In our previous post (found here), we shared some of our thoughts on why moving from Etsy to build your brand on Shopify could provide some incredible opportunities for your business!
To help you through this process, we thought we would show you some quick and easy ways to get started with your own Shopify website. Think about how exciting it would be to build your brand entirely into its own home, where people who come to visit can learn more about you without being distracted by all sorts of other random products and companies surrounding yours. When people visit your Shopify website, they will be warmly welcomed into YOUR home where they can connect and get to know YOU and YOUR brand. You will have their full attention from the first click!
So, without further ado, here are some super simple ways to start!
- Go to Shopify.com (US) or Shopify.ca (Canada)
- Enter your email address, password and store name.
- Create your Store and Start your Free Trial. Shopify is now offering 90 days free – amazing!). When your free trial comes to its close, we recommend the $29 platform! It’s affordable and you will have all the key features you need to get started. You can always upgrade in the future as you grow!
- Enter your name, email address, create password, store name and account.
- You will then enter the "back-end" of your Shopify account which will look something like this:
- Click "Online Channel", found on the left side of your home screen.
- Click Domains.
- Enter and buy the domain you would like to use for people to find your store (we used the example: www.chewchewchew.com)
- Click "Online Store" on the left hand side of your home page.
- Click "Themes".
- Scroll down to button that says “Visit Theme Store”. This will allow you to check out all different themes (some free/some cost money) and choose one that suits the look and style of your brand! *Remember to think of a theme style that will suit how you want to sell your products!
- Once you have chosen your theme, we found the easiest way to get going was to just tackle all of our product first.
- First think about your product and how you can divide it into categories (i.e. Silicone Pacificer Clips; Teether Toys).
- Create these key "Collections" that will help customers easily find your products.
- After you have made your collections, begin adding new products, one by one!
- Enter their title name, product description, weights, price, inventory and pictures!
- You can then also connect them to the proper collection they belong to. This will help all of your products be super organized on your website!
- This will take a lot of time, but is the CORE of your website!
- Under Online Store, click on the Pages tab.
- Create a Page that tells a little bit about who you are and your story- build your brand identity here!
- Under Online Store, click on the Themes tab
- Once there, click “Customize”.
- This area will allow you to personalize your theme as it appears to a customer when they open your website. This is the creative and fun part of your store! You can start to add more pictures and incorporate your products and collections in the way you want them to show up for customers when they visit!
- Once you have some of these key things done, you can then start to work through some more of the intricate details of your design and other technicalities of your website.
- Go to Settings on the bottom left of your homepage.
- Within this category, you will see all sorts of sub categories you can begin to fill in (i.e. Shipping, Billing, Payments, etc.) Just work through them bit by bit…as you go you will pick up valuable information and become even more familiar with the platform.
Voila—you are already well on your way! Of course, there will always be things to fine-tune and make even better. But the structure and foundation has been started for you! Once you have these basics in place, you can work continue working on building and strengthening your brand to become even more professional!
And remember... you won't conquer everything in one day! Take some time to work through these key steps, and then you can continually improve as you go!
For more helpful resources as you learn, check out Shopify's Blog here!
*We want to be clear we aren't receiving a dime from Shopify for this post! There are no affiliate links or monetary gains for us if you sign up with Shopify. We just wanted to share our personal experience as a company when we moved off the Etsy platform, and thought this might help and encourage our customers! Enjoy :)!