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Wednesday 18 April 2018

Beginners guide to Shopify

If you are looking to start an E-commerce website, then you have probably stumbled across Shopify.com , being one of the largest web builders, with a simple "drop and drag" system, its no wonder Shopify has such positive reviews.

And the best part about this platform is that you don't need to be tech savvy to create a professional, customizable website. Here is our step-by-step guide for beginners on creating your very own website with shopify.com

Steps to setting up your Shopify website

Shopify offers a 14 day trial in which you can implement the time into customizing your website to best suit your business needs. 

Step 1: Sign up with shopify

Visit shopify.com and use the sign up form to create your account. When you have filled out this information, hit the "Create your store" button.
You will require a store name, and email address as seen below. 




Your store name should be a reflection of your business, and I would advise that you follow your countries requirements to register this name prior to creating your store. (To also ensure the name is not taken)  You will then be asked for a few more details: Address, Phone etc.

Shopify will then prompt you to answer if you are "playing around" on the website, "Have your own products" and ask "what will you sell."

Once complete, you will click "done"

Shopify Pricing Plans are as follows:

Currency: USD

BASIC SHOPIFY $29 PER MONTH 
ADVANCED SHOPIFY $79 PER MONTH
PREMIUM SHOPIFY $299 PER MONTH

Step two: Store Setup


Once completed, you will be automatically directed to your Dashboard. Here is where you can customize the look of your store, purchase domains, add Apps, track sales etc.


Step three: Theme/ Layout


This is when the fun begins, designing the look of your new store! Shopify has a large number of themes available to choose from, to ensure your website best caters to your audience.
You also don't need any coding experience to use Shopify, and the available themes come ready with various modifications available.

If you are looking at making larger changes to your theme, shopify does have the option of a design team within their "shopify experts" who can assist.

There are various themes available including a large range of Free themes/ Paid themes and you can also search by industry or category. 

Once you have selected the theme of choice from Shopify theme store you can:
  • Check functionality of theme
  • Reviews
  • View Demo
  • Apply theme to website


Step four: Publish Theme


Once you have established the theme that fits your business model, you can now click "publish theme", and don't worry if you decide to change the theme down the track, you can do that simply too!
Once completed you will be prompted to "Theme Manager" which leads me to the next step.

Step five: Editing your theme


The next step will allow you to create a website that is not only original to you, but also suits your business requirements. So using the Theme Manager you can now change things such as:
  • Logos
  • Colours
  • Fonts
  • Header/ Footer
  • Homepage slideshow
  • Functions of the site
  • Collections
  • Product pages
  • Shopping Cart
  • Checkout






Step five: Adding your products


Return to your shopify admin page now, and click "products"  from this page you will see a button marked "Add product"  You should then add in a title for your product, description, Sku, images etc and click Save.


Step six: Collections


You may want to categorize each of your products into their own collections. So to do this you will need to Set up collection (choose name for collection) Shopify will then prompt you to choose which products shall be added to this particular collection.


Step seven: Money, Money, Money


If you are setting up your online store, you probably want to be able to receive payment from your customers too! This is when you will set up your payment gateway.

In the Settings tab on your dashboard, you will find the payment setup. Shopify has a few options for this such as Paypal, Shopify Pay (automatically set up). But you will need to choose the best payment option for you.

Ensure you look at the various fee's associated with each method, cards accepted and countries.


You are almost ready for your website to go live. Before you do there are a few things you need to check off your list and all of these can be found in the Settings Tab.

Taxes: Depending on your country requirements you will need to select the Tax / GST applicable.
Shipping: Here you have the option to set shipping prices, worldwide/your country, based of size, weight etc.
Double Check: Preview your website, to ensure everything looks the way you want it to prior to going live.


Step eight:  GO LIVE!!


In theory your website should be complete and ready to go live. Now you can simply publish the website. Keep in mind that without purchasing a domain name you will be using the standard one provided by shopify.com and this will look something like:

yourcompanyname.shopify.com

You may want to purchase a domain to add to your website prior to going live.





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