Shopify Tutorial for Beginners: Get Your Shopify Store Up and Running in 10 Easy Steps
In this Shopify tutorial for beginners learn how to set up and run your own Shopify store in 10 simple steps.
Follow this video tutorial to learn Shopify basics in a step-by-step approach.
In this guide you will learn:
- Shopify Tutorial for Beginners: What is Shopify?
- How Much Does it Cost to Use Shopify? – Shopify Plans and Pricing
- Step 1: How to Use Shopify for Free? – Start the Shopify Free Trial
- Step 2: Learn Shopify Basics – How to Add and Activate Shopify Theme?
- Step 3: How to Remove Website Password Protection to your Shopify Store?
- Step 4: How to Use Shopify with Custom Domain Name?
- Step 5: How to Add Collections to Your Shopify Store?
- Step 6: How to Add Products to Your Shopify Store?
- Step 7: How to Use Shopify to Add Pages to Your Store?
- Step 8: How to Publish Blogs on Your Shopify Store?
- Step 9: Exploring the Shopify Setting Tabs
- Step 10: How to Fulfil Orders on Shopify?
- Shopify Analytics
- Shopify Marketing
- Shopify Tutorial for Beginners: Meet Shopify Apps
- FAQs
- Closing Thoughts
Shopify Tutorial for Beginners: What is Shopify?
Shopify is a very popular platform to set up your online store. It has all the features you need to run an online retail store. It covers all the bases, from managing day to day activities like putting up a storefront and keeping track of inventory to advanced features like analytics, customer support, and ad campaigns.
No wonder it is very popular among online retailers. Moreover, this one-stop solution to all your retailing needs is easy to learn. In fact, if you follow this guide, you can set up your own digital store in a matter of a few hours.
Isn’t it exciting?
Let us get started with this beginners guide to Shopify. Here you will learn all the basics of setting up your store on Shopify.
How Much Does it Cost to Use Shopify? – Shopify Plans and Pricing
Shopify has three types of plans in three different price ranges.
- Basic Shopify for 29 USD per month
- Shopify for 79 USD per month
- Advanced Shopify for 299 USD per month
You can find more information about what these individual plans have to offer in the table below. I recommend you carefully read all the details and see which one best suits your needs. Generally, I suggest beginners start with the basic Shopify plan as it has all the necessary features to set up and run your new online store.
But, if you own a mid-sized business that sells quite a few products, opt for the 79 USD Shopify plan, to utilise more features.
If you have been in the business for a long time and really know what you are looking for, then go for the Advanced Shopify plan. It has all the unlocked features like lower transaction fees and advanced reports.
Step 1: How to Use Shopify for Free? – Start the Shopify Free Trial
If you are still confused about which plan to choose, don’t worry. Shopify offers you a 14-day free trial. In this trial period, you can test and experiment with all the Shopify features. This will definitely give you a better understanding of the features and help you choose the best plan that suits your needs.
In order to start the free trial go to the Shopify pricing page and click on the ‘Start your Free Trial’ button. This will take you to a sign-up form that asks you to fill in your email, password, and store name. Enter these details and click on ‘Create your store’.
Please note that you can change your store name any time later. Also, you can use custom domains to set up your store. We’ll see how to do this later.
Now, the next step is completely optional. Shopify will ask you if you are already selling, your revenue, and other industry details. If you are willing to provide this information, then fill up the blanks and click next.
Now, you have to fill in the important information like name, address, phone number, and if your business is registered or not. Once you are done with that click Ok. You have successfully created your free trial account in Shopify. This will take you to the Shopify dashboard page.
Here, click on the ‘Online Store’ button under the ‘Sales Channel’ section of your Shopify dashboard. This will lead you to your storefront and see what it looks like. Since you have just created the store, it will be empty and filled with dummy products and text.
Step 2: Learn Shopify Basics – How to Add and Activate Shopify Theme?
