.st0{fill:#FFFFFF;}

The Beginner’s Guide to Shopify 

 Published May 5, 2020

Updated March 20, 2023

By  Kristi Hines

Shopify Masterclass: Proven Ecommerce Business For Newbies

Business coach and entrepreneur Alvin Phang has created an extremely successful online course where he teaches you everything there is to know about running an eCommerce business on shopify.


Ready to start selling products online? Whether you are selling products shopify logoor services, Shopify is one e-commerce solution to consider. It is suitable for businesses of any size and caters to a broad range of industries. Shopify is one of the easiest e-commerce builders to help you run your online store for the first time, making the process straightforward and painless. In this article, we’re going to look at the Shopify platform, from the decision to launch. And if you’ve already decided that it’s the best e-commerce platform for your business, then you might find our Shopify discount code helpful too!

If you don’t think an eCommerce store is for you, maybe it’s time to start blogging?

What You Can Sell on Shopify

First of all, let’s start with what you can sell on Shopify. Overall, if it’s a physical product, drop ship product, digital product or service that isn’t illegal to sell online, you can sell it on Shopify. Shopify has many popular verticals using their platform, ranging from art to coffee, e-books to guitars, shoes to homeware – it’s hard to find something you can’t sell!

If you already have an offline physical retail store, you are also able to merge and manage your entire sales and inventory system in one location with Shopify’s Point of Sale (POS) System.

Shopify Pricing

Shopify’s flexible pricing plans allow businesses of all sizes to take advantage of the platform.

There are 4 main pricing tiers based on increased functionality and additional e-commerce features and tools you can use to help grow your store, with an additional enterprise-grade solution available for larger businesses. These plans are:

  • Lite – $9 per month
  • Basic – $29 per month
  • Professional – $79 per month
  • Unlimited – $179 per month
  • Shopify Plus – starts at $995 per month

All Shopify plans include no setup fees, unlimited product uploads and file storage, 24/7 online and phone support, no bandwidth fees and no transaction fees when using Shopify payments (credit cards rates vary depending on which plan you use). With each plan, you are able to add website templates and apps from the Shopify store, with extensive selections of both free and paid options to choose from.

All Shopify plans are month to month (unless you sign up for an annual or biennial plan) so you are able to upgrade, downgrade or cancel Shopify at any time.

None of the plans include a domain or email hosting and you should compare prices with an external domain registrar, such as Namecheap and GoDaddy.

Shopify offers discounted plans when you pay upfront, 10% discount on an annual plan and 20% off biennial plans, and we also offer a Shopify discount code!

Comparing Shopify to Other Platforms

Want to compare the Shopify platform experience to other e-commerce platforms? Instead of creating comparison charts, Shopify decided to get creative. Find out what ex-customers of other platforms think about Shopify by looking under the “Comparisons” section on the Shopify sitemap page. They have testimonials from users who have moved to Shopify from 20 other platforms and services including BigCommerce, Magento, Amazon Webstore, and 3dCart. As mentioned above, one thing that Shopify has that most other platforms do not Shopify POS, which allows businesses that also have physical store locations to synchronize both their online and offline sales. So now, instead of two systems, you would only have to manage one.

Setting Up Your Online Store

You can start your Shopify store with a free, 14-day trial that you can sign up for on the main homepage or using the Free Trial button in the menu bar. The first thing you will do is enter your preferred email, password and create a store name.
Shopify sign up

Note that your store name will be included in your store’s URL. Even though you can change this later, it’s best to think of something simple like you.myshopify.com. If you go with multiple words, you’ll end up with your-business-name.myshopify.com. If you’re not planning to redirect a URL from your main domain (such as store.yourdomain.com to you.myshopify.com), then you’ll definitely want to keep your store name/URL in mind. Once Shopify creates your account, you will enter your basic details – name, address and phone number, then what you are selling and revenue (if you have any yet). Then, you will be taken to the admin dashboard to begin creating your online store, here are 7 steps to help you guide you through the process.

Shopify dashboard

1. Add your products.

First, you will want to add products to your store. For physical products, you can enter them manually, bulk uploads them from a CSV file, or import them from other platforms like Magento and eBay. For digital products, you will need to first install an app for digital product delivery, then add your products using that app. You can learn more about selling digital products from Shopify’s online manual. If you’re selling services, you may want to consider an app like Product Options to allow you to customize your service offerings. You can have up to 100 variations per product in your Shopify store that fall into three options such as size, color, and finish. Options are product specific, so you can have one product with a set of options, and another product with a different set of options. Keep in mind that options don’t have to be limited to physical products. You can create options for anything. For example, instead of just selling a digital e-book, you could sell three options for your e-book: one option that is just the e-book, another that is the e-book and additional supporting materials, and a third that includes everything and access to a private member forum. 

2. Customize your design.

Next, you will want to add a custom design to your Shopify store by choosing a theme. The Shopify theme store has a great variety of designs to choose from free to paid and sorted by industry.

Shopify theme store

Assuming you do not have the starter plan, you can edit your chosen theme by using the theme settings editor or template editor to modify the coding (HTML, CSS, and JS). On most themes, you will definitely want to go into the settings to modify the footer, as that is where you will add your social links, payment methods, and other details.

3. Set up your domain name.

If you want to use a custom domain for your store as mentioned earlier (yourdomain.com or store.yourdomain.com instead of you.myshopify.com), you will set it up in this step. The Shopify online manual has all of the documentation you need to set up your custom domain,  if you don’t already have a domain name for your Shopify store then use this businessnamegenerator.com tool to find available domain name ideas.  

