How to create a complete Shopify online store from scratch

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How to create a complete Shopify online store from scratch

How to create a complete Shopify online store from scratch

Electronic commerce is booming and there are already millions of small and medium-sized businesses that have started selling online. In this post, which is more of a course than a post , we see how to create a complete online store from scratch with Shopify.

Every store must follow certain laws, and it will have everything essential to be real and complying with Law 34/2002 (LSSI), with the right of withdrawal of distance selling (returns and changes), with the General Regulation of Data Protection (RGPD) and, of course, with the Cookies Policy.

This online store is ideal if you don’t have a store yet or if you already sell from Instagram manually and want to make the leap to professional online sales without financial risk and without any technical knowledge.

What is Shopify and what is it for?

Shopify is ane-commerce CMS (content management system) for, of course, the design and development of online stores.

Thanks to the CMS on the same platform we can find everything we need to create and manage the website.

This particular CMS is one of the great managers for creating online stores and one of its greatest advantages is that anyone can create an online store without the need for computer or programming knowledge , just by following a complete tutorial like this one.

In addition, from Shopify itself we have everything we need for our online store: from creating our product catalog to creating a blog for our store.

In this post, which is like a great free course, we see all the steps we need to set up our online store.

Look at the final result of the store created with Shopify

We start this course with a quick look at the store that we will have ready at the end of the tutorial .

We will have a very powerful front page with a navigation menu, different sections, banners, collections, videos, a professional and legal footer, a shopping cart with payment gateways, configured taxes, simple products, products with variations in size and color and we will have gift cards and discounts.

Step 1: Hire Shopify’s “Ideal Plan” at a discount.

The first step to create our online store with Shopify is to contract one of the Shopify plans. In this case, we recommend the Ideal Plan, which you can hire from this link with a special discount.

One of the great advantages of this plan is that you do not need to hire a separate hosting because this plan that we propose already provides it.

Step 2: Create the store following my steps

Once you have this contracted plan we can get down to work with our online store. In this section we go into detail in the configuration of the theme and with the creation of the pages.

Choose and configure the Shopify theme

The first step is to choose the theme to be set in our online store.

theme is a pre-designed structure that we apply to our website and that we can modify to our liking.

In this case we are going to choose the Down theme because we consider it one of the most complete and innovative and we will prepare the base design of our online store.

How to make legal pages

The legal pages are necessary for our online store to be real and comply with the law.

In this case we are in Spain and therefore we comply with the regulations of our country, but it is important that if you read us from another country you make sure which ones are necessary.

The legal pages that an online store must have are:

  • Shipping & Returns
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Cookies Policy
  • Legal warning
  • Privacy Policy

In this section we show you step by step how to create that page and we provide you with the content that each of them should have.

Create the navigation menu of our online store

It is essential that our online store has a menu through which customers can navigate and find the product or section they want.

In this section we see step by step how to create the navigation menu of your online store step by step:

How to design the footer

The footer is the section or section that is right at the end of the web page, which usually contains the previously created legal pages, the link to social networks and, in this case, we also add our logo.

Design of the pages in Shopify

Until now we have left the theme configured, which is what will give the general design to our website. We have also created the legal pages and designed the footer. Check out more interesting articles on our site.

With this we already have a certain structure assembled, and what we are going to address in this section is the creation and design of the main pages of our online store.

Design of the “About us” page

This page is very important for potential customers to get to know us. The one we show you is created in a very complete way and using all the resources that Shopify offers us.

Blog page design

Having a blog in our online store and creating content related to our products is something that will help us position ourselves in Google.

In this section we tell you step by step how to create this page:

Design of the “Contact” page

On this page customers can contact us using a contact form . By doing this it is necessary that we comply with the data protection privacy policy by adding the mandatory check box in the contact form.

In this section we tell you how to do it and this is a gift that you will not find unless you hire it.

