How to Build Shopify Stores in 2024🔥: Quick 15 Mins Guide

Below are the 7 steps by which you can build your own store using Shopify:

1) Sign Up with Shopify

To start, visit Shopify.com. To start creating the account, fill out the signup form.

• Fill in the required details and then click on the button named ‘Create your store now.’
• You need a unique name for your Shopify account; otherwise, if an account with the same name exists, you will be asked to opt for another name.
• After this, you will need to fill in some of your personal details, such as address, email, contact information, etc.

It will ask you questions related to your business, such as what you aim to sell. If you’re experimenting with Shopify, you can choose ‘I’m just playing around’ in the ‘Do you have products?’ dropdown.

Once completed, click ‘I’m done.’

2) Start Setting Up Your Online Shop

After signing up, it will redirect you to the homepage of your website or newly created store.

Now, you are prepared to initiate customizing your store’s physical appearance, uploading products, and setting up modes of payment and cargo shipping.

3) Snazz Up Your Store With a Theme

Before stocking up your shelves, give your shop a virtual makeover.

•  Step 1: Browse themes

While logging into Shopify, visit the Shopify theme store at themes.shopify.com. Here, you’ll find over 100 themes to choose from, including a wide range of free themes.

You can filter themes by paid or free, by industry (such as art, clothing, food, jewelry, etc.), and by features (such as a drop-down menu or newsletter integration). You can also sort themes by price, popularity, and most recent.

• Step 2: Check the theme details and reviews

Once you’ve found a theme you like, click on the theme’s sample image. You’ll be given more information about the theme, such as whether the theme is responsive (i.e., mobile compatible) and other theme features.

Scroll down to find these reviews and see what other users think of the theme.

• Step 3: Preview the theme

To see the theme in action, click view demo, which is next to the get theme button. If the theme comes in a range of styles, you can also view demos of the different styles by clicking on them.

• Step 4: Get the theme

Find a theme you like? Good job! Now click the green get theme button. Shopify will ask you to confirm that you want to install the theme.

Click publish as my shop’s theme. Don’t worry if you don’t feel 100% sure it’s the right theme for you. You can always change your mind later.

• Step 5: Customize your theme

After the theme has been installed, Shopify will let you know and give you the option to go to your theme manager and then click this.

Your theme manager shows published themes (the ones you installed or activated most recently) and unpublished themes (themes you previously installed).

To customize your themes, change the colors and fonts or click theme settings.

4) Add Products

A store isn’t a store without merchandise to sell! Now that you’ve polished up your shelves with a nifty theme, you’re ready to stock them full with products.

• Step 1: Add a product

To begin adding products, click the products tab in the menu on the left. Then click the add a product button.

• Step 2: Insert product details

This is when the work begins. For each product you list, you must enter a wide range of details. These include:

1. The product name
2. A product description
3. A product image
4. The type of product (e.g., board games, surfboards)
5. The vendor (i.e., the brand, e.g., Apple)
6. Price

You can also select whether to charge taxes on the produce, whether a shipping address is required (it’s not if you’re selling digital products or services), and the product’s weight to calculate shipping.

Set up collections (group of products)

A collection is any group of products that have some feature in common that customers might look for when visiting your store. For example, your customers might be shopping for:

• clothes specifically for men, women, or children
• items of a certain type, such as lamps, cushions, or rugs
• items on sale
• items in a certain size or color
• seasonal products such as holiday cards and decorations.

Products can appear in any number of collections. Your collections are usually displayed on your homepage and in the navigation bar.

This helps customers find what they’re looking for without having to click through your whole catalog.

Additionally, you can enter SEO information for the product and create product collections, which make it easier for customers to find what they’re looking for when browsing for products.

You’re also asked for some more advanced product information. This is optional but is handy for organizing your stock if you plan to sell a wide range of products. This information includes:

1. SKU– This is the code you use to track the stock in your inventory.
2. Barcode– The scannable lines that refer to your product’s data.
3. Compare at a Price– You can use this to show off your low prices compared to your competitors.

• Step 3: Save your product

When you’ve finished entering product details, click the green save button. Your product listing is complete.

5)  Edit Shopify settings

The majority of Shopify themes allow you to make 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’ from the left-hand navigation menu. On this page, you will see your live theme in a box at the top. In the top right-hand corner of that box will be two buttons.

The first one is of three dots, which gives you some basic settings changes. One of these allows you to make a duplicate of the theme.

We highly recommend you do this in case you make some changes you don’t like, then you can delete the duplicate and start again. The second button says ‘customize theme.’

