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Starting a dropshipping business is incredibly simple. Thanks to platforms like Shopify, you only need a couple of days to set up a store then you can start selling to customers all over the world.
By the time you finish reading this guide, you’d be able to create a Shopify store from scratch, populate it with the needed pages and products, make it look inviting, and introduce it to the world!
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Shopify is the biggest e-commerce platform in the world, so when it comes to dropshipping, they are the leaders in this industry.
One of the main reasons I recommend Shopify is that they are supportive of dropshipping, they provide a variety of integrations to make the process easier and smoother.
It’s very easy to set up a store through a drag and drop builder, you don’t need to do any coding, they do the hard work for you, you simply edit the storefront, adding products, editing the navigations, buttons, pages and you are good to go.
In addition, Shopify has the capabilities to handle your sales, marketing, and payments.
While retail is dying, entrepreneurs are flocking towards e-commerce and looking for ways to create digital storefronts.
There are certainly many e-commerce solutions, for me, I had huge success with Shopify, it’s one of the best and easiest to use.
In this article, I will be sharing the simple step-by-step process that you can follow to set up your store.
By the time you finish reading, you’ll have your own e-commerce store with Shopify, ready to sell products to a global audience
It’s also important to mention that beyond all of this, Shopify may seem complicated, but it’s actually very easy to use, they provide a range of features and tools, besides several guides on how to make the most of its solution.
It’s good to check their rich-content blog and the tools they provide.
The Advantages of Shopify
- Shopify will act as your hosted e-commerce solution. This will allow you to easily create a professional-looking store, display your products and take payments from your customers.
- You are allowed to add your own domain.
- They are supportive of dropshipping, they provide a variety of integrations to make the process easier and smoother.
- It’s very easy to set up a store through a drag and drop builder, you don’t need to do any coding, they do the hard work for you, you simply edit the storefront
- It tracks, processes, and manages all your payments and orders, allowing you to focus on building a brand.
And much more.
The downsides of Shopify
Shopify doesn’t let you control the backend (website, coding, hosting, etc…) which may make you feel a bit restrictive, to be honest.
You truly have an alternative which is WordPress. But if you’re looking for an easy and simple method, choose Shopify.
As I’ve mentioned earlier, and always do, I had a huge success with Shopify, for me, it’s definitely worth giving Shopify the control of my backend.
I don’t need to worry about hosting, coding, or anything related to this time-consuming stuff.
Another great point to mention is crucial when it comes to e-commerce and online presence, Shopify is a big company, they are the leaders in this industry, and the chances of a Shopify store getting hacked are quite low compared to a WordPress website.
I’ve got you this proof from our friend Google. This image below shows the most hacked platforms:
You can’t even see Shopify on the list, and WordPress accounted for 90% of all the hacks.
What Are The Steps To Starting A Store?
If you don’t need any further convincing, and just want to know how to create a Shopify store, follow these steps.
Step 1: Sign up to Shopify
Head over to the Shopify homepage and click on “start a free trial” to create an account.
>> Start your 14-day free trial here <<
Since that Shopify offers a 14-day trial, you don’t need to enter your credit card details. All you have to do is to provide a valid email, choose a password and pick a name for your business.
In this section, it asks for some personal information, name, address, phone number, etc…
| ✔️ Related: Check out this article to learn more about Shopify payment packages. (Open in a new tab) |
When done with this, Shopify will take you to the store’s backend.
With that being said, you are done with the first step towards having a successful online store.
Step 2: Surf Shopify’s panel
Now you need to understand the Shopify admin panel.
There are several clickable tabs as you can see, here’s what they offer:
Home: Where you can see what’s happening on your Shopify store.
Order: The place where your first order shows up (You’ll get in love when you receive your first order)
Product: Here you can manage your items, adding products, collections, setting up a gift card, and more.
Customers: This area will give you access to customer’s information, personal details, their sales volume previous orders and more.
Analytics: Here where the reports of sales performance are made, you can also have a live view for all visitors on your store, by having the ability to know where they are located on the world map.
Apps: This is where you can manage and add apps that can extend the functionality of your store.
Online-store: The place where you can find your store’s settings, including personal info, taxes, checkout setting, and much more.
⭐ I’d like to thank you for taking it that far, and as gratitude, I’d like to give you a free course on how to launch your Shopify store in as low as few days or maybe hours. You can find some helpful resources there too. It will pop-up somewhere on the screen, check it!
Step 3: Add your products
This is how you add products to your store, here is where I recommend Oberlo to import products.
It’s one of the best dropshipping apps, and it makes the process simple. Don’t worry as a beginner, Oberlo is completely for FREE, which makes it affordable for you.
You will only be paying once you start receiving 50 orders a month, at that level, you’ll still be making money, good money actually!
Head over to apps, and search for Oberlo.
Oberlo is a useful app, you connect it to Shopify, and download its extension on chrome, you can import any product to your Shopify store with a click, edit it’s description and price and simply publish it!
Oberlo is a fulfillment app at a first level, besides that, they have a marketplace for products and suppliers.
Now if you want a strong suppliers platform, I always recommend SaleHoo.
Related: Learn more about how to find quality products and suppliers for your dropshipping business. (Open in a new tab)
Here’s what you can expect from this strong platform:
In SaleHoo, you can assess the reliability of a supplier using various factors:
- The cost of goods
- The number of suppliers on the platform
- The number of products the dropshipping supplier offers
- Do they fulfill orders automatically?
- What is the product’s quality?
- Shipping times
- Will the supplier let you brand the products in your store’s name?
- Do they ship globally?
Step 4: Setting your product’s price and description
Your customers won’t get the chance to physically touch your products, so your images should deliver high experience expectations.
