gives you a demo version of your online store. During the test period, the following are things that you should look out for;
- The navigation process: Make sure that your store links are correct and the pages are working as you have planned.
- Mobile responsiveness: Since most of the customers will be visiting your site from their phones; you have to make your store work perfectly on phones.
- The Purchasing process: Try to buy a product to ensure that the process of adding products to cart and paying is customer friendly.
Once you have tested your store and you are satisfied with what you see the next thing to do is disable test mode and Launch.
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7. Market your Shopify Store
This can be considered the Post-creation state, it is the process of using Shopify’s in-built marketing and optimization tools to market and rank your store on search engines.
Under Marketing, you can create campaigns with emails, social media, and paid ads. You can also integrate your store into social media stores like Facebook and Instagram store.
Shopify Plans
After you have exhausted the free trial period you get from Shopify you will need to start exploring paid plans from Shopify. The following are the prices and packages available on Shopify:
Basic Shopify: This Plan is perfectly suited for people with small or new businesses. The price for basic Shopify is $39 per month.
Shopify: This package is meant for mid-level business owners and it costs $105 per month.
Advanced Shopify: This is for large-scale businesses with complex needs like more detailed reports and low truncation fees. To have an advanced Shopify package costs $399 every month.
Each of these plans has its own benefit therefore it is advisable to consider your need before making any payments.
Conclusion
With Shopify, the sky is the limit to what you can perform in your store. Make good use of the tools and unlimted features at your disposal and create the e-commerce store of your dreams.