How to Create a Shopify Store: Video guide, Instructions, and Real experience

Thanks to modern technologies and platforms, creating and launching an online store has become much easier. One of such platforms is Shopify. It allows you to create high-quality and attractive stores with minimal costs and efforts, even without technical knowledge.

In this article, we'll look at how to create your own Shopify store from scratch. We'll cover all the steps, from signing up for an account and choosing a theme, to adding products, setting up payment and shipping methods, setting up SEO, and promoting your store.

We'll also give you tips on optimizing and improving your store after it launches, so you can get the most out of the Shopify platform and achieve success with your online business.

Video Guide to Creating a Shopify Store

The Shopify team has prepared a complete video course on creating a store for you. In this guide, you will go step by step through all the stages of creating a store and setting it up until the moment of launch.

The course instructor is Shopify support employee Samantha Renee, who has her own store. She knows both in theory and in practice how to create your own business on Shopify.

Pros and Cons of Creating a Store on the Shopify Platform

If you're having trouble setting up your own Shopify store, you can search the Shopify Help Center for answers, ask the Shopify community for advice, take a "Getting Started with Shopify" course, hire an expert to set up your Shopify store, or contact professional 24/7 support. It's okay to take things step by step, and Shopify has plenty of resources to help you along the way.

Real experience of creating and launching a store on Shopify

According to Braveen Kumar, founder of Hot Sauce Shop.

When I decided to create an online store, I was like an inexperienced artist who looks at a blank canvas in front of him and doesn’t know where to start.

I spent a long time choosing the perfect theme from the Shopify theme store. After that, I decided to create a home page for my online store, without any idea what products I would sell. As a result, I spent a lot of time and made many mistakes before my store was launched.

Looking back, I now realize that my mistakes are the same as almost every newbie in this business. I wrote this article and described in detail all the solutions that are effective when creating a Shopify store to help new entrepreneurs achieve quick and tangible results.

In this guide, I will use a regular hot sauce store as an example, which you can read more about below. I will reveal to you all the nuances of the store creation process to show how the product list was compiled, the main page design was created, the texts were written, the delivery methods were set up and other things were done, which, in general, allowed us to turn the business idea into a ready-made online store.

Free Trial to Set Up a Shopify Store

Before you start building an online store, it’s best to take advantage of the free 3-day trial of a Shopify store plus the first 3 months at $1/month. This is enough time to create an online store and test your business strategy. Especially if you follow this guide. And don’t forget that you can add products to the store and improve it after launch.

The first step in registering your Shopify store will ask you to enter a store name, which will become your default URL (e.g. storename.myshopify.com). You won't be able to change it later, but you can purchase your own domain (e.g. yourstore.com) later. So, choosing a name doesn't take much time.

After you answer a few standard questions, you will be automatically directed to your Shopify store account.

Here's a quick list of what you'll need to have before you get started (I'll use my hot sauce online store as an example from now on and in the future):

• Business Plan: Since many hot sauce brands boast that they are the "hottest sauces ever," I thought it would be a good idea for my Kinda Hot Sauce store to sell mild, not-so-hot sauces for the adventurous in the kitchen. If you don't have a business plan yet, you can check out this list of business ideas for inspiration.
• Name your business. To check if my chosen name is available on social media and as a domain name, I used Namechk. Since the .com URL was unavailable, I chose the domain kindahotsauce.shop. If you're thinking about naming your store, check out how to choose a domain name or try Shopify's free domain name generator.
• Brand Logo. Personally, I worked with a designer to come up with my own unique, competitive logo. It turned out to be playful and bold. I prepared the logo in a file format ".png" with a transparent background so that the logo could be placed on any background. You can use a special guide to create your own logo, either for free or with the help of a designer on a paid basis.
  
• Products to Sell: You can sell physical products, digital products, or services in your Shopify store. My products weren't manufactured when I created the store, but I tried my best to make them look realistic . I've added four types of sauce to the Kinda Hot Sauce store: Hot Enough Habanero, Born to Be Mild Thai Chilli, The Friendly Ghost Pepper, and a set of three hot sauces. If you don't have any products to sell yet, reading this article will help you come up with profitable product ideas. Or, you can use one of the many Shopify apps to find products.
• Include photos. High-quality product photography will help your online store look attractive. I used mockups of hot sauce bottles on a white background, as well as some stock photos to create vivid images. If you have a limited budget and don’t have access to professional product photos yet, you can take your own product photos using a regular smartphone camera, or alternatively use free stock photos.

If you are still having trouble navigating Shopify or want to quickly jump to a specific section, you can use the smart search bar in the Shopify store admin panel to instantly jump to specific products, required pages or settings.

Selecting products for sale

What is an online store that has no products available for purchase? Creating products is the very first thing you should do in your store. Why? Your products are what you will build the look and feel of your site around.

In your new Shopify online store, go to Products > Add product and create your first product.

This is a very important step, so we will look at it step by step.

Name and description of the product

The product page is where your potential customers first learn about your product and decide whether to buy from you. Details matter, and presenting useful information in the right form (from price to product size) through text or visuals can make all the difference. If you’re unsure of what exactly to include in your description, look at how other online stores in your market segment do it for inspiration.

