In one way or another, online business, especially Shopify business will be a good and long-term solution in the COVID-19 pandemic stage where many countries around the world are maintaining social isolation. When shopping is restricted because everything and everyone is kept indoors, home delivery services emerge as an indispensable solution. This is the alternative way to earn a living instead of going out for work as usual. So, where to start from scratch?
Why you should get a Shopify store
When you search for an e-commerce platform that supports your online business on Google, Shopify will definitely appear in top search results. This is Shopify's worldwide coverage, according to BuildtWith 2019 figures
What makes Shopify special compared to other platforms is that it does not require users to have coding skills or sophisticated web development knowledge. You are a non-tech merchant? Don’t worry because Shopify will handle all your programming problems. More than that, you can see Shopify being a tool to help you manage your sale channels all-in-one. Discovering the advantages of using Shopify should be a personal experience, however, some of the obvious benefits that Shopify brings will be listed below:
- No requirements of coding and programming knowledge.
- Good support for kinds of products. There are various applications that help you choose products to sell if you want to do dropshipping business. Make sure your inventories stay organized.
- You can buy new domain directly through Shopify or you can add an existing one that you own.
- Numerous themes and decoration apps for you to choose from.
- Easy to integrate your social media channels.
- Offer a 14-day trial so that you can test to run a store before making any purchase decision.
Then, all you need to do is just get started with this platform.
And this is how
Register a new store/ Start a free trial of Shopify
On Shopify, enter your email address to start the free trial.
Next, set a password and name your store when this below window comes.
Shopify will ask you whether you have experience in the e-commerce field or not to get some of your background information. Just fill in the boxes, don’t worry if you don’t have any experience, because Shopify provides you a few guides for initial setup.
Add your products
Vendors often have an idea for the items before starting the online store. However, if the thought of an online business just sprung to your mind and you haven’t had any idea yet, you might find this video helpful.
If you want to do a dropshipping business, Oberlo will be highly recommended for you. This application helps you with researching by finding popular products for you from Aliexpress, so that you can easily communicate with manufacturers and start selling immediately.
If you’ve already had an idea of what to sell? Great, let’s start uploading items to your store.
This is the window you will see when you add products to your store
At this stage you will have to fill out your product names, short description, product images and add some relevant tags you think your customers will search for. You can decide the prices and taxes of products after that.
When you are done with uploading your products, click on the Save button. You are now having products in your store.
Add a domain
All merchants want their websites to be unique and easily recognized. Then, owning a domain name that is relevant to your brand name is a must. The domain name should be short and easy-to-remember. It might be difficult to find an available .com domain, but there is also .io domain or others that you can search for.
Shopify allows you to buy new domain names from the platform itself.
You have already owned a proper domain? From Shopify home page, click on “Add a domain” to connect your existing domain to your store. The window shown up will look like below.
While buying a domain name through Shopify is very convenient, you may find it a little bit expensive. To save costs, you can go for a cheaper one at Namecheap or Godaddy.
Pick a theme
Designing your store with a user-friendly interface will build conversions and help you get customers who have great initial shopping experience. Shopify themes are either paid or free, all are fully responsive and optimized. Themes have different purposes, so that you should find something which best suits the items you are selling.
There are 9 free themes available at the moment on theme store, which are beautiful, professional and good enough for your store if you are just starting.
64 paid themes are categorized into collections based on number of products, layout style, etc. You will certainly choose a suitable theme for your store in these collections.
After choosing a theme from theme store, you can access to Shopify theme editor window by clicking on “Customize theme” to adjust the layouts.
Set up payment methods
For each successful order, you will receive a payment. You need to fill in your bank account information.
Manage shipping methods
In a nutshell, you should consider things as below:
- Plan your shipping strategies. Your shipping strategy may change over time as your store grows. One of the first decisions you need to make is deciding how much to charge for shipping.
- Choose dropshipping and fulfillment services. There are some dropshipping applications available to help you make decisions.
- Pick shipping carriers. Shipping carriers are services that deliver orders to your customers. Most carriers allow you to drop packages for them while others allow you to schedule pickups from your location. Some carriers can also receive packages from any fulfillment services or manufacturers you work with.
- Create shipping rates. You can choose a variety of shipping rates and methods to appear as options for your customers. You can also specify any restrictions or rules based on the contents of the customer’s shopping cart to limit shipping methods.
- Choose package types according to shipments sizes and weights.
- Understand and reduce processing time.
Establish Live Chat service
If you sell internationally, make sure your customers from all around the world are supported and consulted as quickly as possible, no matter what time zone they are living in.
Customer service is playing a pivotal role in every single business, especially for the companies that aim for sustainable growth. Among the best customer service toolkits nowadays, Live Chat is considered an integral part of successful business. For merchants on Shopify, providing Live Chat is very important because customers are often impressed by the professional support, increasing their ability to leave compliments and high rates in the review section.
If you are looking for some Live Chat applications on Shopify, then Reamaze Live Chat & Helpdesk, Tidio Live Chat and Gorgias are the best by far. In case your store is connected to other social networking sites such as Facebook, Whatsapp, etc, more applications compatible with specific platforms are also available inShopify App store.
Make a page builder
When you need to create an advertising campaign on Google Ad to advertise your products, you need to use the page builder tool to create a landing page.
Pagebuilder is a tool that gives you the ability to create and customize designs. You can create landing pages, add titles, adjust layouts, put gadgets on almost every page of the landing pages that you want and even more without writing a single line of code.
Some page builder applications on Shopify that are highly recommended for you are Shogun, PageFly and GemPages.
Integrate your social media channels
With the strong development of technology, especially social networks, today doing business on social platforms like Facebook and Instagram is no longer something strange to people.
In order for your customers to have the best experience when shopping, and to create your professional image when selling multi-channel, connecting your social media channels to your Shopify store is a must.
Your store is ready to go online
When everything is set up, you can start earning money from your Shopify store.