If you click that, you will be taken to a page that controls all the basic functionality of your store.

This is a great time for you to have a thorough play with the settings and test out all the features so you can find out what your site is capable of.

The Most Common Features Will Include:

• Uploading logos
• 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
• Color schemes
• Font choices

Some themes also allow you to reposition elements on pages, such as showing product images on the left, right, or center of the page. You can also choose whether to display social like/tweet/pin/+1 buttons.

6) Get your online shop “LIVE”

Those are the basics of setting up a Shopify store. You’ve got a theme and products. All you need to do now is confirm which payment methods you accept, set your local tax rate, and confirm your shipping rate.

All these can be done in the store settings tab, which you open by clicking settings in the left-hand menu.

When you want to launch your store to the world, you’ll be asked for your credit card details. Shopify will start billing 14 days after you create your account.

Happy selling!

Before your site can go live, you need to add a few more details about your company and how you plan to make deliveries and pay taxes.

• Step 1. Confirm your General details

Please complete all your business information on this page. Also, use Google Analytics. This can prove to be an invaluable source for tracking your store’s visitors.

• Step 2. Configure Tax settings

1. Go to the products page of your admin
2. Click on the name of a given product.
3. Scroll down to the section called “Inventory and Variants.”
4. Click on the edit link next to your product variant to open a dialog window.
5. Make sure the checkboxes next to charge taxes and requires shipping are checked if you need to include these with your products.
6. Some stores won’t need to charge taxes or shipping on products like digital goods. On the other hand, a T-shirt store will likely need to charge both.
7. If you are planning to ship your product to customers, make sure to enter the product’s weight in the appropriate field.

• Step 3. Set Up Shipping details for your product

If your shipping rates are too narrow, or you don’t give enough options, you may lose out on some sales.

Shopify will only calculate a shipping rate for your customers based on the rules that you define on the admin shipping page. To make sure you won’t lose any sales:

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

• Step 4. Test your order system

To test your system, you can simulate a transaction using Shopify’s bogus gateway.

To use the bogus gateway:

1. From your store, Admin> click Settings, then Payments to go to your Payments settings.
2. If you have a credit card gateway enabled, deactivate it before continuing. (Click edit, then deactivate, then confirm your deactivation.)
3. In the accept credit cards section, click select a credit card gateway to open the drop-down menu.
4. Scroll down the list to others, then click (for testing) bogus gateway.
5. Click activate (or reactivate if you’ve used the bogus gateway before).
6. Go to your storefront and place an order as a customer would. At checkout, enter the following credit card details instead of genuine numbers.

Step 5. Testing a real payment gateway with a genuine transaction

1. Make sure you’ve set up the payment gateway you want to test.
2. Make a purchase from your store as a customer would, and complete checkout using genuine credit card details.
3. Cancel the order immediately to refund yourself and avoid paying transaction fees.
4. Log in to your payment gateway to make sure the funds went through.

7) Consider Buying a Domain Name

To get your site live, you’ll need a domain name. You have two choices for this. Firstly, you can buy a domain from Shopify, and it will be added to your store automatically.

This saves you time, especially if you have no knowledge of hosting a website. These domains typically cost $9-$14 per year. Your second option is to purchase a domain from a third party, such as Go-Daddy.

These domains start from $1.99 a year. The downside is that you’ll have to redirect the DNS records yourself, which can seem daunting at first.

If you’re unable to come up with a good domain name, read my tips on how to choose a domain name. Here are the steps to put your new Shopify store live on a third-party domain name.

1. Add the new domain in Shopify

In the Shopify admin, from the left-hand navigation, go to settings and then domains and add your domain name using the ‘add an existing domain’ button.

2. Update DNS records

Login to your domain registrar and make the following changes to the DNS records:

• Replace the @ or main A record with the following IP address: 23.227.38.32
• Add or replace the www CNAME with storename.myshopify.com (i.e., your store Shopify link without the http bit, which you can see on the domains settings page)

3. Remove any storefront passwords

Otherwise, no one will be able to access your site even once it’s live.

4. Set as primary if relevant

While in settings > domains, you can choose your main domain by using the dropdown at the top of the screen:

Ensure that you also check the ‘redirect all traffic to this domain.’ This means that traffic to all other domains will be directed to your primary domain. This is crucial for good SEO.

5. Adding other domains 

You can repeat steps 1 and 2 with other domain names you own. All domain names will redirect to the ‘Primary’ domain, which you can change at any time with the ‘Set as primary’ option next to each domain name.

Note that the number of domain names you own has no influence on SEO.