How to Sell on Shopify: A Complete Step-by-Step Guide For Sellers

If you're looking to launch your own online store, Shopify is one of the most popular eCommerce platforms to have in your toolkit. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced seller, Shopify provides a user-friendly environment to build, grow, and scale your business. This guide will teach you all about how to sell on Shopify.

Shopify brings you the perfect platform to bring your eCommerce dreams to life. From setting up your account to launching your store, there’s much to catch up on! Let’s get started with setting up your Shopify store and turning your business idea into a reality.

Main Takeaways:

Shopify is a top choice for starting an online store, offering easy-to-use features and flexibility to customize your business as it grows.
Follow a step-by-step approach to set up your store, from choosing a plan and picking a unique store name to customizing the design and adding products.
Optimizing for SEO is a surefire way to boost your store’s performance. This can be done by making use of Shopify’s marketing features, and using analytics to monitor progress.
Efficient inventory management is essential to keep your stock levels accurate and ensure timely order fulfillment. Vendoo helps streamline this across multiple platforms.
Selling on multiple platforms can significantly increase your sales opportunities.

How to Sell on Shopify: 13 Steps to Launch Your Ecommerce Store

Launching a successful online store certainly isn’t a walk in the park! It requires careful planning and execution. Our comprehensive guide will walk you through 13 essential steps to set up and optimize your Shopify store. Whether it’s creating your account to managing orders and expanding your sales channels, we'll cover everything you need to know to get your store up and running smoothly.

Let’s dive in and break down the process into simple steps so you can start selling on Shopify with confidence.

1. Set Up Your Shopify Account

If you want to sell on Shopify, you’ll have to start by creating your account. This will put Shopify’s powerful tools in your hand, making it easy to set up, manage, and grow your online store. Let’s break it down:

Sign Up: Head over to the Shopify website and click on the “Start Free Trial” button. You’ll be asked to provide an email address, create a password, and choose a unique store name. Your store name will be part of your domain, so pick something memorable and reflective of your brand.
Choose a Plan: Shopify offers a variety of pricing plans to fit different business needs. From the basic features in the Basic Shopify plan to more advanced capabilities in Shopify and Advanced Shopify, you’ll find a plan that works best for the size and scope of your business.
Set Up Store Preferences: After choosing your plan, Shopify will ask you to customize your store’s preferences. At this point, you can specify your store’s currency, time zone, and business location. Make sure these are correct, since it’s crucial for accurate transaction reporting and tax calculations.
Provide Business Information: Shopify will then ask for some basic details about your business, such as your address, phone number, and tax information. This is important for payment processing and for keeping everything in compliance with your local tax regulations.

2. Choose a Store Name and Domain

After signing up for Shopify, the next step is to pick a name and domain that will wow your audience and reflect your brand’s identity. Here’s how to do it:

Pick a Unique Store Name: Your store name should be a reflection of your brand’s values, products, and target audience. Choose something that’s easy to remember, spell, and pronounce. A catchy name will stick with customers and make it easier for them to return. Aim for a name that is short but distinctive, and avoid using numbers or special characters, as these can confuse potential buyers.
Secure Your Domain Name: A custom domain (e.g., www.yourstorename.com) gives your store a professional appearance and helps win customer trust. You can buy a domain directly through Shopify. Another option could be to use a third-party provider like GoDaddy or Namecheap. Shopify makes it simple to purchase and connect your domain in just a few clicks.
Be Mindful of SEO: When choosing a domain, think about SEO. Ideally, your domain should include keywords that are relevant to your products or niche. This can boost your store’s search engine rankings. This does wonders to make it easier for potential customers to find you online. Keep it simple, and try to avoid overly complex names that might be hard to type or remember.

