Launching Your Shopify Store

Creating Your Account and Selecting a Plan

Launching your first online store can feel like a big step, and Shopify makes that process a lot more manageable. Getting started is easy. All you have to do is enter your email address, click enter, and then create a password. Then, enter your payment details, and you can select a plan. If you’re just getting started, the basic plan is probably the one for you.

Customizing the Dashboard and Adding Products

You can share your business address, or you could add this later in settings. Then, customize your dashboard by answering a few of these questions, and choose a name for your store. And that will bring you to your Shopify dashboard. The first thing to do here is add your first product. On the left side, click on products, and then click on add product. You can name your product, add a description, add media, add a price, choose your inventory, and even add variants like size and color. Shopify has a lot of AI in it, so you can generate text for your description. It also automatically categorizes it, but you can always change this if you wanted to.

Managing Product Details

Pricing and Inventory Settings

For your price, you can add things like unit price, you can charge tax, you can choose the compare at price. So, if everyone else is selling the same thing for $19.99, you can add that right here. If you’re selling digital products or if you’re drop shipping, you can disable detract inventory. And for additional variants and colors, if you wanted to add, for example, flavors. Flavor now appears as a variant. You can click on that. And from here, you can add other ones. For example, strawberry. Once done, you then have two variants, and you can choose if you want to have different prices for them, and you can track the inventory separately. Additionally, you can add images for each one. And at the very bottom, you’ll see how this will show up in Google.

SEO Customization and Saving

If you click on the pencil icon, you can edit this to change what the name is, the meta description, and the URL handle. Scroll up to the top, make sure the status is active, not saved as a draft. Make sure it is publishing to your online store. And then click on save. Just like that, you have your first product. On the left side, if you click on products, you’ll see the first one is listed. It is now active. You can see the inventory and the channels in which it’s being sold. More products can be added later using the same process by clicking add product on the top right.

Theme Selection and Installation

Exploring Sales Channels and the Theme Store

Shopify uses something called sales channels as different ways people can buy your product. Online store is one of them. Buying in person is another one. Maybe buying on Instagram or TikTok shop would be another one as well. Within online store, you can then select a theme. Shopify has been integrating a lot of AI with the custom themes, but the most popular themes are available by visiting the theme store, where you can browse through nearly a thousand themes. You can also select just the free ones. There are only 24 free ones, but still some pretty good ones. Click on a theme like Origin to view a demo store, which allows you to click around, and if you like it, you can click on try theme.

Publishing and Store Access

That will automatically add it to your store and automatically bring you back to the themes page. The new theme will show as being installed. Once you wait a few seconds, it should be done. Then down here, you can click on publish. That will switch out this theme for the other one. The reason they do that is because in the future, if you ever want to change your theme, but your store is already live, you can edit and customize it and then just hot swap it in with just a little click. Nobody can actually visit your website right now because it is password protected. It’s a good idea to remove the password early on so you can test it as you build the website. Once a theme is on your website, customizing it is very easy.

Designing the Store Front

Navigating the Editor and Design Tree

Click on the customize button on the bottom right and that will bring you into the Shopify editor. From here, there is a design tree on the left side that shows you each section. For example, the announcement bar is up here. The header is just below that. And on the right side, you can click on things and see what they are. Most editing can be done on the left side. Here is the featured product section. It outlines in blue when you hover. And if you click on it, you can then select your first product. That’ll bring you into the settings. Select your product and it shows the name, the price, and everything else. People can add to cart or buy immediately.

Customizing Colors and Layout

If you don’t like the design of a block, below it there’s the color scheme. You can change this color scheme based on ones that already came with the template, but usually early on in the design process, it’s better to add your own colors. On the left side, if you click on theme settings, you can then click on colors, and customize all of the different schemes. If you go to scheme one, you can change the background color, the text, the buttons, and everything else just by clicking on them and choosing the color that matches your design. Most websites are fine with just five schemes, but you can add another one if you’d like.