Your product name should clearly indicate what your product is. It is the first thing customers will see when browsing your store. And the product name should help them find exactly what they are looking for in your catalog. Try to keep it short, but at the same time, it should reveal key information about the product and its features, such as color or size.

For the name of my first major hot sauce product, I decided to use the name Hot Enough Habanero.

A product description describes and sells your product. The good news is that you don’t have to be a professional copywriter to write a compelling product description. You just need to:

• Know your audience. Think about what your buyer needs to know to confidently buy your product, and try to convey that in your description.
• Offer attractive terms for the buyer. Do you have a generous return policy or free shipping? Are your products eco-friendly? Think about which features, benefits, and offers are really important and discard all the unnecessary ones. Many stores add different icons to the text to quickly convey these benefits on the product page.
• Answer the most common questions and concerns. What might make a customer hesitate to buy? Are they afraid of buying the wrong size? Do they need to know what your product contains if they have allergies? Do they need to know that your product is made to quality standards?
• Try to improve the readability of the description. Make your texts easier to read by using short paragraphs, bullet points, subheadings, bolding, etc. Then ask yourself how quickly the visitor can extract the information he needs.
• Help potential customers feel the benefits of your product. Buyers can’t touch, feel, smell, or try on your product. In addition to photos, you can bring your product to life by listing the materials used in its manufacture, including a size chart, or explaining the manufacturing process — all depending on the type of product you have.

When selling a product such as hot sauce, we can assume that when buying, customers pay special attention to the following details: ingredients, taste, quantity, degree of spiciness and ways to combine the sauce with other products. Therefore, I did my best to make all this information available to visitors of my store in the first place.

Product photos and other media materials

In the "Media" section of the product page, you can upload any visual media that will help you tell about your products in more detail: photos, GIFs, videos or even 3D models.

The importance of presentation. Help customers imagine that they have already purchased your product. Let them see the product in action or demonstrate how to use it yourself. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Use high-quality photos that show your products in the best light. Avoid blurry or low-resolution images.
• Try to maintain the same aspect ratio (i.e. the ratio between width and height) in all product photos so that all photos are the same size. This consistency will give a professional look to your online store.
• If you're currently on a budget, know that most modern smartphones are capable of taking high-quality product photos. And to improve the quality, you can use free photo editing tools (like remove.bg, which lets you remove the background for free).
• Once you've uploaded an image to your product page, you'll be able to edit it, such as cropping or resizing it. You can also add Alt text to each image to describe your photos to people who can't see them. For example, I wrote "150ml bottle of Hot Enough Habanero by Kinda Hot Sauce" to help people with visual impairments easily understand what's in the image.

I used one photo of a hot sauce bottle on a white background. But for products where the buyer might need more visual information, such as clothing or jewelry, using multiple photos that show additional angles or details can increase trust with potential buyers.

Price of the product

Now it's time to set a price for your product.

Optionally, you can use the "Compare at price" field to indicate a recent high price for an item compared to its current discounted price. This allowed me to show visitors the savings on a three-pack of hot sauce. However, I wouldn't recommend using this field unless you have a good reason, especially if you're selling premium products, as it can reduce the perception of quality.

The "Cost per item" field is also optional. If you want, you can use it to track the profit of an individual product. On the Shopify plan, this allows you to track revenue in the Profit Report.

In some cases, you as a business will need to charge taxes every time someone places an order with you, so we'll keep that in mind and set up our tax options later.

For example, let's say the cost price of one product or the cost of producing and packaging one bottle is $5. If I sell each bottle for $15, I will have a good income, which will allow me to use discounts and conduct marketing campaigns.

In reality, pricing is rarely as simple as it seems. Various variables can affect how much you should ultimately charge for your product. You can read more about pricing here . For example, the cost of shipping, raw materials, other expenses such as rent or employee salaries, the value of your time, and most importantly, the perception of the quality of your product.

Don't assume that lowering your prices will necessarily increase sales. Buyers often use price as a proxy for quality. If you're selling a premium product, don't be afraid to set a high price. Especially if you can justify it with compelling and professional branding.

There is always an opportunity to review and change your prices depending on the results of your marketing campaign. You may find that customers are willing to pay more for your product or find alternative ways to reduce costs and increase the average value of each order.

Inventory

If you were a dropshipping or print-on-demand business, you wouldn't need to keep track of inventory. But because Kinda Hot Sauces makes, sells, and ships its own hot sauce, it has to track inventory in Shopify to know how many of each sauce are left and how many more need to be made so customers can order it at any time.

If you're new to online selling, you may come across a few unfamiliar terms, so let's go over them.

• Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) Identifier: An SKU is used to track and manage inventory of specific items and their variants. Create a consistent system for yourself, using numbers or letters, that allows you to easily identify what an item is (e.g. MHS-HEH tells me it's Hot Enough Habenero Medium Hot Sauce).
• Barcode - Barcodes (ISBN, UPC, GTIN, etc.) are typically used if you are reselling products or want to add scannable barcodes in the future for easier inventory management. In my store, I left this field blank because we manufacture and sell our own products.
• Inventory balance. This is the amount of a particular product that you have on hand. If you have multiple inventory locations and have them set up in Shopify, you will be able to specify the inventory balance for each of your warehouses. In my example, I started with a small batch of 10 bottles of each hot sauce and used my own warehouse to store the product.

