How To Make An Online Store On Shopify Plus?

Shopify is a leading e-commerce web development platform based on a subscription to a software service model, helping business owners to create highly functional e-commerce stores and utilize their shopping cart solutions for selling, shipment, and managing their products.

Shopify Plus offers a wide range of services for store owners as well as end-users by providing an access of easy to use admin panel where you multiple tasks like product addition, order processing, store data entry can be done in a hassle-free manner. You can build a fully functional online store to sell digital or physical goods, just for a monthly subscription of $2000/month with a 14 days free trial.

If you are looking to build an online store using Shopify Plus, you’ve come to the right place. In this post, we’ll show you how to use Shopify to launch your online store as soon as possible.

Ready? Let’s get started…

1. Sign-up

Visit Shopify website and click on “signup” form to create an account. Just enter the required details and click the ‘Start free trial’ button. Always remember that your online store name should always be unique otherwise you’ll be asked to choose something else. Few more details like including your name, address, country, and contact number would be asked later on.  Now you will be asked whether you have products available and what do you aim to sell. Select the appropriate option and once complete, click ‘I’m done’.

2. Setting Online Store

After the signed up process gets finished, one will gets redirected to your store admin screen. Now you are ready to start customizing the store as per requirement, upload products and set-up payments and shipping options.

3. Selecting Theme

Shopify have a team of globally recognized designers on their theme designing board including Clearleft, Pixel Union and Happy Cog, creating over 100 themes for developers to choose from. With 8 free & 68 premium e-commerce templates available, one will not be having any trouble finding the perfect corporate image for your business.

• Check the Functionality and Reviews

After find a suitable theme, click on the theme’s sample image to get some more information like responsiveness along with other features. Have a look at some reviews by scrolling down.

• Preview the Theme

You can click on View Demo option to see the theme in action. This option can be easily found below the green ‘Preview Theme in your Store’ button.

• Get the Theme

After selecting the suitable theme option, click the green button. Shopify will ask for conformation about theme installation, then click Publish as my Shop’s Theme. After the theme has installed, Shopify will let you know and will give you the option to Go to your Theme Manager.

4. Edit Shopify Settings

All Shopify themes offers the flexibility of making simple changes that can massively change the appearance of your store, so you can rest assured knowing you won’t end up with a website that looks like a clone of thousands of other stores. On your admin screen, select ‘Themes’ option in the left navigation menu which gives you some basic settings changes. This allows you to make a duplicate of the theme.  The second option is ‘Customize Theme’ where you can test the controls all the basic functionality of your store to find out what your site is capable of.

The most common features will include:

• Uploading logos
• Color schemes
• Font choices
• Uploading slides to a homepage carousel
• Adding related item functionality to product pages
• Choosing how many items appear on each line of the collection pages

Many themes also offers repositioning elements on pages such as showing product images on the left, right or center of the page.

5. Adding Products

In navigation bar at left select ‘Products’. You can see a blue ‘Add a product’ button in the middle of the page. You can utilize this to add as much detail as needed about your products. Especially look at those that will help with SEO such as name, description, and URL. Include as many details as possible to help inform the customers about your items. Same screen will also help you upload product pictures and getting them rearranged without any worry about any particular order. Once everything is filled out, always remember to click the ‘Save product’ button in the top and bottom right corners.

Payment Gateways

A payment gateway gives you the facility of receiving payments from your customers via your website. Since every payment gateways is created different from other, you need to look at the following essential points while choosing the right payment gateway.

• Transaction Fees
• Card Types
• Offsite Checkout

Remember that payment gateway transaction fees are additional on Shopify’s own transaction fees. Depending upon your Shopify plan, you can save on these extra costs. Depending on your plan, you will receive these highly appealing rates.

• Basic 2.4% + 20p
• Professional 2.1% + 20p
• Unlimited 1.8% + 20p

Depending on how many transactions you make every month, it could be worth upgrading to take advantage of these savings.

Discounts

Discounts are used by merchants to attract more customers and build loyalty for brand by rewarding them. With Shopify Plus, you have a few ways to apply discount on products based on what you are selling, how much you’re able to discount and what is your customers’ price sensitivity. Here are a few examples:

Percent based discounts:

For example: 10% on product cart, 15% on new arrivals, or 25% on a particular item

Fixed amount discounts:

For example: AED 50 off your cart, AED 30 off on entire collection

Free shipping discounts:

For example: No charges for shipping on orders value of AED 300 or above

Limited time discounts:

For example: 20% on selected products till 31^st Aug ‘20

On certain limits:

For example: 10% on purchase upto AED 200, 20% on purchase upto AED 400 and 30% on purchase upto AED 600.

Also in Shopify Plus, you can control your discounts, pull up lists, check every discount, enable and disable discounts, or delete them.

6. Get Your Online Shop “LIVE”

Before your site can go live, it’s required to add a few more details about your company and how you plan to make deliveries and pay tax.

Taxes

1. Visit products page of your admin panel.
2. Select the name of a given product.
3. Move downwards to the section called “Variants”.
4. Don’t forget to tick the boxes next to Charge Taxesand Require Shipping if you don’t included these with your products earlier.
5. Few e-commerce websites doesn’t require charging taxes or shipping on digital goods while many others tend to charge for both.
6. If you are planning to ship your product to customers, make sure to enter the product’s weight in the appropriate field.

Shipping

1. From your store admin, go to the Settings > Shipping page.
2. In the “Shipping rates” section, see if you have set a weight-based shipping rate and adjust it according to your product’s specifications.

7. Add a Domain Name

To get your site live you’ll need a domain name. Either you can purchase a domain from Shopify or it will be added to your store automatically. These will cost $9-$14 USD per year. Or you can purchase a domain from a third party such as GoDaddy. These domains start from $10.00 USD/year.  Now you need to follow the procedure for making new Shopify store live on a third party domain name.

• Add the new domain in Shopify
• Update DNS records
• Remove any storefront passwords
• Set as primary if relevant

Congratulations, Your New Shopify Store is Ready!

If you have managed that way – congratulations. You should now have a fully working online store. If you want to explore alternatives, see below:

Alternatives for Shopify?

You can also use WooCommerce for developing an online store. It’s cheaper but requires a knowledge. Either way, it can be a great alternative. For more detailed review you can read this – Shopify vs. WordPress (WooCommerce).