The most complete guide to opening a Shopify store, you will know everything after reading it

After selecting the products, all you have to do is find suppliers. You can use the two platforms of AliExpress and Spocket.

Shopify recommends AliExpress as the preferred source of goods for dropshipping. First, search for "dropshipping" on AliExpress:

Click on “dropshipping watches” to see the results:

The prices of the products in the search results are mostly between $1 and $20. Below the prices, you can see the product sales and ratings. The higher the rating, the more reliable the product/seller is. Also, try to find products with many user ratings. If there are only a few user ratings, you can't tell whether the product is good or bad.

Be careful to choose non-branded products, because it is difficult to distinguish the authenticity of branded products on AliExpress, so it is better not to choose brands.

Below the product rating is the seller rating, represented by diamonds. In addition to the product, the seller rating is also very important. The higher the rating, the more reliable the seller is. A rating above 95% indicates that the seller is reliable:

Through the above steps, you can narrow down the scope of suppliers step by step, and then communicate with them to understand their feedback.

Let’s say you decide to sell the following watch on your Shopify store:

The rating is 4.7, with 87 user ratings and 94 orders, which shows that the product has great sales potential.

Now we need to evaluate our pricing. Let’s go to Amazon and find similar products:

The screenshot shows that the price range is between 20-200. In order to ensure the competitiveness of the product, we can set the price at 20 US dollars.

It is best to do a test purchase of a supplier to see if the purchase process is smooth and check the product. This will also give you a better idea of ​​the customer's reaction after purchasing the product in the future.

Now that you have found your products, it’s time to create a store. You can create a Shopify account for free, and you will need to fill in your email address, password, etc.:

After successfully registering, Shopify will provide 4 options for you to choose from:

• I'm not selling products just yet

• I sell with a different system

• I'm just playing around

• I'm selling just not online

If you don't have any experience, click "I'm not selling products just yet" and select 0 for your current revenue. Then you need to complete your personal information, and after submitting it, you will be redirected to the backend panel.

Shopify Plan

After creating your account, you need to subscribe to a plan to unlock Shopify's advanced features. Although you have a 30-day free trial, it's still better to decide on a plan as soon as possible to avoid confusion later. To choose a plan, click the "Select a Plan" button:

There are three plans to choose from – Basic Shopify, Shopify, and Advanced Shopify.

As a beginner, you can choose the Basic Shopify plan first, and then change the plan when your store starts to take off.

Creating a Shopify store is divided into 4 stages

• Buying and setting up a domain

• Set up email forwarding

• Determine the store theme

• Set up the required pages for your store

Buying and setting up a domain

First, click "Domain" in the store backend. Shopify will assign you a domain name like this for free: http://xxx.myshopify.com. If you want to consider building your own brand awareness, you can purchase a domain name.

GoDaddy and Namecheap both provide domain name purchase services. GoDaddy is the world's largest domain name service provider. Namecheap's prices and services are more competitive:

The cost of a .com domain name is $10.98/year, and .net is $14.98/year. When you purchase a domain name, you will get WhoisGuard for free, which can hide your identity.

Or you can buy a domain directly from Shopify.

Set up email forwarding

To set up email forwarding, first click on the Domain page, then click on the domain name you have purchased:

The next page will show two email addresses with your domain name as the suffix: info@ and sales@. To change the forwarding address of Shopify store emails, you can change it here. You can also delete and add email addresses here.

Determine the store theme

Sellers need to think carefully about the design of their store, because it is closely related to the customer experience. If customers like your design style, the probability of placing an order will increase.

The theme is part of the store design style, and Shopify provides free themes. To change the store theme, click on the backend Themes:

A new window will display a variety of themes, some free and some paid. Sellers who are just starting out can choose a free theme:

After selecting a theme, if you want to apply it to your store, click "Install Theme". If you want to fully apply the theme, click "Publish as my store's theme". If you do not want to overwrite the current theme, click "install as an unpublished theme".

After completion, a "Go to your theme manager" button will appear. Click it to make customized modifications yourself.

After clicking, page sections will appear in the sidebar, and clicking will display various options for you to choose.

If you don't want certain sections, click the "Delete section" button.

Set up the required pages for your store

You need to add some pages to your store yourself. It is recommended that the store must have the following pages:

• About Page

• Product Page

• Shipping Policy Page

• Refund Policy Page

• Contact page

To create a page, click Pages under Online Store:

Click the "Add page" button and you can add a new page to your store.

About page settings guide:

Since you need organic traffic from search engines, you need to edit the SEO permissions of the page. Scroll down on the settings page and click "Edit website SEO". Edit the meta title and description, preferably something that will attract users to click. Click Save when you are done.

After you have created it, you need to add the page to the website navigation bar for easy viewing by users. After saving, click "add it to your store's navigation". There are top and bottom navigation bars to choose from. For example, if you want to add it to the top navigation, click Main Menu. After completing the settings, click "Save Menu".

To quickly create a refund policy, privacy policy, and other pages, click Settings > Checkout, find the Refund, Privacy, and TOS statements section, and click Generate content:

Once completed, it will be displayed in the footer of the checkout page. Some templates may not be suitable for the actual situation, it is recommended to edit accordingly.