Since my items don't take long to produce, I have enabled the "Continue selling when out of stock" option. If your inventory is limited or requires more time to replenish, you can disable this option. Then, once all inventory is sold, the sold out items will be marked as "Sold" in the store.

Delivery of goods

The Shipping section contains settings that will automatically calculate shipping costs and print shipping labels for each order.

For my store, I marked the products as "This is a physical product" and entered the following information:

• Weight. I entered the weight of one bottle as 0.65 kg.
• Customs information. This is important if you plan to sell the product internationally. I entered "Canada" because Kinda Hot Sauce is manufactured and shipped from Canada. Then I used the search to find the International Seasoning System code, 21309.

Later, we'll take a closer look at shipping cost settings, as well as other useful options you can offer your customers.

Product options

I personally haven't added variations to my products, but I still want to share how many Shopify store owners do it.

If your product has different variations, such as size or color , instead of adding each as a separate product, you can simply add them as variations of the same product. Each variation can have its own image, price, stock, and associated customizations.

You can add multiple types of product variants at once, such as offering multiple colors that come in different sizes.

Once you have added product variants and clicked the "Save" button, the page will refresh. After that, the "Media", "Pricing", "Inventory" and "Shipping" sections that we discussed above will need to be set for each specific variant.

Since my product comes in one volume and has no variations, I left this section alone. However, if you sell different variations of the same product, be sure to include information about each variation that is relevant to it. For example, if you offer different colors, the photo of the orange shirt should be for the orange version, not the green one.

Organization and availability of goods

In the "Organization" section, you can group your products, thereby facilitating: managing your store's product catalog, helping the buyer select the product they need, applying certain rules or discounts to your products.

Here's what each option means:

• Product availability. You can choose from a variety of sales channels to list your products, such as Facebook Shops or Amazon (we'll cover these in more detail below). First, you'll need to make sure your product is available in the Online store sales channel, otherwise it will be hidden from the buyer.
• Product Type. This is a special option that you can use to identify specific products (e.g. T-shirts). Each product can only be assigned to one type. I used the type "Hot Sauce".
• Supplier Name: This is the name of the manufacturer, wholesaler, or third-party supplier of the product. In the store, the visitor will be able to filter the list of products by the name of the supplier, which will significantly speed up the search for the desired product. "Kinda Hot Sauce" is the manufacturer, so I listed it as the supplier.
• Tags. Tags are keywords that you can associate with your products. You can add multiple tags to a product to help customers find it through your online store's search bar or by using the tag filter on a product collection (category) page. You can also use tags to automate actions in your store, such as adding a product with a certain tag to a specific collection. For my online store, I left this blank because I don't have a reason to use tags yet.
• Product Collection. Collections are important because they allow you to organize your products for a specific audience. For example, a clothing brand might create a collection based on women's products, men's products, summer sales, or new arrivals of the year. The same product might be in multiple collections. We'll create collections after all the products have been created.

Setting up SEO for a product

This is where you can customize how your product page appears in search engine results like Google.

If you know what keywords your target audience uses to search for products like yours, you can include them in this section to increase your chances of future online store traffic, as your products will be prioritized in search engine results for these keywords.

I used the Ubersuggest app, a free keyword research tool, to determine how often people search for keywords related to my product. I noticed keywords like "habanero sauce" with 5,400 searches per month, "mild hot sauce" with 590 searches per month, and "medium hot sauce" with 50 searches per month. And of course, I used them for my products.

We'll talk more about SEO later, but for now, here are some quick optimization tips in this section:

• Page Title: Write a page title that includes your target keywords but is short and descriptive enough to be clicked on. I chose the keyword "medium hot sauce" because it was the most relevant for this product. If possible, keep the title to 60 characters or less. I used "Hot Enough Habanero | Medium Hot Sauce" as my page title.
• Description: Use this space to include any useful information that might persuade your audience to click on your product in search results or on social media. I tried to keep it short and sweet, but still cover the topic presented in the page title.
• URL and Title. This should be simple, unique, and meaningful to people using search engines to find your product. I used "/hot-enough-habanero".

Once all the steps are done, you can click the "Save" button and view the product page. Small details like color and fonts can be changed later when you start customizing the online store theme.

You can repeat these steps for each product you want to add to your store, but keep in mind that you don't have to add all of your products at once to launch your store.

Adding a product to a collection

Now that you have at least a few products created, you can start sorting them into collections under Product > Collections in Shopify.

A collection is created to group products, for example:

• for a specific audience (for example, products for children);
• by topic (for example, bestsellers);
• by product type (eg accessories).

In Shopify, you can choose whether you want to manually add products to your collections or whether you want to automate the inclusion/exclusion of products in a collection based on their price, tags, or other parameters.

Collections are needed for the following purposes:

• If you want to display a product line on your store's home page.
• To help different audiences quickly navigate your store with site navigation.
• To manage product groups (for example, you can apply discounts to certain collections).

