If you are a budding entrepreneur looking for ideas and a platform to get started, then you have landed at the right place. Shopify is one of the most popular online business platforms. It offers a wide range of features that will help you to kickstart your journey as an entrepreneur. To create a Shopify Store on your own is no rocket science, it is really easy and hardly takes few minutes. Once you create a Shopify Store, you need to know about the products and services that you are allowed to sell and the ones that you are not allowed on this platform.
In this blog, you will get to know more about Shopify and its features. The working of Shopify is briefed here. Most importantly the method used to create a Shopify Store is elaborated in this blog. You can also find business ideas about the products and services that you can sell on your Shopify store.
Table of Contents
What is Shopify?
Image Source: Wikimedia
Shopify is an E-Commerce Platform that allows you to set up your own Online Store with just the click of a button. If you don’t want to go through the hassle of building your own website, setting up a Shopify Store is the best thing you can do for your business.
It hosts your business and helps it to grow by allowing you to customize your website as per your liking. Its easy-to-use Design Templates let you customize your website without writing any code in real-time. Shopify is giving you an online platform to market your products and conduct secure transactions.
Worried about your website crashing during peak hours or hackers breaking into your network? Shopify has got you covered. It offers reliable and secure hosting of your website including Secure Payment Gateways. You can literally sell anything on Shopify, as long as it’s legal of course, from Handcrafted Artifacts to Online Classes, it offers great versatility.
It also gives you the ability to study and analyze customer behavior to get valuable insights into your business. With the in-built Analytics and Reports functionalities, you can learn about your Sales and Customers in great detail. It also allows integrations with plenty of third-party services to help your business grow.
Key Features of Shopify
Shopify is an all-in-one ECommerce solution for millions of users worldwide. The following features are responsible for its immense popularity:
- Security and Reliability: It ensures secure hosting of your website with Secure Payment Gateways and SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificates to encrypt data.
- Discussion Forums: Shopify has discussion forums where users can ask and answer questions about business-related topics like marketing, accounting, and customer engagement.
- Inventory Management: You can add new products, restock existing products, and change prices of products directly on your Shopify interface.
- Multiple Language Options: On Shopify, you can publish checkout information in about 50 languages. The system will also translate your checkout information if you are working with a foreign customer.
- App Integrations: It also allows integrations with plenty of third-party services to enhance users’ Sales, Marketing, and Workflow.
- Analytics and Reporting: The Shopify App store allows access to a wide variety of Marketing Tools, including Email Marketing, Analytics, and Reporting functionalities. You can have an in-depth look at your customer’s behavior and optimize your Return of Investment (ROI) in the best possible way.
- Access to Shopify Experts: If you are new to e-commerce, you can seek help from professionals on the platform.
- Blog: Shopify lets users create their personal Shopify blog where they can create articles related to their products and review various items in their store.
- Shopify Templates: It comes with visually stunning and well-designed themes and templates. You can easily customize your website and make it user-friendly with features such as Product Filters, Live Search, and Drop-Down Menus.
- Customizable Shipping Rates: You don’t have to charge the standard shipping rate when delivering a product to your customer. With Shopify, you can edit shipping rates whenever you need to.
- Search Engine Optimization: Users can change the titles of their products to favor related high-ranking keywords. Using such keywords will help your target customers find your products easily on search engines.
- 24/7 Customer Support: It has an exceptional Customer Support system that is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You can reach Shopify’s Customer Support via Phone, Email, or Webchat. A multitude of Community Forums and Documentation in the Shopify Help Centre also come in handy.
How does Shopify work?
Shopify is an online business platform to host your e-commerce business. For this, you will first create a Shopify store for your business. Shopify works in a way for you to design and set up your online store. You will first design your store with customized themes and products. Then you must ensure that your website works fine in both desktop and mobile view. After this setup process, you must promote your products. You can have a real-time view of your customer visits and activities on your Shopify website.