3. Set Up and Customize Your Shopify Store

Once you've secured your store name and domain, it's time to bring your Shopify store to life. Customizing your store is an essential step to ensure it represents your brand and provides a seamless shopping experience. Here’s how to make your store stand out:

Choose a Theme: Shopify offers a variety of professionally designed themes, both free and paid. Choose one that matches your brand’s aesthetic and ensures a smooth, responsive experience for visitors on both desktop and mobile devices. A mobile-friendly theme is particularly important, as more customers are shopping via smartphones.
Customize the Layout: Shopify’s drag-and-drop editor makes it easy to personalize your store’s layout. You can adjust everything from the homepage to product pages. This can make your site easy to navigate. Set up clear navigation menus, add essential pages (like “About Us” and “Contact”). Apart from these, you should also make sure your store is structured to guide customers through their shopping journey.
Optimize Design Elements: Pay attention to the design elements—colors, fonts, and images. Choose colors and fonts that reflect your brand’s identity and are easy on the eyes. Keep the layout clean and user-friendly. A visually appealing store can win customer trust and encourage sales. Add high-quality images and product descriptions that align with your brand's personality and the experience you want to deliver.

4. Add Products to Your Online Store

Now that your store is all set up, it’s time to start adding products. This is your chance to bring your inventory to life and make it easy for customers to find what they’re looking for. These steps can ensure your product listings are not only attractive, but also informative:

Add Product Details: Start by adding clear product titles, engaging descriptions, and competitive pricing. Be specific about the features and benefits of your products. This can help customers make informed decisions.
Use High-Quality Images: Upload sharp, high-resolution images. It’s important that they showcase your products from different angles. Great photos can boost customer confidence and increase sales.
Optimize for SEO: Make sure your product titles and descriptions include relevant keywords. This will improve your store’s search engine visibility and help more people discover your products.

5. Manage Inventory and Stock Levels

Effective inventory management is key to maintaining a smooth and efficient online store. Properly tracking your inventory helps prevent stockouts, avoids overselling, and ensures that customers get the products they want when they need them. Here’s how you can manage your inventory effectively:

Set Up Stock Tracking: Shopify makes it easy to track your inventory levels for each product. Enable inventory tracking for all of your products to get real-time updates on stock availability. This prevents overselling items that are out of stock, reducing customer frustration and protecting your store’s reputation.
Update Stock Levels Regularly: It’s essential to keep your inventory updated and accurate. Regularly check your stock levels, especially if you’re running low on an item. If an item goes out of stock, update your listings to reflect this, and consider marking it as “out of stock” in your store to avoid disappointing customers who try to purchase it.
Leverage Vendoo for Cross-Listing: If you’re selling across multiple platforms, managing your inventory can get out of hand super fast! Vendoo helps by syncing your inventory across Shopify and other marketplaces, ensuring your stock levels are consistent and accurate. This saves you time and reduces the risk of errors by managing all your listings from one central dashboard.

6. Set Up Payment Methods and Sales Tax

Now that your store is ready to go, you need to set up payment options so customers can easily make purchases. Additionally, configuring sales tax is crucial to ensure you comply with local regulations. Here’s how to do both:

Set Up Payment Methods: Shopify offers various payment gateways. Some prominent ones include Shopify Payments, PayPal, and other third-party options. Shopify Payments is the easiest to set up and integrates directly with your store. Choose the payment method that works best for your business and customers.
Configure Sales Tax: Shopify makes it a breeze to set up tax rates based on your location and your sales regions. You can enable automatic tax calculations for different regions. This helps you collect the right amount of tax based on customer location.
Stay Compliant: Make sure you’re aware of sales tax laws in the regions you’re selling to. Shopify’s tax settings can help you stay compliant by automatically applying the correct rates.

7. Set up Shipping Methods and Rates

Setting up shipping is essential for ensuring your customers receive their orders on time, and it’s one of the most important factors in providing a positive shopping experience.