I created one collection in my medium hot sauces store. This was to include three individual hot sauces in this collection, while excluding the three-pack. This way, on the collection page, I could show visitors the individual flavors of the sauces. And I highlighted the three-pack separately in the store.

I wrote the title and description for my collection based on how I wanted to greet visitors when they landed on the collection page. The Search Engine Preview collection section can be populated using the same practices we covered for the product page.

You can also set an image for the collection, which we'll look at later when we move on to customizing the look of your online store.

Creating the main pages of your store

So far, we've focused on products. But your online store should do more than just offer products for purchase. It should help shoppers understand your business, give them reasons to trust you, and provide other important information that will be useful to your audience.

Most of these pages can be created under Online Store > Pages.

You don't necessarily need to have a lot of pages before launching your store, but there are some important pages that are best created right away:

• Contact page. This page gives customers a way to contact you if they have questions. Or it can point them to a place where they can find answers, such as an FAQ page. You can read more about what to consider when creating a contact page here.
• About Page. An About page establishes a personal connection with customers, explains your business model, and communicates the reasons why you started your business (read more here). A compelling About page can greatly increase the credibility of new online stores.
• Frequently Asked Questions Page: The FAQ page provides answers to the most common customer support queries.
• Company Policy Page: There are certain legal pages that customers want to see that can help protect you in the event of a dispute, such as the return policy and privacy policy, which you can set up under Settings > Legal.

For an online store, in this guide we'll cover how to create an About page, a Contact page, and the main store policy pages (Privacy Policy, Shipping Policy, and Terms of Service), but you can create whatever pages you think will help you build trust with your customers.

Online store page "About us"

A company page is a great way to connect with a small business and build trust with your audience.

You can include a video introducing you as the owner, links to awards and press mentions, images explaining your supply chain, or anything else that helps this page tell your customers who you are and what you do.

For Kinda Hot Sauce, I created a simple About Us page written as a letter to a client explaining my philosophy and reason for starting the business.

When someone comes into my store and is hesitant to make a purchase, I want them to be greeted with a warm and heartfelt message on the About page if they decide to visit.

Since we'll be relying mostly on text, I recommend using the formatting options available in the Shopify page editor to make the text more appealing.

Just like with products, you need to set up the SEO section for each of your pages - what the URL should be and how you want the page to appear in search engine results.

Contact page

Your contact page is what customers will look for when they want to ask a question or get support.

Most Shopify themes make it easy to create a page like this using a pre-made template. Simply create a new page and on the right side, under "Template," select the "contact" template. This will add a contact form to your page. You can then write the page text to help customers contact you, or even link to other pages, like an FAQ, to help customers try to find answers to their questions on their own first.

There are also live chat apps that you can install to provide instant, real-time customer support.

Company Policy Page

Company rules pages are standard practice for online businesses. They give your customers a way to understand how you conduct your business and what to expect from you. They also help protect you in the event of a dispute with a customer.

• Return Policy: What is your policy on returns and exchanges? How long does a buyer have to initiate a return? What condition does the item need to be in? A fair return policy can help customers buy from you with confidence.
• Privacy Policy. A privacy policy describes how you collect information about your customers and how you protect it from unauthorized persons.
• Terms of Service. The Terms of Service is an agreement between you and your clients that describes how you will operate and what rights you reserve.
• Shipping Policy. A shipping policy will help you communicate to customers what they can expect regarding shipping costs, turnaround times, and delivery speeds for the areas you ship to.

The look and feel of your online store

Now that you have a few products in your online store and a few pages ready to go, it's time to head over to the Online Store > Themes section in Shopify and start working on making your site look great.

Selecting a topic

The first step is to choose a theme: a template that can be installed in the store and that we can use as a starting point for the design of our site. The Shopify theme store offers both free and paid themes, each with its own set of styles and features.

Some themes were created for large product catalogs, others for businesses with a small number of products, and some were created for specific industries or types of businesses, such as the Express theme for restaurants.

Here are some key points to consider when choosing the perfect theme:

• Each theme has several styles, so when choosing a theme and style, consider the size of your product catalog and the aesthetic look you want to give your store.
• Check if the theme you're considering has the built-in features you need, such as a search bar that loads search results on the fly or a blog that displays your press releases. Remember that you can also find free and paid Shopify apps that add additional functionality to your online store.
• Don’t choose a theme just because you like the color or the font. You can customize all of that later. You can even make your own truly unique theme by hiring a Shopify expert to customize it for you.
• You can test a paid theme in your store before purchasing it.
• First of all, remember that you can always change the theme to another one. If you decide to change the theme later, you can install the new theme in the store and customize it, without having to re-create the product descriptions or pages.

After experimenting with a few free themes like Debut and Narrative, I settled on Brooklyn (Playful style) because Kinda Hot Sauce has few products and doesn't require a lot of functionality to launch successfully. I like the unique layout of the product grid, the simplicity of the navigation menu, and Brooklyn 's emphasis on visual branding.

Homepage Design

Each theme consists of sections that can be rearranged, added, removed, or temporarily hidden from the page. Sections will help you decide on the design of your store's home page and try out different approaches.

