Setting up a Shopify store is more than just adding your products and customizing your theme. There are a lot of other items that need to be done for your shop before you open for business. This is a list of steps you can go through as you set up your Shopify store, so you have everything in one place. As someone who spent a lot of time figuring this out when I set my Shopify store up, I hope this helps simplify the process for you.

1. Pick a Plan: Start by picking out Shopify plan. You can start with the free trial offer, but it will help to know what you will budget going forward. You can pay yearly or monthly.

2. Choose A Custom Domain Name: Your professional domain name is very important to represent your brand and create trust with your customers. If you do not have your domain name registered, you can register your name with Shopify. You can also search to make sure the name you want is available before on Shopify. You will need to replace your default Shopify with your domain name.

3. Set Up Payments: You will need to activate and set up your payments in Shopify Payments which uses Stripe to take credit cards. You can also choose to accept Pay Pal and Shop Pay as other payment methods. These have different processing fees and are a bit more cost than Shopify Payments payment process fee. Payouts will be linked to a bank account of choice. It is best to have a separate business bank account connected to your store.

4. Configure Sales Tax: Make sure sales tax is set up properly for your location on Shopify. In the US sales tax is based on the state your online business is located in. Anyone purchasing from your shop that is also in the same state will pay sales tax. There are some states with no sales tax collection. Some items may be exempt from sales tax in your state. Anything shipped to other states will not collect sales tax on your Shopify store until a threshold of sales for that state has been reached by your store for example $100,000 in sales. Make sure to also register your business as collecting sales tax in your business state and also keep track when you will need to report sales tax made.

5. Shipping: Configure shipping settings. First determine where you will ship your products. You can choose to just ship only within your country on Shopify or choose other countries. Keep in mind customs and tariffs for each country. I chose to just ship within the US.

You will also need to decide how your items will be shipped such as USPS flat rate, ground, priority. You can choose to ship just USPS or choose Fed Ex or UPS for example in the US.

If you have items that ship in only one size box or envelope Shopify bases shipping off one default package size. If you have various items and container sizes, you will need an app for accurate shipping. I have found the Boxify app to be a good choice for this. Each product will have to be set up with proper shipping information within the Boxify app when creating a product listing. You need to make sure product dimensions and weight are accurately listed. Boxify will show shipping cost calculations to the customer at checkout instead of Shopify calculations.

Decide also if you will offer free shipping in your store so you can set it up. For example for a purchase over $50 you will offer free shipping.

6. Choose and Customize Your Shopify Theme: Shopify offers some free themes and others for purchase. This will be based on your needs and products. You will be able to customize the Shopify theme. Paid themes can offer more complex customization, but a free theme may be best when you are first starting your shop. You can customize your theme or hire a Shopify web designer to do this for you. This includes your store brand logo, colors, fonts, and images. Make sure your hero banner image represents your store brand and products clearly.

7. Create Collections: Create collections of products you will have in your shop with clear titles for customers to find under Shopify Products collection listing. Each collection will also include a description and image. These will also be connected to the menu bar you will set up on the header of your shop.

8. Upload Images and Add Products: Upload your product images to the content files on Shopify. Make sure your products have clear, professional images. You can use Canva or other tools to create product mockups. Have photos that show your products close up details as well. Shopify also allows you to remove backgrounds, crop, and edit your product photos in each listing. Under Products you can add each product with title, descriptions with good SEO keywords, price, weight, and specific dimensions in Boxify if you choose to use this shipping app. Also make sure to choose the collection the product will be included in.

9. Write an About Us Page: Create a new page and tell the story of your store and products. This helps the customer get to know the who and what is behind your shop and products. You can include images as well.

10. Set Up Your Contact Page: This is important for customers to feel they can contact you directly.

11. Must Have Pages: Write your refund policy, shipping policy, privacy policy, and terms of service. Shopify will help you with a written template, but it is important you edit and write these properly for your store. You may want to consult a business lawyer for your terms of service page. A FAQ page is also great to have for your customers to be able to access important information such as refunds and shipping.

12. Design Navigation Menu: This will link your collections and pages in the header and footer.

13. Set Up Professional Email: If you purchased your domain via Shopify you can easily create a business email with Shopify mail. Otherwise, you will need to purchase and connect a professional business email. This is the email your customers will see.

14. Design your invoice and receipt templates: This creates brand cohesion and trust for your customer.

15. Install Apps: You may want an email marketing app like Shopify Email or Klaviyo to send newsletters and email offer to customers. An SEO optimizer app like Google Analytics is also helpful.

16. Add Blog: Add blog if you intend to write a blog in the beginning of your online store. This can be helpful for customer trust and SEO traffic.

17. Place Test Order: Use Shopify’s “Bogus Gateway” to place a test order. Ensure everything works out with order processing, notifications, and shipping.

18. Remove Password and Launch Shop: Go to Online Store to Preferences and uncheck “Limit access to visitors with password”. Your store is now live!

Congrats you now have a Shopify store! Now you can focus on marketing your store and selling your products to customers. May you have great success in your business.