Setting up a Shopify online store in a few days

Setting up a Shopify online store - Here's how to do it in a few days

How to make a Shopify online store? What should the entrepreneur take into account here? We put together a condensed guide on how to set up a Shopify online store in a couple of days or a few days without any previous experience in building an online store or Shopify.

In this guide, we start from the fact that you already have a company, products sold in the online store and some visual elements.

Why choose Shopify when setting up an online store?

Let's start by briefly explaining why you should choose Shopify when there are other great options for setting up an online store. One of Shopify's leading competitors, which we also prefer in our online stores, is WooCommerce .

Like Shopify, WooCommerce is not an independent system, but an add-on that can be installed on a WordPress website. To set up a WooCommerce online store, you must have a pre-built WordPress website .

There are various plugins that can be installed in WooCommerce, which make the online store in question easier to implement without web development skills or previous experience with WordPress/WooCommerce. However, the appropriate add-ons must first be found and implemented, which is usually time-consuming if you don't know what you're doing. As a general rule, it can be said that setting up a Shopify online store is easier and faster for a beginner .

Setting up an online store on the Shopify platform does not require as much familiarity as WooCommerce or experience. The tools needed to set up a store can be found conveniently ready from Shopify. These include, for example, online store design tools, product management and hosting service already included in Shopify's packages. Like WooCommerce, additional services or integrations in Shopify do not need to be purchased separately.

Shopify is particularly appreciated by those online retailers and entrepreneurs who want to get started more easily and get their online store up and running quickly - even in a few days.

In terms of appearance, Shopify also gives you plenty of options to choose from a wide variety of themes that you can customize to your liking up to a certain point without any coding skills. It is easy even for a beginner to change e.g. fonts, colors and other online store details . If your online store requires more customization, then coding skills and professional help will come in handy.

The platform in question is therefore relatively simple to use, and in practice setting up a Shopify online store can take as little as a couple of days. In this case, as an online retailer, you need to have some materials ready, such as product texts and images, as well as visual elements of the brand, such as the logo, colors and fonts.

The 24/7 technical support also speaks for the Shopify online store, from which the entrepreneur can get answers to his questions if necessary. This can be especially important when you are setting up an online store on your own without outside help.

This is how setting up a Shopify online store is handled in practice

1. Create an account and set up a Shopify online store

The first step is the easiest – you register on the e-commerce platform and, of course, create a Shopify account. At the time of publishing this article, you can take advantage of a three-day free trial , before which you don't have to pay anything to set up a Shopify online store.

When you register for the store, you will first be asked for your personal information and the name of your online store. You should choose a unique and easy-to-remember and write name for the shop name - it can also be the name of your company or your domain name.

However, you do not need to know the final name of the online store at this point, as you can change it later if you wish. ‍

2. Choose a Shopify theme and Customize it

Next, you can start thinking about how you want your new online store to look. You probably already have some idea ready for this; the brand's visual elements, color scheme and guidelines that define the appearance of your online store.

In Shopify's Theme Store, you can find hundreds of free and paid themes, from which you can choose the look that suits you best and customize it to your liking.

With a free theme, you can mainly adjust the colors and fonts of the online store and change the logo. These themes may well be enough for some entrepreneurs and online retailers, but for the most part, paying for a Shopify theme is worth it . In this case, you can customize several elements and certainly create a professional-looking online store in line with your brand.

Paid themes also allow you to modify the code of your online store, allowing you to customize the appearance and individual functions to suit your needs. Anyone with the relevant need, suitable skills and time can do this cleverly themselves, others can seek help from a web developer who knows Shopify inside out, for example from us.

Free and paid themes are available in Finnish, but they are more widely available in English. If the language of your chosen theme is English, you can update it to Finnish or your customers' language using Shopify's functions. You can find more instructions on changing the language and other practical aspects in Shopify's own guide .

After you have made the necessary edits and officially adopted the theme, remember to publish it separately.

3. List the products you sell in the online store

The next step in setting up your Shopify online store is to add the products you sell. You can do this by going to the Products tab in Shopify and clicking "Add product".

Before you start adding products, you should familiarize yourself with how your competitors and other popular Shopify online stores organize and present their products, if you haven't already done so.