 

When designing your home page, think about the goals you want your home page to achieve and determine how they fit with your business:

• The priority should be the convenience of the buyer, so that when he visits the page he can quickly understand what your business is and what you sell.
• There should be additional features for regular visitors to make it easier for them to access the products and pages they often search for in your store. For example, you should consider having a Featured Products feature or taking care of creating a Customer Loyalty Program .
• Every page visit to your website should generate interest in your products and trust in your business.
• Clear navigation that allows you to access the information you are interested in. You can highlight an "About Us" page for those who want to learn more about your business, or different "Collections" so that visitors can navigate to the products they are interested in on their own.
• When creating your home page, keep in mind that many visitors will be viewing it on mobile devices.

Over time, you will revise and refine your home page. Don't let youthful maximalism try to do everything at once, move forward step by step.

For Kinda Hot Sauce I decided to use the following sections:

1. A slideshow (with one slide) to quickly grab attention by explaining why this isn't your typical hot sauce brand. The headline "Not the World's Hottest Hot Sauce" communicates what my brand is about, and the subheading "A Nice Spice" complements and explains it. I also added a background color overlay and reduced its opacity to make my text legible against the image.
2. A "Featured Collection" section to showcase three different hot sauces from the Medium Hot Sauce collection I created earlier. I complemented the impression my slideshow gave visitors by adding a bold statement about my products: "Delicious hot sauce doesn't have to be deadly".
3. The image with text summed up my brand positioning and the reasons for my store's existence with a link to the About page. I chose to use my logo as the image, but you can use your own photo or an image that represents your brand well.
4. Newsletter to get people to join my email list. Not everyone who visits my store is ready to buy. By giving them a reason to sign up for my newsletter (in this case, mildly spicy recipes), I was able to build my list of potential buyers, thereby driving traffic to my store.
5. Featured Product to draw potential buyers' attention to my three-pack of hot sauce (and the savings they'll get). I placed this section last to entice those customers who scrolled all the way to the bottom of my home page without clicking anything to make a purchase.

I plan to expand my homepage in the future to include a section that explains how "hot" my sauce is, or a gallery of blog posts featuring recipes using my hot sauces. Until I start marketing, I won't know for sure if the decisions I'm making for my homepage are the right ones. However, it seems like a good idea to me.

When creating your homepage, be ruthless in prioritizing your information delivery. Less is usually more. Instead of trying to cram as much information as possible onto your homepage, direct visitors to additional pages that help them learn more about your business or explain various nuances.

Setting up the navigation menu

The Header section is where you will make changes to the very top area of ​​your online store, which includes the navigation menu, shopping cart, and logo.

We will focus mainly on creating a clear navigation menu, since this is what your store visitors will pay the most attention to.

There are three main types of menus you can set up in your theme's sections:

1. Main Menu. This is the top menu where you can use links to the main pages of your site. Also, you can create submenus (i.e. drop-down menus) under each item to avoid cluttering the main menu.
2. Footer Menu: This is where you'll find links to additional pages that, while they may be distracting to new visitors, should be accessible to those who need to find them. Most online shoppers know to look for information like the return policy or contact page here.
3. Search: You can enable a search bar in the Site Header to help visitors find what they are looking for. This is especially useful if you have a large product catalog and many pages on your site.

To avoid overwhelming people with too many navigation links, you can organize them in a better way.

Knowing that one menu item can have multiple sub-items, you can group multiple collections under one menu item. For example, under the "Women" menu item, you can place a group of links focused on women's products. This way, you won't overwhelm men with navigation links that aren't relevant to them.

For "Kinda Hot Sauce" I decided to create a simple navigation structure where I:

• Placed hot sauce collections and a 3-pack under the "Shop" menu item.
• Placed the pages "Our History" and "Frequently Asked Questions" under the "About Us" menu item.
• I included a link to the Contacts page in the menu, knowing full well that I could move it to the Footer in the future if I needed to replace it with another menu item that would better serve my purposes.

 

You can create a menu item without linking to any page by simply entering the # sign in the Link field instead of the URL. This can be useful when creating menu headings that you don't want to have a link for.

Customize the color scheme, text, and other theme options

Color and text play a big role in the visual perception of your online store. In the Theme settings tab of the online store editor, you can customize the appearance of your online store, including color and text.

 

Even if you're not a designer, using the following tips you can still choose a font and color that you like.

When choosing colors:

• Consider the psychology of color and how different colors make people feel (for example, red makes you feel hungry, yellow makes you feel safe, and purple makes you feel good and peaceful).
• Use contrast to highlight important elements of your home page, such as buttons.
• Use a tool like Coolors to choose different color palettes to find colors you like and their corresponding hex code.
• Don't be afraid to follow your intuition or just stick to simple color combination rules if you're in doubt (even if it's a simple black and white color scheme).

I chose the following color palette for Kinda Hot Sauce because I want my store to look bold and colorful. I may not end up using all of these colors, but there are enough to help me find the combinations I'll eventually go with:

• #392B58
• #FF0035
• #F7EE7F
• #654597
• #574AE2

Text elements

• Try to choose two (maximum three) fonts to use in your store.
• Choose a font that's easy to read (sans-serif fonts like Helvetica are usually easier to read on screen).
• Use a tool like FontJoy to experiment with different font combinations.