It’s important to have a good description of every single product as well, indicating all benefits, features, and what problem does the product solves.
This is how it looks like after you import it to your store. This gives you the flexibility to add tags to your products, which are used and act as labels, allowing you to categorize your products with ease.
Now, an important topic to dive into, Pricing.
Pricing is a very important component on your store when it comes to pricing, you’ll get these three fields to work with:
Price: This is the price of the product that will appear to customers.
Compare price: This option is when you want to show your customers that an item is on a sale. It will display this field as the previous price before the discount.
Cost per item: the cost from the supplier.
In this case, you’re selling this item for $300, and it will show people the previous price before the sale, which will create Scarcity, and acting as it’s a good deal.
According to the previous example, if you sell 20 of this item, Shopify will display it as “Out of stock”,
If you have the stock-keeping unit (SKU) available for the product, enter it in the SKU field.
For those who aren’t aware of SKUs, they’re internal identifiers that help you find products faster. I recommend you to insert a standardized SKU for every item right from the beginning.
Save product when done with it, and it should be displayed on your store, in the section of the product, at that point, Congrats, you’ve just added your first product to your Shopify’s store.
Step 5: Customize your theme, pages, and navigations
It’s also good to enhance the appearance of your online store, to make it look inviting. Shopifywill give you a free theme which they call (Brooklyn).
Now you got two options, it all depends on your budget, you can either replace this free theme with a more professional one, or you can edit the existing one to reflect your business and it’s goals.
What if I tell you that you’ve only got 3 seconds to catch the customer’s reaction?
With that being said, you need a very professional, eye-catching theme, because it will be your business’s heart-beat.
Always remember, when it comes to dropshipping, speed is everything, you don’t want a slow theme with bad user experience, and here come the premium paid themes.
Shopify offers a variety of themes and layouts, that you can choose from and select the one you like best.
If you are willing to invest a little more in your site to make it look more inviting and professional, I suggest you use a Pro Theme, that’s optimized for mobile as well, because obviously.
It’s an investment that’s worth it, the conversions would be higher!
A new look has successfully been given to your store!
Now, your website should contain the needed pages that will take responsibility to educate people about what is your business all about.
To add a new page, simply navigate to the online store section, pages, add a title, body, and hit save.
Once you’ve created the needed pages, now you need to create a path for shoppers to navigate these pages.
Some pages take place in the header of the homepage, like collections, about us, and contact us.
While other pages take place in the footer, a good example of these pages is a privacy policy, terms of service, and others.
You are the one who’s responsible for which ones should go in header and footer, to do so, then follow these steps to create navigation on your website.
Head over to the online store section, navigation, select the header or the footer. Click “Add menu item” next.
Give a name to this item, then go to the “Link” field to select it from a list of products, collections, and pages you’ve already created.
Repeat the steps until your header and footer menu gets populated.
Now, you are getting closer to the professionalism that you are looking forward to, and in order to achieve more and more, and capture people’s trust, you need to be having a unique domain now.
Step 6: Setup a unique domain for your store
Shopify domain names originally will have this format by default: your-store-name.myshopify.com/admin.
Now it’s time to set up a domain to make your store official, which means that you convert the above domain into a proper www.mystore.com domain.
To do so, head over to the admin’s panel, online store, domains, and there you will be able to get a new domain.
The domain’s cost is ridiculously cheap, it’s something between $5-15 a year.
After successfully connecting a domain to your Shopify store, all that’s left is to set up your payment methods, in order to be able to start receiving orders and capture payments.
Step 7: Setup your payment methods
To receive money in your corporate bank account or activate an alternative payment processor, go to your Shopify store’s Settings.
Now choose “Payment providers” to configure what account you want to receive your money in.
While Shopify supports several alternative payment methods, PayPal Express and Shopify Payments are configured by default. Both of these charge their standard fees on sales.
For using PayPal, you’ll need to create a merchant account. This can be done by logging into your personal PayPal account and finding the option to upgrade to a merchant account.
Regardless of the payment method, you end up choosing, Shopify will sync your customer’s payments with their orders, allowing you to track what has been bought, who bought it, and how, without leaving Shopify if you’re using the native payment configuration.
Also, you get access to accelerated checkouts such as Apple Pay. These enable prospective customers to check out seamlessly, enhancing their experience and helping you increase sales.
Conclusion
Now after you’ve learned how to set up your Shopify in 7 major simple steps, that’s basically it! You have a well-optimized website, filled with products, with all the needed pages, navigations, and a very good looking theme.
It’s time to introduce it to the world by signing up for a paid Shopify plan.
While the free trial lets you use most of Shopify’s features, you can’t sell anything until you become a paid monthly user.
Overall, Shopify will be ideal for you, whatever you want to sell online, and the good news: if this is a business model you’ve liked, but still not convinced, you’ve got a 14-days free trial, that you can take advantage of and learn about this platform.
Start by testing its waters, you don’t need to provide your credit card details for the purpose.
Finally, if this is a business model you like to be involved in, give it a try, because you’re armed with knowledge now. Take action, because you are closer than you think.
Because you, our readers are precious to us, we’ve come up with this amazing course, that can teach you how to launch your own Shopify store without paying big bucks to some gurus. Don’t forget to grab your seat, it’s for free!
Do you have previous experience with Shopify? What has this article added to your info? Share your thoughts in the comment box, and I will reply back as soon as possible.
Finally, you, our readers, are so precious to us! And in fact, you’re the reason behind creating this awesome blog! For EcomDimes readers, we’ve grabbed you a $300 OFF voucher for America’s most comfortable mattress. Sleep better and do more! 😊
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Cheer,
Odeh Ahwal