Here’s how to set up shipping for your Shopify store:

Define Shipping Zones: Shopify allows you to create shipping zones based on regions or countries. Set up zones that match where you plan to ship, ensuring customers in each area are charged correctly.
Choose Shipping Methods: Shopify offers flexible shipping methods. These can include flat-rate shipping, weight-based rates, or free shipping. Select the method that best fits your business model and customers' needs.
Set Shipping Rates: You can set specific rates for each shipping zone. These can either be a fixed cost or calculated based on weight or order value. Be transparent about your shipping fees to avoid any surprises for your customers.
Optimize for Cost and Delivery Speed: Consider offering multiple shipping options, including express or economy, so customers can choose based on their preferences. Offering free shipping on orders over a certain amount can also help boost sales.

8. Optimize Your Shopify Store for SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) can do a lot to drive organic traffic to your store and boost visibility in search results. By optimizing your Shopify store, you can boost your odds of being discovered by potential customers. Here’s how to get started:

Optimize Product Pages: Use relevant keywords in your product titles, descriptions, and image alt text. This helps search engines understand your products and rank them higher in search results.
Update Meta Tags: Make sure each page on your store has a unique meta title and description. These appear in search results and should be written to encourage clicks while including important keywords.
Create SEO-Friendly URLs: Shopify automatically generates URLs for your product pages, but you can customize them. Keep URLs short, relevant, and keyword-rich to improve search engine ranking.
Focus on Content: Adding a blog or useful content to your store can help you target long-tail keywords and engage visitors. It also boosts SEO by increasing the number of pages in the search engines index.

9. Market Your Shopify Store

Marketing helps win customers and drive traffic to your store. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to expand, here’s how to get your Shopify store in front of the right audience:

Leverage Social Media: Social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest are excellent hotspots to showcase your products. Share engaging posts, run ads, and collaborate with influencers to boost your visibility.
Use Google Ads: Setting up Google Ads can help you reach potential customers who are on the lookout for products like yours. Start with targeted ads based on relevant keywords and optimize as you go.
Set Up Email Marketing: Build an email list by offering incentives like discounts or freebies. Use Shopify’s email marketing tools or third-party apps to send personalized offers and product updates to your subscribers.
Offer Promotions and Discounts: Running promotions, flash sales, or offering discount codes can help attract first-time customers and incentivize repeat business. Make sure to advertise these deals through social media and email marketing.

10. Set Up Analytics and Tracking

Tracking your store’s performance is crucial for understanding your customers and making data-driven decisions. Shopify has built-in analytics, but using other tools can give you even more insights. Here’s how to set up and use analytics:

Connect Google Analytics: Google Analytics provides deeper insights into your website traffic. It can help you understand where visitors come from, what they’re doing on your site, and where you can improve.
Monitor Shopify Analytics: Shopify’s built-in analytics track many important metrics like sales, customer behavior, and conversion rates. Use these insights to evaluate your store’s performance and make improvements.
Set Up Conversion Tracking: Track your ad performance by setting up conversion tracking. This helps you measure the success of your marketing campaigns and adjust them for better results.
Use UTM Parameters: For more detailed tracking, add UTM parameters to your marketing links. This can help you track the performance of specific campaigns and channels, helping you focus your efforts where they’re most effective.

11. Launch Your Shopify Store

Now that your store is all set up, it’s time to go live! Launching your store is an exciting milestone, but it’s important to make sure everything runs smoothly. Here’s how to prepare for a successful launch:

Test the Checkout Process: Before you announce your launch, make sure to test the checkout process. Complete a test purchase to ensure your payment methods and shipping options are working correctly.
Ensure Mobile Compatibility: Many customers shop on their phones, so double-check that your store looks and functions well on mobile devices. Shopify themes are usually very responsive, but it’s still important to confirm everything displays properly.
Prepare for Traffic: If you’ve been promoting your store before the launch, be prepared for increased traffic. Ensure your website is fast and can handle the traffic load without slowing down or crashing.
Announce Your Launch: Use your social media, email list, and other marketing channels to spread the word about your launch. Offer limited-time promotions or discounts to encourage people to shop on your opening day.