Step 3 – Basic Shopify Setup, Payments, Shipping, and Taxes

In this section we delve into the configuration of everything related to payments, shipments and taxes. Our online store expert, Alegría, will tell you all the details of how to do it.

Payment settings. Shopify payment gateways

This is one of the steps that causes the most headaches, but our Shopify expert will explain it to you step by step and in a very clear way.

In this case, Shopify has a great advantage, which is that it has its own payment methods already configured and you don’t have to configure any extra plugins or virtual POS.

We also see how to disable payment options that have an additional surcharge.

Shipping configuration (national, free and click and collect)

In this case we see how to configure the shipment to Spain, the European Union and the rest of the world with their corresponding rates.

We also go into detail on how to set up free shipping from a purchase amount and free local pickup or click and collect.

Tax configuration of our online store

Shopify comes preconfigured with three different tax regions, and we’re going to set up the European Union.

It is important that you seek advice from an expert on the subject of taxes. In Spain we have to configure a 21% VAT

Other basic Shopify setup

In this section we carry out the rest of the configuration that our online store needs, such as the domain name, notifications, etc.

Step 4: Product and Collection Catalog in Shopify

In this section we go deep into one of the most important things of an online store: its catalog . Therefore, we will see how to create different collections of our products, how to create their variations (such as color, size, etc.) and we will tell you how to manage your inventory.

Collections with automated conditions (news and offers)

Every online store that has several products needs to organize them by collections .

For example, if you had a clothing store, you need a classification for sneakers, coats, scarves, etc.

We also see how to create these collections so that you can create a section of offers and news.

Simple products and with variations (size and color, offers, etc.)

In this section we see how to create the products of our online store and how to customize them .

The same product can (and usually) have various sizes and/or various colors and we must indicate this in the catalogue.

In addition, we see how to use tags to make our products appear in different collections.

Mass inventory management of our online store

The inventory is the list of all the products of our company and in Shopify we have a section from which we can control it.

Automated inventory or transfers from Shopify

In this section we see Shopify transfers or also called “ automated inventory” :

Link of our cover with the Shopify product catalog

In this step we are going to link everything that we leave pending on our cover or Landing Page and we will tell you why we follow this order:

Step 5: Marketing: gift cards, discount codes and Instagram store

Once we have our online store designed and configured, we are going to get fully involved in our marketing strategy, where we are going to try to bring the sale as close as possible to the customer.

For this Shopify helps us with the possibility of creating gift cards and discount codes.

We configure the gift cards of our online store

Surely you have ever received or given a gift card, and they are very common.

In addition, it is a way to make life easier for someone who wants to give a gift, but is not sure which one.

From Shopify they can be configured and in this video we tell you how:

Discount codes with Shopify

Discount codes, like gift cards, are a very good way to get more customers and also to make someone who has already bought from us come back.

In this video we see how to configure them:

We set up our Shopify online store on Instagram

Another of the strong pillars of our marketing strategy must be the action on social networks, and the case of online sales Instagram is the king.

Step 6: Final auction: SEO, indexing and Cookies

To put the finishing touch to this complete Shopify course , we see in this section some brushstrokes on how to work with the SEO of our online store (it is a very extensive job and that we cannot address in this video), indexing in Google and working with cookies . _

Some details of the SEO work of your online store

SEO is a set of actions or techniques that we work to position our website in search engines.

In other words, it is to try that when someone types the keywords that represent our website, we appear as soon as possible in the results.

In a very complex and important topic and that is why I am going to leave you this post so that you can take a look at it when you finish your website:

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In this video we tell you how to configure your online store to optimize SEO , but it is something that you must work on first.

Google indexing of the Shopify online store

In this step we see how to notify Google that our store exists so that users can find us.

We do this in Google Search Console and in the video we tell you how:

Installation of the Cookies app of our online store

To finish with the creation of our online store we show you how to install and use the application through which we are going to manage Cookies:

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