This is particularly important, because the solutions you end up using to present your products affect the success of your online store, either positively or negatively. Clear product categories and listings not only help potential customers find your products faster and easier, but also contribute to the online store's visibility in search engines, together with other solutions.

In the opposite situation, search engines may not understand the structure of your site. In the same way, the paying customer also gets confused, so he leaves the site quickly. Either scenario will weaken your sales and your ranking in search engine results.

In addition, when adding products to the online store, you should always consider that there is no opportunity to get to know the product online in the same way as in a traditional brick and mortar store. If not enough information is provided or the information provided is incorrect, the customer will probably not buy from your online store. It is therefore worth investing in product information .

At least take these things into account when listing products in the online store:

• Product titles: the title should make it clear what you are selling. A good product title is short and concise, arouses the customer's interest and contains keywords that potential customers use to search for your product online.
  
  
  

• Product descriptions: the most important features of your product and the benefits your customers receive should be found out from the product descriptions. The product description doesn't have to be very short, because in addition to pictures/videos, this is the only decent information that a potential customer will get about your product.
  
  However, it is not worth writing a novel. Make descriptions easy to read and quick to glance at by writing shorter paragraphs and including lists in the text. Remember to use relevant keywords in product descriptions as well.
  
  
  

• Product images and videos : make sure that the images and videos of the product are of high quality and show the product in the best possible light. Products can sometimes go unpurchased because of bad product images/videos, as low-quality online store content easily reduces trust in the product and your online store.
  
  
  

• Product groups/categories are important for both you and your customers, as they help potential customers find your products better and make product management easier as an online retailer. The products of the online store should be grouped based on, for example, product types, gender, age and offers or campaigns. ‍

4. Choose the best payment methods for your customers

In order to accept payments, you must first define the online store's payment methods. For this, Shopify flexibly offers many different options, but you should also weigh them carefully based on your customers' preferences.

If you run an online store in Finland, the entrepreneur should consider the most popular payment method among Finns, i.e. online bank payment . If this payment method is not available in your online store, at least some customers may miss out on purchases.

According to Visma, after online banking, the most popular payment methods in 2022 were payment cards, mobile payments, invoices and partial payments, so online retailers should consider offering these payment methods to Finnish customers as well.

Shopify offers its users its own Shopify Payments payment service, which allows customers to pay by card, Apple Pay and Google Pay. Online bank payment is not offered by Shopify itself, so this option may be more suitable for an online store with mostly international customers.

When choosing a payment service for your online store, remember to take into account the fees charged. Most payment services charge something for each payment transaction. It would be ideal to find a service with relatively low fees.

In the domestic market, the best option is probably to use a third-party payment service that enables online bank payments. According to our experience, the best payment service provider in terms of price-quality ratio is the Finnish Paytrail .

5. Add the missing information of the online store

You cannot start a Shopify online store with incomplete information. Before publishing your online store to the public, you should add information about your company and your online store operations.

From the settings of your Shopify account, take care of at least your company's information (for example, contact information, social security number and VAT number), the value added tax charged on the products, the delivery methods and prices of the online store, and the information to be asked from customers at the checkout . Before the publication , the payment, delivery and return terms and the GDPR-compliant Privacy Statement must also be added to the online store, which can be found online.

At this point, remember to also choose the delivery methods of your online store carefully. Delivery methods should be offered as versatile as possible, this way customers can choose the most suitable option for them and the creation of a sale is not caught up in the lack of a suitable delivery method.

In Finland, good and comprehensive alternatives are for example Posti, Matkahuolto and PostNord, but in the international market it may be more profitable to choose DHL and/or UPS as a supplier. Our tip is that you should choose a delivery method for your online store that is certainly familiar to your customer and thus also a safe option.

In the online store, you should also pay attention to the time of notification of postal charges. If you can present them to the customer sooner rather than later, do it, because surprising postage costs announced at the checkout can interrupt even more deals. ‍

6. Choose a domain name and publish the online store

When you have completed all the previous things, it is time to choose a domain name and publish the online store for customers to see.

As a domain name, you can use the free option offered by Shopify. However, if you do not want the address of your online store to be of the category www.maijankauppa.myshopify.com , you will have to pay for the ID. We recommend paying for the ID, because the address in the example doesn't look very professional and might drive away more demanding customers.