The first order of business is to set up a theme for your storefront. This will make your store look more elegant and professional. It will also help you impart a unique look and feel to your online business.
To do this, click on the Customize Theme button in the Shopify Dashboard.
Shopify Theme Library
In the themes section, you can see that the ‘Debut’ theme is activated by default. Scroll down to locate the Theme Library where you can find a collection of both free and paid themes.
Click on Explore Free Themes to browse them. Here, select any theme you like and click on View Demo Store to see how it looks on the front end. If you are satisfied with the looks of a theme, you can add it to your store by clicking on the Add Theme button on the top.
Next, you have to activate them in your Theme Library. Locate the newly added theme and click on the drop-down menu called Actions and choose Publish. Now, this theme will be activated on the live store. You can check if it is applied to the store by clicking on View Store.
Customize Shopify Theme
You can now customize the theme as per your needs. To do this, locate the added theme you want to customize in your Theme Library. Now, click on the Customize Theme option next to it. This will take you to a page where you will have a lot of options to customize your theme and make it look more beautiful.
Based on your selected theme, you will find different kinds of options on the Customize Theme page.
Header Section
As the first step, you can add your business’s logo under the Header Section if you have a logo ready. Click on the Add Logo option under the Header section and upload your logo if you have already created one.
You can also make the header and logo transparent here by clicking on the respective options. There is also an option to add or remove the search bar for your website. Choose Modal under Navigation to add the search bar to your store.
There are also provisions here for adding and editing Menus to your website. Menus are the main drop-down lists in the header area which lead to the various sections of the store.
If you scroll down you will locate an option to customize the footer menu in a similar fashion. The footer section usually contains information about payment options. It also has provisions to change website language and region.
Another interesting feature you can find here is the option to add Announcement Bars. Add them at the very top of your home page or all pages to announce offers, sales, discounts, or any other call to action. The announcement bars can be linked-to offer pages or other special landing pages on your website.
Slideshow Section
Under the Slideshow section, you can add custom images to the main background of your store site. Click on the Slide option under the Slideshow section and upload a background image if you have created one.
Once you do this, you will get various image options to customize your background picture. You can change the size, position and opacity of your background image here.
There are also options to add and edit the text inside this background image. You can also add and edit the button labels to your slides to cycle through them. Now you can add multiple slides in a similar fashion. You can also modify the slideshow speed by clicking on the slideshow option.
Rich Text Section
Next, there is a rich text section where you can add and modify the main body of text on your website. Make sure that it looks catchy and compelling to your potential customers.
Add Collections and Featured Collections
So, at this stage, you can add and modify the collection list of your store if you already have your product collections ready. Similarly, you can also set up a featured collection section here using the same option.
Add Newsletters
There is also a newsletter section here. It prompts users to enter their emails and get info on offers, discounts and other news about your store. You can edit the text displayed inside this newsletter section here.
Now, if you want to add more sections to your store, you can do so by clicking the Add Section button. You’ll get the complete list of sections you can add here. Choose any one of these to add and modify it. For example, you can add images, call-to-action-buttons, redirect buttons, maps to your brick and mortar store, or even blog posts here.
Once you have modified your online store to your requirements, please save the changes by clicking on the Save button on the top. You can now preview how your website will look from the front end on various platforms.
Step 3: How to Remove Website Password Protection to your Shopify Store?
Since you are in the free trial, your Shopify website will be password protected. That means visitors can only access it if they know the password. You can remove this feature and make your store public right away by clicking on the Disable Password button in the Shopify dashboard.
But, Shopify will prompt you to choose a pricing plan before it allows you to continue further.
Don’t worry, you will not be charged any payment till the 14-day free trial ends. So, go ahead and choose an appropriate pricing plan. I suggest you do this, to closely follow along with this Shopify tutorial for beginners.
Next, you will be asked to link either a credit card or PayPal account as payment methods. No money will be deducted from your account during the free trial. So, go ahead and fill up the necessary details.