4. Set up shipping and tax rates.

You will need to choose to add additional shipping costs and taxes to your items or to let Shopify know you have included them in your item price. Shopify includes some basic rates to get you started, but depending on what you sell, you may need to customize more options.

5. Set up payments.

Perhaps the most important step after adding your products is setting up how customers will pay you. If you are in the USA, Canada or the UK you can accept payments with Shopify Payments that accept credit cards without needing to set up a third-party payment gateway or merchant account. Shopify also integrates with many different payments processing services including Paypal, Amazon Payments, and Google Wallet.

Shopify payments

You can see their list of over 90 third-party processors in the FAQ.

6. Settings.

You will want to go through your Shopify settings thoroughly. Most of these will be filled out while you complete the above steps, but a few things like the place where you add your Google Analytics code, store title, and store description are awaiting configuration in the general settings section.

7. Open your store to the world.

Once you are ready, you can make your Shopify store public. Until you do, it will be password protected so you can do some testing to make sure things look and function the way they should. As with all things, be sure to do lots of testing so that customers aren’t the first ones to find mistakes and glitches.

Choosing Apps for Additional Functionality and Features

Shopify has hundreds of free and premium apps that you can use to enhance the functionality of your online store. The app categories are as follows.

  • Accounting — Connect your Shopify store to popular accounting solutions such as Quickbooks, FreshBooks, and Xero.
  • Customer Service — Add contact forms, live chat, feedback, and other customer support features to your store.
  • Inventory — Incorporate inventory management systems to your online store to help streamline the process.
  • Marketing — Everything you need to incorporate email, search, and social media marketing into your online store can be found in this category.
  • Sales — Help increase sales using these apps for customer loyalty programs, product reviews, upsells, and recommendations.
  • Shipping — Make product shipment simpler with apps to help manage order fulfillment and connect you with your preferred shipping service.
  • Social Media — Get more engaged and connected with your customers on social media using these apps.
  • Tools — Here, you’ll find tools that help with all aspects of your online store, including setting up bulk redirects, language translators, fighting fraud, and syncing your blog RSS feeds.

If you’re not sure where to start, the most important things to do with your store would be to configure good SEO settings for your product pages and add email marketing support so customers can join your mailing list. Most email marketing services have directions on how to connect your Shopify store to their system. You can see directions for Aweber, MailChimp, and GetResponse; or search for your own.

Social Selling

What if you want to sell products on your blog? That’s not a problem. Shopify offers widgets/plugins for WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal users. These allow you to add products to your pages, posts, and sidebar. This means that if you are creating content that your target customer base would enjoy, you have a good chance to monetize your site’s traffic by directing your readers to your products.

If you want to make the most of the awesome content, you can also choose to use Drop In Blog for a Shopify blog. It is a third-party integration that helps users create an SEO-friendly blog and easily optimize all blog posts. That will increase visits and help in converting visitors to customers.

Another way you can integrate sales into your social strategy is by promoting different types of facebook ads. Shopify offers dozens of Facebook integrations that allow you to turn your Facebook page into an extension of your e-commerce store, helping fans discover your products and ultimately buy from you.

What About Affiliates?

If you don’t mind offering a share of the profits to others, you can enlist the help of affiliates to spread the word about your products. Shopify has several apps that allow you to create your own affiliate program to track referrals made by your customers and supporters.

Where You Can Go to Learn More

Shopify wants you to be successful, therefore they have a great education and support system for their users. You can start with E-commerce University where you will find e-books, guides, tutorials, and videos to help you learn more about Shopify and online selling as a whole. This section includes everything you need to know about using Shopify and the design/development of your store. The support section has over 200 articles to help you with any troubleshooting issues you may run into. If you don’t find what you’re looking for there, you can also try the forums, which contain thousands of topics on e-commerce, from accounting to wholesale, and all things Shopify.

Where You Can Get Help

Last, but not least, if you want professionals to help you build your store, you can refer to the Shopify Experts area. Here, you’ll find setup experts, designers, developers, marketers, and photographers that can help you turn your e-commerce store into a thriving, successful business.

RELATED POSTS

  • Was doing some research about this a few days ago. Shopify truly has provided great resources for learning about online stores. I especially love the Ecommerce University. What I can’t seem to find is if there’s any samples or case studies where or how online stores set up by those in developing countries succeeded or not.

  • Hi Julie,

    Thank you for the question.

    You will have to purchase a paid plan in order to sell products on your Shopify store.
    The free trial is there to see if Shopify is the right fit for your business.

  • I am in Australia and envisage that I will be selling to customers in other English speaking countries e.g. the US. Do I have to set up my store on shopify.com.au and if I do, would I have to have .au at the end of my URL?

  • Can I exclude my country in the shopping list. I have a shop at ETSY and now searching another platform.
    ETSY does not allow sellers to exclude their country and that is not fair for the sellers
    The sellers have the right to sell their products anywhere they want to

  • Great write up! Thanks for enlightening me. Is it possible to have a store with Shopify without any physical store?

  • We are planning to open an online store for a range of clothing/designer stuffs. We want to launch an e-commerce website which shall enable the visitors to shop while they browse. Which should be a preferred option, Shopify or WordPress?

  • {"email":"Email address invalid","url":"Website address invalid","required":"Required field missing"}

    Sign up for How to Sell on Shopify

    Get access to our FREE full Shopify Course and product monetization. 

    >