- Choose apps for additional functionality
- Optimise your Shopify store.
- Some points you must consider to grow your business.
- Conclusion
What is Shopify?
Shopify is a cloud-based e-commerce platform where you can create your own online store, sell across social media sites, and attract customers from around the world. Shopify is the largest storefront-management platform which is mostly recommended for ease of use, affordable cost, and multiple features.
More than 800,000 merchants including Budweiser, Red-Bull, and Tesla host their store on Shopify. Shopify helps them to sell over $100 billion worth of goods. It is suitable for business of any size and industry. Today we are going to discuss how to set up, manage, and optimize a profitable e-commerce store using Shopify.
What to sell on Shopify?
On Shopify, you can sell almost all the physical products, drop-ship products, digital products, or services as long as they are illegal. Products like medicine, weapons, liquor, etc are legally restricted to sell on Shopify.
If you have an offline physical store then with the help of the Shopify Point of Sales (POS) system you can merge and manage your sales and inventory system in one location.
Shopify Pricing
Shopify pricing varies depending upon the type of business. The pricing ranges from $29 to $299 per month. There are basically three plans for small business, growing business, and advance Shopify. You can choose the plan as per your requirements.
All the plans come with unlimited product upload and storage, no set-up fees, and no transaction fees when using Shopify payments. However, credit card rates may vary depending upon the plan you opt for.
Getting Started on Shopify.
Set up your Shopify account
To start, just sign up with 14 days trial. All you need to do is enter your email address and password and create a store name. Choose the store name carefully because it will be included in your URL. However, you can change your store name later on also. Your store name will be used as your domain name. Additionally fill other preliminary information like name, business address, and phone numbers. You can also add billing information and set a store currency.
A domain is a URL that links to the website. By default, your domain is written as yourstorename.myshopify.com but you have an option to purchase a custom domain or use your existing domain. You can purchase a new domain from Godaddy. Once you have done this you will be taken to your new storefront management interface. Congratulations, you have just set up your first Shopify store!
Add product to your Shopify store
This is probably the most time-consuming process but it needs most of your attention. You can add both physical and digital products to your store. For a few physical products, you can add the products manually. If you have numerous products then you can either bulk upload from CSV file or import them from other platforms like eBay.
For selling a digital product you have to install an app and add the product via that app. Service vendors can also install an app like product options to customize their service offerings. In the Shopify store, you can have different variations within options like size, color, and finish.
Options are product specific and available for both physical and digital products. You have the option to either sell a digital course or digital course with additional materials or digital courses with access to the private member group. There are similar options for any physical product also.
While adding items to your product in your Shopify you need to fill varieties of fields of the product. The selection of the image, description of the product, the proper title for product plays a vital role in your success in Shopify.
Title & description
Your potential customer should know what your product is, how it is made, and other necessary features of your product. Google will look for organic searches your product can show for. Organic product pages get clicks for free.
You can improve the likelihood that your product page will appear at the top of the search engine by optimizing the title and descriptions of your product. However, the most optimized page can still struggle to rank, if there is a lot of competition for your target keyword(s).
For expensive products, you must include all the specific descriptions and features of the product while for a cheap product keep your descriptions short to attract the potential customer.
If you are thinking of a drop-shipping business, you can connect to Oberlo from where you can directly add desired products to the Shopify store.
Image
For sales, the entire digital market revolves around one thing and that is a product image. Product image is the only thing that customers have to rely on since they cannot physically see and feel the product. A great image is equivalent to great sales.
Chose your Shopify theme
The first thing customer will see once they visit your store is the website design. That is why an attractive and highly functional theme is highly recommended. When all your products are listed on Shopify, its time to manage your store as per the look and feel of your brand. You can get a variety of options to customize the look of your store. To get all the theme options you have to click to “Customize theme” under the home tab.
There are predesigned store designs that you can use to feature products without hiring a designer or a developer. There are fairly good looking Debut themes that are absolutely free to start your store.
Alternatively, you can also use external websites to create themes if you want to have a better storefront for your product. Of-course it will cost you money but you will surely get better results. You can also use the Shopify theme store to choose among several Shopify themes.
These themes can be further customized by editing the theme code. Most of the coding in Shopify is done in Liquid, Shopify’s custom templating language. Use the “theme setting editor” or the “template editor” to modify the coding. On all the themes, the footer is the place where most of the information relating to your company will be located. So don’t forget to modify the footer.
Once you have picked the most appropriate theme for building your store, you can activate the theme to make it public.
Setting up your shipping cost
You have to provide the shipping rate and shipping method. The shipping cost will be based on the information you provide. You have options to use a third-party carrier, fulfillment service, or fulfill the orders manually. Shopify includes some basic rates for beginners but you can customize more options as you sell more on Shopify.
Setting up payments
Receiving customer payment is the most crucial step in every business. That is why you need to set up how to receive payment from your customer. You don’t actually have to make any process here. Shopify can process payments for you with minimal fees of 2.9% plus $0.30 for every transaction. This rate will be reduced more with higher-tier plans.
You have to provide your bank details to Shopify to receive the payment directly to your bank account. You can manage your payment methods from the payment providers section of the Shopify admin.
You can also integrate the third-party payment process like AmazonPay, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Wallet, or AliPay into Shopify if you already are using one. With over 90 third-party payment processors, Shopify is by far the most flexible payment receiving platform.
Set up taxes and store policies
As a seller, you need to charge the taxes ultimately from the customers. Shopify can handle basic tax calculations for you but you must do the extra exercise depending upon the tax policies of countries where you want to sell your items. You should be extra cautious about the double taxation avoidance or overriding effect of taxes and adjust your setting likewise.
Policies are the set of guidelines that bind the customers in one set of legal and regulatory frameworks. Your policy should be carefully framed because the ultimate jurisdiction in case of disputes, refund policy, privacy, and terms of service will be held in this part. Mostly the policy part will be linked to the foot of your page.
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