Congratulations, your online store is completely open to the public now and is free to use for 14 days.
Step 4: How to Use Shopify with Custom Domain Name?
Did you notice that whenever you visit your Shopify store, its URL is displayed as ‘example.store.my.shopify.com’? This is an auto-generated domain name for your store. If you want to change this to a custom domain name like example.com, example.net etc, you either need to purchase a domain name here or link it to your Shopify account if it is already purchased.
To do this, click on the Add Domain button in the Dashboard area. If you are looking to purchase a new domain, click on the Buy New Domain button on the top. Please note that it involves a recurring yearly expense and is not included in the Shopify plans.
Click on any available domains inside the scrollable list to purchase it. Once you are in the payments section, Shopify will send a verification email to you. Click on it in your email inbox and follow the instructions to activate and link your domain to your store.
Once you have done this, your online store will appear with your custom domain name.
Step 5: How to Add Collections to Your Shopify Store?
Now it’s time for us to add collections to our Shopify store. To add collections, go to the Shopify dashboard and click on the Products > Collections. We don’t have any collections yet.
Let’s create one by clicking on, Create a collection. We have to enter basic information here like the title, description, and set a featured image.
Next, you need to select the collection type, i.e manual or automated. In the manual type, you have to manually add products to the collection. In automated, you can set criteria or conditions for the products so that they are sorted automatically in these collections. For example, if you want to group all products above 100 USD together, you can use the automated collection.
Once you are done with the collection details, don’t forget to click on the Save button. You can add more collections to your store by repeating the same process.
Step 6: How to Add Products to Your Shopify Store?
Next, it is time for us to add the product details in the following section. If there is one thing you should learn from this Shopify tutorial for beginners, this is it.
To do this, click on All Products. Now, select the Add Products option. Here you can add as many products as you want and set their details like title, description, image, status, and vendor name.
Note that you can assign the product to collection types here. There are some advanced options like shipping variants, inventory (in the pricing section), etc. Moreover, you can set SKUs, assign barcodes, toggle out-of-stock selling ON/OFF, set quantity, etc.
In the pricing section, you can calculate profits by adding the cost per product details and enabling/disabling taxes. Similarly, you can calculate shipping by adding the product weight details.
Below, in the product variants section, you can specify the different sizes, colours, materials or styles that your product comes in. You can add different images for each variant and assign different prices for each variant.
After assigning your product its type and its collection, you have to specify the tags related to your product. For example, if I am selling a t-shirt, I can add tags like ‘white’, ‘round neck’, and ‘small’. These are used to describe my product.
Finally, make your product active and click on Save. Congratulations, your product is now live on your digital store. If you want to, you can preview your product in the store. Add more products in a similar fashion. You can learn more about adding products with multiple variants and assigning them to collections or featured collections here.
Step 7: How to Use Shopify to Add Pages to Your Store?
Next, we have to add pages to our Shopify store. There are a few important pages that every e-commerce store should have. For example, privacy policy terms and conditions, refund, policy, etc.
To do this go to Online Store > Pages.
Now, click on the Add page option here. This takes you to the page editor where you can edit the page details. Don’t forget to add a title name and start writing the content of the page in the description box. You can do all the regular text formatting like alignment, bold, italics etc. Add bullet points, images, tables etc to give your content better structure.
Once you are through all of this, click on Save and the page will be created. You can see how it looks on the live site. Now, create all the necessary pages for your online store by following the same process.
Step 8: How to Publish Blogs on Your Shopify Store?
Blogs are the best way to guide your customers about what’s trending in the market and what is interesting about your products. It will drive a lot of engagement and traffic to your online store, which will eventually convert to more sales.
To create a blog post, you just need to click on Online store > Blog post > Create a blog post. Here, enter the title and write the content of the blog post. Add an excerpt, set a featured image, and set the visibility to the public before clicking on Save. Don’t forget to assign tags to your blogs before publishing. This helps in categorizing your blogs for later use.
