Do you want to enter into eCommerce world and start your own online store? We know that how terrifying it is to build an online store especially when you’re not a techy. Well, that is not only you. After helping hundreds of eCommerce entrepreneurs start their online store, we’ve decided to put together the most comprehensive guide on how to build your online store which will drive sales. (step by step).
Whether this is your first time online base business or you’ve been in the game for a long time, this guide will teach you how to start an online store (eCommerce business) in some simple steps.
Our goal is to have your storefront up and running today, you might even make your first internet dollar!
A Quick Introductions to Online Store Platforms
May be you just came up with a wonderful product idea and now you want to see if people will interest to buy that. When you are ready to run an Online Store but you don’t know where to start and which is the best for you there are many things to take into consideration. One of the most important question is which platform you are going to use for creating your online store and is that suitable to your business and is that will fulfill your requirements?
I have been mainly using Shopify for my own online store and I had built more than 60 Shopify Store with my experience because I believe Shopify offers the most customization whilst it’s come with great admin interface and functionalities.It’s easy to use admin interface will give you all of the important report as well as greta tips to help boost your sales.
In regards of add extra functionalities and Customization Shopify give access to almost every aspects to their template to tweaking and apps for add more functionalities.You can change almost all funcinalities of your store with Shopify.The main fact to choosing Shopify is they have a big apps market where you can find great apps which will add more functionalities to your store as well as help boosting your sales.
The only downside of using Shopify is they will not give you tweak their Checkout page for security reason though that checkout page is still responsive and it will work perfectly with any kinds of devices.
Why you should use Shopify?
Shopify is one and only best platform for non-technical person. This platform require no coding skills to setup an online store. You can easily setup your online store within ten minutes with Shopify. Shopify is a solid platform for beginner to and for those who don’t want to spend too much time with develop an online store. They have great team to support you and you can sell unlimited number of products without any hassles.
How to Create an Online Store from Scratch with Shopify?
It’s now not a secret that Shopify is the greatest eCommerce platform among all of the platform availabe in the market. It will not take more than 10 minutes to set up your online store with some mouse clicks and a little typing. There are some reasons why Shopify is such a great platform. One of them is it was never so easy to setup an online store easily with some clicks of mouse. In this article we will show you how you can create an online store from scratch less than 10 minutes.
Sign-Up:
To get start visit Shopify.com (<or Click on this) and click on Get Start button. Fill the form with your e-mail and required information, choose your store name and Click on Create your Store button.
Then it will ask you if you would like to build a Brick & Mortar Store or an eCommerce store. With this tutorial we will only choose eCommerce store to make an online shop with Shopify.
After that initial screen you will be also asked for a few more details that include your name,address,contact number and country.
You’ll also be asked for if you have any products for sale if yes what you want to sell. If you are just trying out Shopify to see if that works for you then you can select “I’m just playing around” in the “Do you have products?” dropdown menu,and “I’m not sure” in the “What you’ll sell” option. Once complete Click “I’m Done”
Starting Up with Add Your Products:
After you have signed up successfully that will redirect straight to your Shopify Dashboard. Now it’s ready to add your your products,setting up your payment system and customizing your store look. Shopify Admin Dashboard outline very nicely a step-by-step process on how to add your products and how you can completely setup your online store. The first button ask you to “Add a product” to see that in your online store. The add products page will see like the image below. You have to fill in details like A Product Title, Description, Price & Vendor. Feel free to fill up those fields with your products details. Then Hit “Save Product”
Selecting a Theme for your Store
Go back to your main Shopify Dashboard and Click on “ONLINE STORE” > “Themes” Scroll Down and click on “Visit Theme Store”. Shopify has it’s very own Theme Store where you can find some great free theme and you can pick up one of those. This themes are guaranteed to get support from designers and it’s also come with a comprehensive list of modifications what you can do without a single line of coding. Premium themes comes with more modifications and more great design but that’s not to say you can not get great look with a free theme. In case you want to change full design of any theme there are some restrictions for that tweaking HTML & CSS. Don’t worry Shopify has an Internation Third Party portal which they called as Shopify Expert and we The Digital Develop also officially Shopify Expert.
Now select a Theme which you want and click on “Install Theme” and Publish that as your Shop Theme. After downloading and installing the theme to your store click on “Go to your theme manager” that will redirect you to your Shopify Store Theme page. For customizing your Shopify Store’s look click on “Customize Theme”. This area will give you access to customize anything from Logo to Colors of text and others.
Setup your Domain and Go Live
After selecting a theme and tweaking the design as you liked now it’s time to go live and start selling. But before go live you have one more thing to do. That is setting up your very own domain. Though Shopify offers a subdomain like xyz.myshopify.com but it is not ideal for your business that’s why you should buy and set up the domain with your Shopify Store. Suppose you have a domain XYZ.com now you want to setup that with your Shopify Store. Now the question is how! We demonstrate that here.
Go to your Shopify Backend/Shopify Dashboard click on Online Shop>Domains>Add Existing Domain or Buy New Domain (If you have no domain name yet)
- When You have your own Domain: If you have a domain name already what you want to use click on Add Existing Domain and type your domain name there and click “Add domain”. Then you have to ask your domain provider and they will create a new record with Shopify’s name server and it will go live with your own domain name.
- When you have not your own Domain: If you have not already your domain name click on “Buy new Domain” choose the name you want to use and walk through the steps to make the purchase and it will go live with that.
Activate a Payment Processor you want to use
A payment processor will allow you to take payments from your customer with your online store. There are doens of payment processors such as Stripe,Square,Paypal Pro,Authorize.net. The price and commission rate is important for your business but it’s also important which features they offer. Not all payment gateway is equally created. Shopify has also their own payment processor which is super easy to implement to your store. Follow the steps to setup Shopify’s Payment Gateway.
- Go to Shopify Dashboard , Click on Settings>Payments
- Find the accept payment section and Select Shopify Payments
- Activate that
This will allow you to take payments from your customers and put that in an account. After all the steps done properly launch the store to make it live
Congrats! Now you have a fully functional eCommerce Store with Shopify 🙂
Conclusion: That’s all there is to make a store within 10 minutes. At last you can have not only a great looking online store but also a money making fully functional eCommerce web site without being an expert. Now it’s time to market your products and get some sales without worrying about your eCommerce site’s technical aspects. We wish you a good luck with that. Feel free to ask any questions you may have in the comments section we will glad to answer those. Happy eCommerce.