You can get .com and other international domains directly from Shopify. You can't get Finnish domains from Shopify, so you have to get a domain ending in .fi from somewhere else, for example from Zoner . On the other hand, you can easily connect the purchased and already existing domain to your Shopify store from the settings.

If you are in a hurry to get the store up and running, not all the things we covered in the article need to be done right away, but you can publish the online store prematurely and come back to refine details, such as product texts, later. However, we recommend filing the store in as representative a condition as possible before you let your customers surf the pages.

If you have some of the materials ready, setting up a Shopify online store may well only take a couple of days.

If everything is not ready, make sure that even the unfinished online store works flawlessly, is easy and comfortable for the customer to use, and that its content is of high quality. You should also check the store for typos and, for example, test the functionality of all buttons, links and other functions before publishing.

Remember that sales are not made without marketing

As with all commerce, if you don't market your online store, people won't find it either. We therefore provide a few extra tips to ensure that potential customers find your online store now and in the future.

Here's how to make sure your Shopify online store sells:

• Make sure you've polished your product titles and descriptions to be attractive and optimized with relevant keywords that your products are searched for on Google. Produce high-quality and wide enough content for the entire site, don't leave the online store half-empty. Good content is not only for search engines, it increases trust in your company and your online store.
  
  
  

• Optimize your Shopify online store for search engines, even at a basic level. Search engine optimization includes continuous and partly technical measures, but you can improve visibility in search engines just by optimizing the images and texts of the online store and removing unnecessary things from the store that slow down its loading time.
  
  
  

• To make the customer more likely to buy when they land on your website, make sure that the Shopify online store is as easy to use as possible and the page experience is as straightforward as possible. When designing your Shopify online store, put yourself in the customer's position and ask yourself at least the following questions: What kind of online store and layout is the easiest to navigate? How do I organize the products so that the customer can find them easily? How can I simplify the checkout process?

• Make sure that the online store you plan is definitely fast (loading time less than a couple of seconds, otherwise you risk annoying customers leaving the site) and that it works flawlessly on different devices; on mobile, computer and tablet . An efficiently running online store helps promote both search engine visibility and sales.
  
  
  

• Advertise your Shopify online store on social media and/or search engines. Facebook, Instagram and Google advertising can give a considerable boost to online store traffic and thus sales. It should be noted, however, that digital advertising will not save the sales of a poorly made online store if the things we mentioned are not in order before the advertising starts.
  
  
  

• In order for the online store to support sales as efficiently as possible, it is of course also necessary to invest in a professional and beautiful appearance. In this way, make sure that the visual choices of the online store, such as the logo, fonts and color scheme, communicate your brand correctly, and that the choices in question are suitable for the online world.

For example, the wrong type of font slows down the loading time of an online store, a logo with an inappropriate file format is easily pixelated, and a bad choice of colors often means that the website either does not have enough contrast or that the entire look of the online store suffers. In this case, it may be difficult for the customer to read the text of the online store and the online store will not look as good as you planned it to look.

However, branding goes beyond visual elements, as it tells who your company is and how you differ from competing companies and online stores . With a carefully planned brand, you inspire trust and create a competitive advantage for yourself. That's why it's better to invest in creating a strong brand before setting up your Shopify online store than after.

Investing in a professional online store is often necessary if you want to build a memorable and trust-inspiring brand and an effectively converting (selling) online store.

You can definitely succeed in the goal yourself, but it will inevitably take more time with learning and mistakes. If you definitely want an effective Shopify online store right away, you should contact an expert in the field directly.

Growly implements goal-oriented brand design and effectively converting online stores with years of expertise, the latest example being the bikini brand Halla Halla . You can find our designed online stores here .

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Starting vs Running a Shopify Online Store

Hopefully, these tips will help you create an effective Shopify online store if you decide to do it yourself. However, we remind you one last time that setting up any online store (be it Shopify or any other online store) is vastly different from running it.

Although setting up a Shopify online store can in principle only take place in a few crazy days (not taking into account other things, such as product and brand design), store maintenance and marketing will usually take at least days or weeks per month in the future .

If you yourself cannot invest in the success of your online store, you can also consider outsourcing marketing to a specialist company.

At Growly, we have already helped more than 150 companies achieve results with, among other things, web design, conversion optimization, search engine optimization and digital advertising, and we would be happy to help you too.