Click “Add product”:

Then fill in the product details:

The product description can be edited based on the content provided by the supplier. The description should be attractive to customers:

On the right side of the page is the "Organization" information, where you can edit information such as product type, supplier, collection, and tags. Collection means putting products together with similar products to show them to customers, and tags make it easier for users to search for your products.

Pull down to upload product pictures. To improve the conversion rate, you must ensure that the uploaded pictures are of high quality:

Then for the price section, enter the price you set, and leave the inventory blank:

Since the delivery is handled by the supplier, this part can be left blank. Remember to discuss the delivery issues with the supplier:

Then enter the product attributes, enter the product color, size, etc.:

Finally, you will edit the information that your product page will show on search engines. Click "Edit website SEO" and enter your title and description, as well as your URL. If there is space in the title, consider adding your store name at the end. Make your description as detailed as possible, making full use of the 160 characters. Keep the URL as short as possible.

You can also consider keyword optimization for this page, such as adding keywords with less competition found by SEMrush to improve the ranking.

After completion, click Save. The same steps are followed for adding other product pages.

Automatically add products to collections:

Click Collections and enter a name and description for the collection.

It is best if the collection cover image shows all the products. If there is no such image, it is also acceptable to add high-quality product images.

You can quickly add products to a collection based on product type, price, supplier, tags, etc., then set the SEO content of the collection page and click Save.

Your store needs to provide multiple payment methods to facilitate users to place orders. Generally, consumers will use PayPal or credit cards to shop online.

Sellers can use Shopify Payments to directly accept credit card payments from users. Shopify Payments can track all transactions in the store. But it is currently only available in some countries. So another option is to use PayPal as a payment method:

Shopify uses PayPal Express Checkout by default for all orders, allowing buyers to pay via PayPal balance, bank account or credit card. There are no transaction fees and you can keep all your revenue.

If you want to use another third-party payment provider to process credit card payments, you can click "Accept credit cards" and select the provider here:

Shopify provides hundreds of payment options to meet the various payment needs of buyers, so sellers will not lose orders due to not providing the payment methods required by users.

To add more payment options, click on the “Alternative payments” and “Manual payments” options.

To set your shipping rates accurately, you need to know:

• Shipping costs. Domestic and international shipping costs are based on the size and weight of your product and are affected by many factors.

• Surcharges. Fees that need to be paid for some factors, such as home delivery

• Fees paid to suppliers, including packaging costs, etc.

There is no uniform standard for these charges, you will need to contact the courier service provider and supplier for details of the charges.

If you subscribe to the Shopify plan, in the Additional shipping methods section of Shopify, you can set up third-party service providers to automatically calculate rates during checkout, so you don’t have to enter the shipping costs manually.

Or if you don’t want to deal with the distribution issue, add a dropshipping service and let the supplier handle the orders directly.

If a customer is hesitant about buying a product, giving them a gift card can motivate them to place an order. Gift cards and discount codes can greatly increase your store's conversion rate. You need to subscribe to a Shopify plan to set up gift cards and discount codes.

Gift Card Settings

Go to Products > Cards and click “Start selling gifts on my store”:

Then set the gift card price and quantity on the next page:

After setting, save and select online store in the "Visibility" section and click Save. Or you can choose specific users to send gift cards.

Discount code settings

Click Discounts, select Add Discount, enter the discount code information, and pay special attention to the Conditions and Usage limits to ensure that the discount code will not be abused:

After the settings are completed, you need to promote the discount code. The promotion methods include:

• Social Media. Share the discount code on social media

• Publish a blog. Publish a blog with information about the discount code and how to use it, and then post the blog to social media, which can also drive traffic to the blog.

• Create pop-ups. Pop-ups can collect email addresses or drive traffic to specific pages on your website.

• Send emails. If you only want registered users to use the discount code, you can send it through email marketing. Or you can use the discount code to entice buyers to register.

Finally, although discount codes can effectively increase store sales, you should pay attention to the frequency.

Even the wisest person can make mistakes. No matter how carefully a seller sets up a store, there may be things he fails to consider and customers may still have questions.

In order to solve customer problems, sellers need to provide customer service and respond to customers quickly without making them wait for hours or even days.

To solve this problem of customer service, you can use the ZenDesk tool:

Its features include:

• Telephone: Contact customers by phone and solve their questions. It can automatically record call content and customer history data.

• Chat: quickly answer customer questions, facilitate users to seek help, and improve user experience

• Knowledge base: collects questions and provides answers, serving as a one-stop Q&A guide for users, saving users the time of sending messages or making phone calls.

• Social Media: Allow sellers to contact users through social media and solve problems

ZenDesk's pricing is very flexible and charges based on functionality.

For $10, you get access to email and social media support, a help center, and a display icon. There is a 14-day free trial for each plan.

If you feel that ZenDesk has too many features and dazzles you, you can choose other more targeted tools:

• Drift. You can display a chat button floating on all pages of your store and respond to customer questions in real time.

• Grasshopper. Create custom numbers and forward calls to your phone

• Hootsuite. Manage all social media in one place and respond to consumer questions across all channels

All relevant work has been completed and the store is about to go online, but before going online, you need to remove Shopify's password protection so that consumers can see your store.

To remove password protection, click Themes, then click Remove password:

Then you will enter the password Preferences page, click Enable password page, and then save it.

The above is the complete tutorial for opening a Shopify store. If you have any other questions, please leave a message below to tell us.