Set Up Your Shopify Store!
What is Shopify And How to Set It Up?
Are you looking to start your online business but you’re not sure where to start?
Our team here at Artovo have put together a simple step by step guide on how to set up your first Shopify store!
Shopify is a popular, well known eCommerce platform that businesses and merchants can use to build a website and online store. It is available to purchase through various plans, either monthly or yearly.
Before You Start
Know what products you want to sell and have your designs finished.
For help on setting up your artwork so it is print ready view our “Prep quality artwork” blog here: https://www.artovo.co.uk/blogs/news/how-to-prep-good-quality-artwork
Things to have before starting your online store:
Business Name
Logo
Product Photos. To do this you can customise our products using our product customiser and save the mocked up image as a .jpg
Step One: Sign Up
Sign up for a free 14 day trial of shopify here: https://www.shopify.com/
Step Two: Business information
Before you start adding your products, you will need to update your store's business information including your contact information, business name and billing details as well as setting up a payment provider so you can take orders and get paid!
Shopify offers multiple payment gateways including their own Shopify Payments that take all the most popular payment methods and Paypal.
Make sure these actions are completed before progressing:
- Add your business details
- Add you billing information
- Set a default currency for your store
- Add a payment provider
- Configure your countries taxes
Step Three: Organise your collections & upload your products
We highly recommend setting up your product collections before you begin uploading your products. Be sure to create and organise these in a way that your customer will easily be able to find the product they are looking for in the relevant categories.
Once you have set up your collections it's time to upload your products. Thanks to Shopify’s intuitive menus, this is a relatively simple process but keep in mind you will want to include as much information as you can that is relevant to your product & customer.
This means ensuring your product includes a simple product title and a detailed product description that includes the key selling points of your product.
In the product menu, you should also assign your products type and tag it with the correct collections.
If your product is available in multiple variants, like size and colour, this can also be set up on your product page as well as the products SEO description and Keywords.
Make sure these actions are completed before progressing:
- Description and Title
- Upload Product Images
- Set a Price
- Tag your relevant collections
- Set up your variants if applicable
- SEO Description
Step Four: Set Up Store Pages
Creating easily accessible and readable legal and policy pages give your customer confidence in using your store. Make sure your returns and delivery policies as well as your GDPR policy (if applicable) are clear and defined, to help avoid issues or complications in the future.
Shopify makes setting these up simple and intuitive. To do this, access the settings in your store's settings menu then select the legal option. This will take you to your legal pages set up and from here you can generate a default template including a Privacy and Returns policy and your terms of service pages.
You can then go in and complete your store's business details.
We also recommend setting up a delivery policy and GDPR policy if you are selling in the EU or United Kingdom. You may also want to set up a “Contact us” page, this can be done by selecting the page ‘contact template’ under the Template Suffix dropdown in the page settings.
Make sure the below are completed before progressing:
- Privacy Policy
- Refund Policy
- Terms of Service
- Delivery Policy
- GDPR
Step Five: Customise your store
The next step is designing your store appearance, this process is equally as important as your product and design selection. Shopify offers a wide range of free and paid themes that suit a wide range of styles and layouts. We suggest you spend some time honing your stores design and always try to design your store from the users perspective - this helps to ensure it is laid out in a way that is easy to navigate and displays your products to their fullest!
Make sure the below are completed before progressing:
- Choose A theme
- Design Homepage
- Design Product Pages
- Upload your logo
Step Six: Final Touches
Once you are happy with your products and store design there are only a few steps left until you can launch your store.
If you haven't already, it’s time to purchase your store's domain name. Shopify allows you to purchase domain names as well as many alternatives including UK2Net, GoDaddy and more.
Next it's time to connect any social media channels you have and add any alternative sales channels you plan on using including eBay & Pintrest.
Below is a checklist of actions we recommend you complete before your store goes live:
- Create and link your domain Name
- Add additional sales channels i.e Facebook & Pintrest
- Store title and meta description
- Link to your google analytics if applicable
Step Seven:
Launch Your Store :)