For my online store I decided to use two fonts:

• For headings: Lora font;
• For emphasized text: Roboto;
• For the main text: Roboto.

go to theme settings, there you can set a Favicon icon (usually your logo serves as a favicon), which will be displayed on browser tabs, bookmarks and other places. If you look at the tab of this page, you will see the site logo. This is a pretty useful addition to the site design.

Customization of the checkout page

In the Theme Settings section, you can also customize the appearance of your checkout. At the very least, it's a good idea to add your logo to the page to give it a more personalized look.

If needed, you can also customize the checkout form by going to the checkout settings in Settings > Checkout.

Here's a quick overview of the settings you can apply to your checkout page:

• Buyer Accounts: You can choose whether or not buyers need to create an account when they check out. This can be useful if you have a wholesale store or a members-only store. I disabled this feature on my online store because I wanted to save buyers a lot of steps during the checkout process.
• Method of contacting the buyer. You can allow buyers to choose the method they prefer to be contacted after placing an order (email or SMS). I chose the option "Customer can only place an order by email" to keep things simple and focus on building an email list that I can then market to.
• Form Options: Here you can decide whether additional information (such as first name, last name, or company name) is hidden, optional, or required when placing an order. Since I don't need all of this information on Kinda Hot Sauce , I made most of the fields optional.
• Order processing: You can simplify the checkout process or add an additional confirmation step. For example, I used the option to copy the customer's shipping address into the billing address field and also enabled the autofill address feature to save my customers time.
• Email Marketing: You can use customers' email addresses in your marketing list if you offer them a newsletter signup during checkout. Since email is a key element of many online marketing strategies, I included this option. Now I can promote my hot sauce to not only potential customers, but also existing customers in my newsletters.
• Abandoned orders: Sometimes a customer reaches the checkout page but does not complete the purchase (this can happen for a variety of reasons). For these customers, you can set up an automatic reminder email. I set up an automatic reminder to be sent 10 hours after the customer abandons the order. Because after 10 hours, my store will still be fresh in the customer’s mind and they will have enough time to reconsider before the product sells out.

When in doubt, choose checkout options that are less distracting to customers while they're checking out.

Ask for feedback on your store

Feedback is a gift, especially when you spend so much time working on building your online store. From the outside, you can often see parts of your online store that could be improved.

By default, your online store is closed to visitors with a password, but you can give this password to a friend. You can find the password (or change it) in the Online Store > Preferences section.

For advice about your store, please contact:

• People close to you who you can rely on for honest, constructive feedback.
• Communities that your target customers may be subscribed to, such as Facebook groups.
• For visitors to the Shopify Community forum, in the "Feedback on my store" section.

When I asked for feedback on my Kinda Hot Sauce store, visitors pointed out the following details that could be improved:

• The copy on my product pages needs to be more focused on who my brand is for (hot sauce lovers).
• Several people commented on how "charming" the About page was and how it made them want to buy from that particular online store. So, I might want to consider using the concept of this page when I start doing marketing.

Accept both positive feedback and negative criticism when you ask for feedback about your store. You will receive more objective feedback later on, when you start actively promoting your business.

Delivery settings

Shipping can be one of the most challenging aspects of running an e-commerce business. Product weight, packaging costs, shipping destinations, carrier rates, and potential profit on each order are all variables to juggle.

Luckily, it all comes down to a few key variables that you can combine based on your business needs to create a shipping strategy that works for you:

1. Offer free shipping. Free shipping can be an effective incentive for customers to buy from you, whether the free shipping applies to certain items, order amounts (for example, if they spend more than $50), or regions of the world. Keep in mind that if you plan to absorb shipping costs for your customers, you will need to factor this into the retail price of your products.
2. Dynamic carrier rates. Shopify integrates in real time with a variety of carriers, like USPS and Canada Post , to show customers shipping options and costs. This allows your customers to choose the shipping and price they want. You can also take advantage of shipping discounts by using Shopify Shipping.
3. Use a flat rate shipping fee whenever possible. Flat rate shipping works best when your items are all the same size and weight, making it easier to predict actual shipping costs.
4. Offer curbside pickup. You can give local customers the option to pick up their online order at one of your locations by setting up specific settings for each curbside pickup location, including notifications, delivery instructions, and other details.

For more tips and tricks on choosing a shipping strategy, you can read the Beginner's Guide to Ecommerce Shipping and Fulfillment. Remember that shipping settings (like most of what we've covered so far) can be revisited and adjusted over time.

To illustrate the different approaches you can take in your shipping strategy, I'll share the strategy I chose for Kinda Hot Sauce.

Since my store is located in Canada, I decided to arrange shipping as follows:

• Flat rate $8 for shipping to Canada and the US;
• Free shipping to Canada/USA on orders over $30;
• Display carrier rates in real time for other regions.

About Shopify Shipping: With Shopify Shipping, you can create discounts, print shipping labels, and track orders all in one place.