Refining Header and Sections

Adjusting the Header and Logo

There are more advanced features that can be explored for a beginning website. To add and remove sections, on the top, on the left side, hover over rich text and delete it. To change how the header looks, click on header again. Change the color scheme to scheme 2 so it matches with white. And you can choose the position of the logo. Top center looks pretty good. Click on back, and then click on announcement bar. The announcement bar is optional on the top. But if you want to have it, you can have multiple announcements.

Configuring Rotating Announcements

That rotate through automatically. And you can choose how fast they rotate through. In order to add an announcement, click on the little back icon. Make sure you click on the drop down to see the announcements that are available. The first one says welcome to our store. Instead, maybe you want to say save 10% with code fall 10. And you can add a link as well to a product, so when somebody clicks on that, it brings them into the checkout page. If you want a second announcement, click on the three dots and duplicate this. Once done, you’ll have two announcements. The second one could say free shipping. These will automatically rotate every 5 seconds. Scrolling down, there is an image banner.

Advanced Design Elements

Building a Multimedia Collage

Instead of an image banner, you may want to have a collection of different images of the product, assuming this is a one product website, or maybe other products or collections could appear down here. To add a section between these two, either add one on the bottom or hover for the blue line and click on that. From here, click on collage and that will add it. To edit this section, simply click on it. The color scheme can be changed, and clicking the drop down lets you edit the content that’s in there. There is an image, a product, and another image. Much like the rest of the website, you can decide to add or remove things by hiding them or clicking on the trash can. That will change how your multimedia collage actually looks. In the settings, you can click on it and change the text.

Mobile Viewing and AI Sidekick

You can access different pages on your website by clicking the drop down and selecting the pages to edit those. You can also view the site on mobile or tablet views on the top right to make sure it looks good on all devices. And if you want to change something and you can’t find the setting, you can click on the sidekick — an AI assistant that can help you do things on your website. For example, to remove something on the bottom, just tell it to remove that. Once done, click save and exit on the top left.

Marketing and Discounts

Creating Manual Product Discounts

Making discounts for your website is also really easy. Going back to the Shopify dashboard, click on discounts. To create the fall 10 discount that was shown on the banner, click amount off products. Name this fall 10, and make this discount percentage 10%. It can also be a fixed amount in dollars. You can choose what it actually applies to by finding your product, clicking add, and it’s ready to go. You can also set limits for how many customers can use it or any other requirements. Save this and the first discount is created.

Setting Up Automatic Discounts

There are other styles of discounts as well. Clicking on create discount shows options for buy one get one, amount off your order, or free shipping. For the free shipping mentioned on the banner, this can be made an automatic discount. That means nobody has to type in a code in order for this discount to work. For it to work, you can add a minimum purchase amount, such as $25. Save this and that discount is also active. There are some really important settings that need to be adjusted. On the bottom, click on settings.

Finalizing Store Settings

Payments and Shipping Setup

First, go down to payments and set up Shopify payments. Click on complete account setup and follow the four steps to set up Shopify payments, so you can accept credit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and things like that. Then click on shipping and delivery. From here you can set up pickup in store if you wanted. You could have local delivery, or on the top you have different shipping profiles. Make sure you add taxes and duties based on where you are. And of course, a domain is needed for the website. Click on domain, then click on buy new domain. Shopify recommends some options, but you can also search for one. Once found, you can buy it and it will automatically connect the domain.

Registering Your Domain and Policies

Check your email and make sure that you verify that you registered your domain and your Shopify account. All these things are required in order for the domain and the website to work. It’s also really easy with Shopify to make policies by going down in your settings, clicking on policies, and using the templates that Shopify already made. For the return and refund policy, click on insert template, then click publish. Same thing with terms of service. Obviously, you want to read these because these are your terms of service, but it’s convenient that Shopify provides these templates.

Store Launch and Final Thoughts

Just like that, you have a Shopify store that’s up and running with a product and ready to go. You now have a fully functional online store. You can view it by clicking view. Now you can see analytics on the left side. For questions about the next steps or more advanced features, there are additional tutorials available that dig into those topics.