You can track your customer’s cart and on completing a purchase, Shopify will process your payment and get it to you. After payment, you can track the shipping status of that product. Shopify also provides you stats and reposts to understand your website traffic and customers better. You can even plan your e-mail marketing strategies once your customer opts into your email list. You can build a successful online store on Shopify. It not only helps you to build an online store but provides you with useful insights about your customers for you to plan further.
Shopify pricing
Shopify provides different pricing for each plan:
- Lite Plan – $9 per month + a Buy button
- Basic Shopify Plan – $29 per month + 2.9% and 30¢ per transaction
- Shopify Plan– $79 per month + 2.6% and 30¢ per transaction
- Advanced Shopify Plan – $299 per month + 2.4% and 30¢ per transaction
- Shopify Plus Plan – $2000 per month + 2.15% per transaction
| Plan | Basic Shopify | Shopify | Advanced Shopify |
|---|
| Price | £20 per month | £56 per month | £211 per month |
| Features | 2 staff accounts
Unlimited products
Free SSL
Abandoned cart recovery
Social sales channel
Discount codes
Gift cards | Professional reports
International domains
International pricing | Advanced report builder
Third-party calculated shipping rates |
Table Source: Startups.co.uk
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How to create a Shopify store?
There are 12 basic steps that you need to follow to create a Shopify Store.
Step 1: Create your Shopify account
The first step to create a Shopify store is to have a Shopify account. For this visit Shopify.com to begin your free trial. Shopify provides local editions depending upon your geographical location, so choose accordingly. Now enter your email address to get started. Fill in the basic information and give in your store name. Your Store name is your brand, so make sure you get it right. If the Store name is already taken, you will be notified to change it again.
Image Source: Shopify
Image Source: bitcatcha
Step 2: Provide detailed information about your business
Apart from the basic information provided earlier, Shopify requires some additional detailed information regarding your online store. To create a Shopify store, you must provide details like your business revenue, your billing details and etc. You must also know your goal for starting a Shopify store. Shopify will also ask for your address to calculate your Sales tax and to get you your payments.
Image Source: Shopify
Image Source: Shopify
Step 3: Customize your Shopify store
The next step in setting up a Shopify store is to customize your Shopify store. The admin page where you have landed now will hold all the details of your online store. You can add individual or group items to your marketplace. You can also select your Shopify store’s theme here. Customize your Online store’s style to reflect your product style. Shopify provides a lot of themes from basic to advanced designs. Improve the aesthetics of your store completely to create a Shopify store at its best. You can select create a Shopify store’s theme based on the industry to which the products belong.
Image Source: adnabu
Image Source: adnabu
Step 4: Customize your website’s layout
You can also customize your website’s layout compatible for mobile and desktop views separately. You can customize the footers, text overlays, and more of the website. The website’s layout can be further customized by uploading logos of your business. You can also select fonts style and brand design based on your aesthetics sense. You can also change the color of the schemes of your website. You can further customize your website’s layout by adding information about the items. The number of products on each page can also be customized. Further, the website needs to be optimized for the mobile view to make it mobile-friendly. This is because 52% of the website users today access it through mobile.
Image Source: eCommerce-platforms
Step 5: Add products and customize
The next step in the process of setting up a Shopify store is to upload products into your Shopify Store. For this, navigate to the bar on the left side of your admin panel named “Products”. Here you can add new products to your listing or select the existing products from the inventory. After this, you must add the product name and add the product description and other details.
You need to mention the product pricing as well. You can list all the variants of a product that you are listing. You will have to add the shipping details and most importantly the SEO terms. Shopify also provides you with an option to view the inventory list to know the products that are available.
Image Source: Shopify
Step 6: Categorize your products
Shopify provides you with an option to categorize and group your products. This is done to provide a smooth shopping experience for your customers. For example, if you are selling designer clothing, you need to provide details on the age and sex to which this is more relevant. Similarly, for any product, you sell, ensure to group them and categorize them based on these essential details. You can find this option in the admin’s page products dropdown.
This does not demand you to add each product individually to a collection. It is enough if you just provide all the necessary information for your product to fulfill specific criteria to get added to a collection automatically.