Setting up a delivery zone

You can customize your shipping settings under Settings > Shipping in your Shopify store. Here you can specify shipping zones and set shipping rates for specific countries.

Setting up shipping rates

In the newly created shipping zone, you can use the Add rate button to add individual rates based on certain conditions. For example, you can offer your customers free shipping if their order reaches a certain value threshold. Or, you can increase the shipping cost if the order exceeds a certain weight.

Overall, you can save time and money on shipping and still make more money on each sale by incentivizing customers to add more items to their order. So I decided to use free shipping on orders over $30 (two bottles of hot sauce or a three-pack) as a bonus for customers to spend more.

Setting up real-time delivery rates

Real-time shipping rates are calculated based on the data you used when creating your products, as well as the package dimensions you specified on the Settings > Shipping page. Customers can choose the service and rate that suits them best when placing an order.

You can also include a handling fee in your rate so that in addition to the courier's rates, buyers pay for additional costs such as packaging or your time.

Setting up tax collections

As a business selling goods or services, you must collect a sales tax from the government every time someone places an order from your store (but there are some exceptions for digital goods in many jurisdictions, for example).

Shopify will help you calculate most sales tax charges automatically using data on standard sales tax rates around the world. However, it's a good idea to do some research or consult a tax professional to make sure you're charging the right amount of sales tax.

You may be able to waive tax charges if your region has special tax rules, such as taxes only on specific items or shipping.

Go to Settings > Taxes to set the region for which tax should be calculated. Here you can change the default tax rate. Or specify a different rate if special conditions apply to your region or your products.

Since Kinda Hot Sauce operates in Canada, I set my default tax rate to Canada. If you have a tax ID, you can enter it here or do it later. To see how much tax you've collected, go to Analytics > Reports .

None of this is tax advice, and you should consult a tax professional if you are unsure about setting your tax rate. Shopify does not provide tax reports or remit sales taxes for you.

Setting up payment acceptance

We're at the final stage! The next step is to decide how your store will accept payments and how you, the store owner, will get paid.

Go to Settings > Payments to set up your payment processing services. Shopify has made it easy to accept all major payment methods with Shopify Payments. If you operate a business in one of the approved countries and your business is not considered prohibited, you can activate Shopify Payments with one click and avoid paying additional fees for your transactions. Here, you can choose from over 100 payment processing services, and also offer your customers additional payment methods like PayPal .

You can read more about Shopify payment systems and payment methods in this article.

In my case, I set up Shopify Payments by entering my legal and banking information. Among the Shopify Payments settings, I have access to:

• Selecting payment methods that I want to offer to my customers. For example, various credit cards (Visa, Mastercard) or fast one-click payment methods such as Apple Pay and Shop Pay . Shop Pay is a service that allows its users to pay for purchases in online stores in one click, without having to enter their data on the sites every time.
• Select different currencies. When this option is enabled, buyers will see the payment amount in their country's currency. Since I sell products mainly in Canada and the United States, I have added the US dollar and Canadian dollar to the list of supported currencies.
• Payout schedule: You can receive payments daily, weekly or monthly.
• Implementing additional fraud prevention measures (such as CVV and postcode verification, which will generally increase the level of security).
• Customize how my online store will appear on my customers' bank statements. I used KINDAHOTSAUCE to make my brand recognizable to customers on their credit card statements.

The currency you sell your items in can be set in Settings > General. I have set it to sell in US Dollars because that will be familiar to both US and Canadian buyers.

Preparing the store for opening

Once you've done all this work, you can launch your online store right now if you're ready. You just need to disable theme password protection in Online Store > Preferences to flip the "Open" sign on your store's doors and let people in.

If you are in a hurry to start selling, you can skip some or all of the following steps and come back to them later when you have time.

Once I had everything set up, before I opened, I wanted to make sure that my store would not only make a strong first impression and be customer-friendly when I launched, but would also be a good place to start marketing. So in this guide, I've added some more helpful information for you.

So here are the final steps we'll look at:

1. Adding your own domain.
2. Establishing new sales channels.
3. Set up email/SMS notifications (optional step).
4. Setting up a store for marketing (tracking and analytics).

Adding a custom domain

Buying a domain is like buying a piece of land on the internet. That's why it's called a "web address".

A custom domain is a fully branded URL that replaces the default URL that Shopify gives your online store. For example, you could purchase the domain name yourstore.com to replace the yourstore.myshopify.com domain that Shopify gave you when you created your store.

In the Online Store > Domains section, you can buy your domain directly through Shopify in a few seconds. Or, you can transfer your domain from another registrar and connect it to your store.

Since my chosen .com domain name "KindaHotSauce" was already taken, I decided to purchase a .shop domain directly through Shopify. KindaHotSauce.shop is now my store URL.

Setting up new sales channels

One of the benefits of using the Shopify platform to run your business is that your online store is just one of many sales channels you can use to sell your products. You can offer your products to your customers where they spend their time, and you can track your products, inventory, and reporting all in one Shopify account.

While you don't have to plug in all of these channels right away, just keep them in mind as you get ready to explore new ways to get your products in front of the right buyers.