12. Manage Orders and Fulfillment

Once your store is live, managing orders and fulfilling them on time is key to keeping your customers happy. Shopify offers tools to help you stay on top of orders and shipping. Here’s how to manage the process efficiently:

Track Orders in Shopify: Shopify’s order management system makes it easy to view and manage all your incoming orders. You’ll get notifications when a new order is placed and can view order details at any time.
Fulfill Orders Quickly: When an order is placed, fulfill it as soon as possible. Shopify allows you to mark orders as fulfilled once shipped and notify customers with tracking information.
Set Up Shipping Notifications: Automate shipping notifications to keep customers informed about the status of their orders. Providing tracking numbers and delivery estimates goes a long way in reducing customer anxiety.
Use Vendoo for Multi-Platform Fulfillment: If you sell across multiple marketplaces, Vendoo will prove to be your best friend! It can help you sync your orders and inventory, ensuring smooth fulfillment across platforms.

13. Expand Your Sales Channels

As your business grows, expanding your sales channels enables you to reach a larger audience and increase revenue. Shopify makes it easy to connect with multiple marketplaces, social media platforms, and more. Here’s how to expand your reach:

Sell on Social Media: Set up Shopify’s social media integrations. They’re a great way for you to sell directly through platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. This creates a seamless shopping experience for customers browsing your social profiles.
Leverage Shopify’s Point of Sale (POS): If you have a physical store, you can use Shopify POS to sync your online and offline sales. POS integration is great for keeping your inventory up to date and enabling a unified customer experience.
Use Vendoo for Cross-Listing: With Vendoo, you can easily manage and sync listings across all sales channels from a single dashboard, saving time and improving efficiency.

Boost Your Shopify Sales and Efficiency with Vendoo

Selling on Shopify opens up countless opportunities to grow your online business. Being proactive and following the 13 steps we’ve outlined—from setting up your account to expanding your sales channels—gives you the foundation for success.

Whether you’re a beginner or a pro, managing multiple marketplaces and channels can become overwhelming. That’s where Vendoo comes in.

Vendoo's crosslisting tool simplifies the process by helping you manage and sync your Shopify inventory across various marketplaces from one central dashboard. This means you can streamline product listings, inventory management, and order fulfillment without drowning in stress.

Vendoo helps streamline your operations, so you can focus on what matters most—growing your business. Whether you’re listing products, managing inventory, or fulfilling orders, Vendoo simplifies the process, boosting both your sales and efficiency. Start today and experience the ease of selling on Shopify with Vendoo by your side.

FAQs

How Much Does It Cost to Sell on Shopify?

The cost of selling on Shopify depends on the plan you choose. The Basic Shopify plan starts at $39/month, while the Shopify plan costs $105/month, and the Advanced Shopify plan is $399/month. Each plan offers different features, such as advanced reporting, shipping discounts, and the number of staff accounts. Shopify also charges a transaction fee unless you use Shopify Payments, which can be avoided depending on your plan.

Is It Worth It to Sell on Shopify?

Yes! Shopify is an excellent platform for folks looking to scale their business. It’s famous for its user-friendly interface, endless customization options, powerful marketing tools, sales tracking, and inventory management. While there are costs involved, the value Shopify provides in terms of growth potential, support, and ease of use makes it a great investment for most sellers.

What Is Required to Sell on Shopify?

To start selling on Shopify, you'll need to set up an account, choose a pricing plan, and customize your store. You’ll also need to add your products, set up payment methods, and configure shipping rates. In addition, you should have your business and tax information ready, as Shopify will ask for these details during setup.

What Are the Downsides of Shopify?

Even though Shopify is a powerful ecommerce platform, there are some downsides. First, the monthly subscription fee can be expensive, especially for smaller businesses. Shopify also charges transaction fees unless you use Shopify Payments. Some users find that certain advanced features require third-party apps, which can add extra costs. Finally, customizing the store’s code may require technical expertise, which could be stressful for non-tech-savvy sellers.