Image Source: Shopify
Step 7: Set up payment gateway
To create a Shopify Store, setting up a payment gateway is the most important step. After starting a Shopify Store and listing all the products on the website, You must decide on the method to get your payments. Shopify provides you with its own payment gateway and also allows the use of third-party payment gateways.
Before fixing up a payment gateway, do a basic ground survey with respect to your target customers. Understand what kind of payment gateways they commonly use and prefer. Get to know the amount charged per transaction. It is also important to know about the payment modes like Debit cards, Credit cards, UPIs and etc. Plan and pick up the right payment gateway to create a Shopify store that performs well.
Step 8: Understand taxes and shipping costs
This is the most crucial step to create a Shopify store. Fill in all the details carefully for taxation purposes. All the information you provide will be within your products. In the process of starting a Shopify store, keep track of all your investments, purchases, and other payment details. Make sure to have multiple copies of these records in hand for records purposes.
To maintain transparency, mention the additional taxes and shipping charges for each product. Make it clear to your customers if you are adding all these additional costs along with product costs or you are charging it extra for each product.
Step 9: Test your order system
It is not enough to just create a Shopify store, you need to test it before launching it. Shopify provides a Bogus Gateway to test your order system and work. To do this, just order any product from your own website and make online payments with all the relevant information asked. Ensure the entire process is smooth and secured. Then finally cancel your order and see if your amount gets refunded completely. Have a check on your back-end system also to see if it all works fine.
Step 10: Customize your domain
To create a Shopify store and to have a unique domain name for it, both are equally important. Customizing your domain name is an important task in your e-commerce venture. Shopify provides you with a domain name that costs around $2-$4. You can also get an external domain name redirected DNS on your own. If you choose an external domain, be prepared to update all the details on your Shopify store. For this, navigate to the Domain tab in settings. Click on “Add Domain” and enter your external domain. You must change your existing DNS records also at this point.
Step 11: Remove password protection
When you create a Shopify store, by default it is in the password-protected mode. During this mode, only you can access it entirely. Only when you disable this password protection, your customers can access your Shopify store.
Step 12: Run periodical checks
After setting up a Shopify store, ensure to have a periodical check in the backend to see if all the changes are reflected properly. This is really important in most cases when you change domain and upgrade plans.
Business ideas to create a Shopify store
If you are a budding entrepreneur looking for ideas to create a Shopify store, then here are few ideas. When you create a Shopify store, you can sell products as well as offer services. And also it is essential to know about the products that you cannot sell in your Shopify setup.
Create a Shopify store: Products that you can sell on your Shopify store
There are a lot of products that you can sell in your Shopify store. Here are few trending products that gain traction easily.
- Smart Electronics
- Travel Accessories
- Fitness Accessories
- Mobile and Mobile Accessories
- Designer clothing
- Home decor items
- Health well-being supplies
Create a Shopify store: Services that you can offer on your Shopify store
Shopify will serve as a platform for you to sell services to your target customers. Some of the services that you can offer in your Shopify store are listed below.
- Conferences and meetings
- Workshop and events
- Event tickets
- Memberships
- Appointment services
- Online courses and classes
- Installation services
Create a Shopify store: Products and Services to avoid
There are a few products and services to avoid selling in your Shopify setup. These include:
- Pharmaceutical products and illegal drugs
- Business involving fortune tellers
- Illegal content and social media activity sale
- Prepaid phone cards, telecommunication services
- Multi-level marketing scams
- Virtual currency and currency exchange
- Human hair extensions or fake hair
- Age-restricted products and contents
Conclusion
From this blog, you would have learnt more about Shopify and its features. You would now know how to create a Shopify store on your own. The business suggestions provided after starting your Shopify store would be an added advantage for you.
It is quite easy to create a Shopify store. But when it comes to tracking and analyzing Customer’s Information especially when your Customer Base becomes large, it becomes a daunting task. This is where Hevo saves your efforts and simplifies the process.
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Share your experience of setting up a Shopify Store in the comments section below.