Not all sales channels are relevant for every business, but here are some that are worth paying special attention to:

• Shopify POS is a retail point of sale solution that allows you to accept payments in person and easily sync physical retail sales with your Shopify online store and product inventory.
• Social Media: You can sell your products through a Facebook store on your Facebook page, tag products in Instagram posts, Pinterest, etc.
• Marketplaces: Many shoppers begin their search for a product on marketplaces like Amazon or eBay.
• Google Channel: Google is the most popular search engine in the world. With Google Channel, you can launch Google Shopping and list your products for free on the Shopping tab in Google search results.
• Buy Button. If you already have a website or blog where you want to sell your products, you can create a Buy-button sales channel to use the Buy-button functionality on your site. With this functionality, you can list your products on different web pages, allowing customers to check out from your Shopify store. You can even create links that lead directly to the checkout page for pre-defined products. These links are convenient to send to specific customers, prompting them to immediately proceed to checkout of the products they have selected.

To add a new sales channel, simply click the "+" button next to the Sales channels heading. On this page, you can view a full list of apps from the Shopify App Store that offer various sales channels.

After setting up new sales channels, on each product page in the Product Availability block, you can choose which channels the product should be offered on.

I primarily looked at Facebook and Instagram channels since a brand like Kinda Hot Sauce will rely heavily on social media marketing.

Setting up email notifications (optional)

Shopify offers ready-to-use automated email and SMS notifications to keep customers up-to-date with order confirmations, status updates, and more.

I've left these settings alone for now, but if you need to customize them for any reason (such as sending special instructions to customers or to better represent your brand), you can edit these notifications under Settings > Notifications.

Preparing a store for marketing

Marketing is different for every business, but no matter your strategy, it's important to get the right foundation in place as soon as possible so you can get the most out of your efforts to drive traffic to your store when you start marketing in earnest.

I want to share the basics of eCommerce marketing strategies that are important for new store owners to know.

Analytics

Shopify Reports (under Analytics > Reports ) not only helps you track the traffic and sales your store is generating across all your sales channels, but it also serves as a treasure trove of useful information to improve your business in the long run.

You can find out where your traffic and sales are coming from, the overall conversion rate of your online store, traffic and sales over a certain period of time, and much more.

For more detailed analytics and flexible reporting, you can install Google Analytics in your store for free.

Facebook Pixel

Have you ever visited an online store, looked at a product, left without buying it, only to see an ad for that product a few days later? Or have you ever seen an ad for a product from a company you've never heard of, but it seemed like it was made just for you?

This is made possible by Facebook's intelligent code, which studies how people interact with your brand and website - from liking your social media posts to making a purchase - and allows it to personalize your ads over time.

The Facebook code looks at all the traffic you send to your online store, so if you plan to advertise on Facebook or Instagram in the future, it is important to install the Facebook pixel (tracking code) in your store.

You can get clear instructions on how to set this up for your Shopify store by installing the free Facebook Marketing app into your store (note that this process requires you to also create a Facebook Page and Facebook Ads account for your business).

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Many shoppers turn to Google or other search engines during the shopping process, whether it's to search for a product they saw or heard about from friends, or to compare products before making a purchase.

By helping your online store pages and products appear in search results, you can create a passive stream of relevant traffic for free. However, this traffic source takes time to develop.

You can lay the right foundation for marketing through a practice called search engine optimization (SEO), which I first became familiar with when I was creating products and pages for my online store.

There is one more detail about your store that you should keep in mind when working with SEO . These are the Title and Meta description fields, which can be found under Settings > Preferences. For Kinda Hot Sauce, I included my brand name in the store title and information about my business in the description. I based this on keywords that people might use when searching for the products I sell.

You can use a free keyword research tool like Ubersuggest or Keyword Surfer (a Chrome extension) to estimate how many times a month people search for a particular query and what results that keyword brings up. The monthly search volumes these services calculate aren't always 100% accurate, but it's important to understand that the more popular a search query is, the more competition it has.

Always remember that the search engine's job is to show the user the most relevant results, so try to give preference to keywords that are directly related to your business.

Let's use Kinda Hot Sauce as an example to draw some conclusions that can be drawn from even the most basic keyword research:

• "Medium hot sauce" and "mild hot sauce" have 480 and 40 estimated monthly searches, respectively. Since they are closely related to what my business does, I can prioritize them in my homepage title and description.
• A lot of people also search for different spicy recipes (like "how to make crispy hot wings"), which means I can later create a blog to publish content for queries related to recipes that use hot sauce.

When a link to my store is shared on social networks or in messengers, I am convinced that my marketing strategies are effective - I create a strong impression on a potential buyer who visits my online store for the first time.

Check out this SEO checklist that can help your store appear better in relevant search engine results.

Starting your online store

Now everything is ready to launch! Was my store perfect? ​​No. But I felt it was good enough to start spending time and money on marketing it. I will also listen to feedback from friends and customers to make it even better over time.

I removed the password from the store (under Settings> Preferences) and started telling the world that I opened my online store.

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Braveen's store journey ends here. But for you, it's just beginning. Here are the next steps and resources to help you grow your business after you launch your online store:

• Attract traffic to get your first sales.
• Learn from your traffic data.
• Optimize your store.