Your blog will be publicly visible to everyone. You can view it by clicking on the View button. They will start appearing automatically in the blogs section of your online store.
Step 9: Exploring the Shopify Setting Tabs
Next, let us see what the ‘Settings’ tab has to offer. I’ll give you a brief overview of these settings. You can learn more about them in detail here.
Under the ‘General Settings’ tab, you can edit your store name, edit your store, email sender, email, and store industry, currency etc.
Next in the Notifications settings section, you will have settings related to your notifications related to order confirmation, notification, order edited, ordered cancelled refund, gift card, create payments, error, fulfilment request. You can use them as per your requirements.
Likewise, in the languages section, you can add or remove supported languages to your store.
Now, the payments section is very important. You have to set up at least one payment method for purchases. You can either add PayPal express checkout API key if you already have one or you can connect to any third party service provider from the list. Add all the mandatory payment details here to set up your payment methods.
Rest, there are some advanced features like setting up multiple sales channels, local delivery settings, tax rate, shipping rate and location settings. You can learn more about these in the video tutorial.
Step 10: How to Fulfil Orders on Shopify?
After setting up a basic online store, it is time for us to learn how to fulfil orders on Shopify. As soon as a customer orders a product from your website, it’ll automatically appear in the ‘Orders’ tab of your dashboard. Click it to see everything about the order, from customer name to product type/variant ordered.
Now, you can manually modify some of these details if needed. To fulfil any order click on the ‘Fulfil’ button next to it. This will generate a tracking_id, which should be mapped with the courier’s shipping_id.
As soon as your product is delivered to the customer, you will receive a success message in the Shopify dashboard.
Shopify Analytics
The analytics tab is where you’ll be able to see information about the total sales, how many people have visited your store, how many sessions there were, returning customer rate, total orders, average order value, conversion rate, etc.
Go to the ‘Report’ section to see additional reports. You can go to live view, to see how many people are active on your website, as well as their location.
Shopify Marketing
In the ‘Marketing’ section, you can create paid marketing campaigns like e-mail campaigns, run ads on social media, and manage blog posts related to campaigns. Some of these campaigns may require special Shopify apps to be installed.
Shopify Tutorial for Beginners: Meet Shopify Apps
Shopify Apps enable you to add additional features or applications to your Shopify store. If you visit the Shopify app store, you will see that there are many apps in various categories for you to choose from.
This opens up a whole new world of possibilities in Shopify. You can integrate third-party custom made apps into your store and get additional functionality. For example, If you want to add an app for SEO that optimizes your blog posts and other content for search engines, you can go ahead with it.
This is what makes Shopify a very powerful platform for online retailing.
FAQs
How to cancel Shopify subscription?
You can always cancel your Shopify subscription any time you want. Just go to the ‘Plan’ section on your Shopify settings page and click on the ‘Cancel Subscription’ button. Re-confirm or review your cancellation details. Once again click on the ‘Cancel Subscription and Close Store’ option and click on ‘Continue’. Enter your password one last time to cancel the subscription.
How to remove Powered by Shopify?
Select your active theme in the themes section and click on ‘Edit Languages’ under ‘Actions’ next to the theme. In the ‘Search Transalations’ search bar, type ‘powered’ without the quotes. Replace the two text boxes that contain ‘Powered by Shopify’ with a blank space or any other phrase of your choice. Save your changes before exiting.
Closing Thoughts
In this Shopify tutorial for beginners, I walked you through all the basics of setting up your online Shopify store. I suggest you immediately create a Shopify free trial account and learn Shopify by testing these basic concepts for yourself.
If you have any questions or doubts about this, please feel free to let us know in the comments section.
Simon Sez IT has been teaching IT for over ten years. For a low, monthly fee you can get access to 100+ IT training courses from industry experts. Do check out our free resources section for more high-quality guides.