Posted by The easiest way to create an eCommerce website is by using Shopify, a popular eCommerce platform that comes with everything you need to get sell online. It has all the tools for building your online store and managing orders and customers.
Ever want to sell things online but are not sure where to start? We’ll show you how to create an online store in just a few steps with Shopify and discuss why you should sell products online.
What Is Shopify?
Shopify is an e-commerce platform that allows you to quickly sell products online, in person, and social media. It’s a Canadian company with headquarters in Ottawa. The Shopify platform offers a wide range of services to help you run your business; these include e-commerce necessities like inventory management and secure payments. It also includes marketing and SEO tools, point-of-sale systems for physical stores and pop-up shops, website building programs, and even shipping.
Another cool thing about Shopify is its subscription-based pricing model. From $9.00 per month up to $299.00 per month for the basic plan for a store selling one product to an advance plan for enterprise-level needs. These plans are all based on monthly subscriptions, so you aren’t tied into lengthy contracts. Suppose you want to set up more complex things like recurring billing or group shipping rates; you can do so. All you need do is pay extra with what they call “additional apps.”
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Statistics
If you need more to convince you to take your selling to Shopify, here are some statistical facts about the platform. These facts should further prove to you that Shopify is integral if you wish to make more money from selling products online:
First of all, Shopify has more than 1 million users. This makes sense since it’s the best eCommerce platform out there. If you want to sell things online and make money, you need to use Shopify. The other thing is that Shopify has over $40 billion in sales. In 2017 alone, over $20 billion was made on the platform.
Another stat that might interest you is that Shopify has employees in over 150 countries worldwide. They have many people who work at their headquarters in Canada and runners around the world spreading the word about eCommerce and selling things online on platforms like Shopify.
How to Join Shopify and Start Selling
If you are interested in selling online, you should check out Shopify. It’s straightforward to get on the platform and only require learning few ropes about how to sell online with Shopify. In this section, I’ll walk you through the process of creating a Shopify account and setting up your store.
Before that, you may find this course helpful as it has helped me increase my sales on Shopify greatly:
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1. Create A Shopify Account
The first step to creating a store is signing up for a Shopify account. To sign up, follow the process below:
- Go to the Shopify home page and click on the “Get Started” button.
- You’ll be prompted to enter your email address and choose a password.
- Once you’ve created an account, you can begin setting up your store by clicking on the “Set Up Store” button.
You’ll be able to add products, create your website, set up payment methods, and configure shipping options. Also, you get to set up taxes, set up your store policies such as returns and exchanges, set up a domain, and set up your store’s privacy policy.
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2. Choose A Template or Start with A Blank Slate
You can create a store in one of two ways:
By Choosing a Template
The Shopify Theme Store makes it easy to begin your selling journey on Shopify. You can start by looking at the templates offered by Shopify’s theme store. Click on Themes on the left side of the screen, then enter keywords related to your business into the search bar. When you find something that seems right, click on it and scroll through the different presets to understand how you might use this theme. If one stands out to you, go ahead and click “Add theme” on that page. Now it will appear under the “Your themes” section on the left-hand side menu, where all of your content is stored for easy access.
Starting With a Blank Slate
This option would be best if you have specific ideas about how you want your store to appear and feel. None of the available templates seems like a good starting point for your needs. In this case, go ahead and click “Add Section” at the top left corner of any page within your content manager and select which type of section fits best with what you want to do next. For example, you can pick “Featured Collection” if there’s a specific collection of items that’s important enough to highlight.
3. Enter a Domain Address
Now that you have a name for your store, it’s time to enter a domain. This is the URL that your customers will type into their browser to find your store. You can choose any part you want. Just enter the domain name you wish to in the domain field. If it is available, then click “Next”.
Choosing a good domain is essential since it makes your store easy to remember and spell. You don’t want potential customers guessing how to spell or type your domain name, so make it simple.
4. Add Products
This may come as a surprise, but you don’t need to spend much time designing a Shopify product page. There are only five required fields for creating a product page:
- An image;
- A title to be used as the “main” title;
- Add a description to help potential clients understand what each item is;
- The item of prices including currency symbol;
- An option for a variant option that determines the size of an item or its color. Another image file can replace this last field if your product has more than one variation.
Once you’ve added these elements to your product page, it’s ready to go up for sale.
5. Market Your Business and Optimize For Conversion
If you’re creating a website for your small business, you’ll want to pay close attention to how your site is set up, and the Shopify store is no exception. This is especially true if you’re trying to sell a product or service online. Various elements make up every page on the internet, from speed and security to SEO and conversion.
The first thing you’ll need to do is learn how each of these different areas affects your overall site’s performance. It’s important to realize that SEO can affect the speed of your website. Making sure that it’s optimized will improve the rate at which pages are loaded by users and make it easier for them to find what they’re looking for when they click on an ad or buy something through your shop.
Your Shopify theme has been set up with one main web page template, but other templates can help recommend products based on specific keywords in search results. If you have several items in stock and would like some recommendations, this could be helpful too. You could also incorporate social sharing buttons throughout the site, so customers can share their thoughts about what they bought. It will also allow for other reviews about your items on social media platforms after they receive their order.
How to Sell More With Your Shopify Store
Even with your store’s best and most straightforward creation process, you will still need to find several avenues to help increase your conversion. Thankfully, these means are diverse, and when harnessed correctly, you are sure of gaining more from your efforts. Here are a few ways to help you improve on your selling with Shopify:
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1. Drive Sales on Shopify With Pinterest Group Boards
Pinterest is a social media website that allows users to post things they like and “pin” them on a bulletin board of their choice. Usually, users will take photos of products or images and post them. Those photos can then be saved or “pinned” to Pinterest by other members.
Pinterest Group Boards are great for Shopify store owners because they allow you to group specific pins based on certain categories of your business. Creating Pinterest Group Boards will enable people who are not familiar with your products yet an easy way to discover everything about them in one place.
2. Increase Sales on Shopify With Host a Giveaway
The first step to running a giveaway on your store is to create the actual giveaway. However, make sure your giveaway gift is relevant to the products you sell in your Shopify store. You want to be giving away items that potential customers will be interested in, even if they haven’t bought them yet.
This way, people hear about your excellent product and get introduced to your store. It’s a win-win for everyone involved. Make sure it’s relevant to your target audience. Your target audience is the group of people who are most likely interested in what you’re selling.
Sell More on Shopify in 2022 | See Working Tactics
3. Improve Sales on Shopify With Drive Referral Traffic
You can use referral traffic to your advantage, but don’t get too attached to the idea of increasing it. It’s a great bonus when you increase referral traffic, and it looks good on paper, but it isn’t all that important if your conversion rate is low. Remember that what matters is how many people buy products from your store. Referrals are generally not something you can control since they happen organically.
4. Partner With Influencers
Building a relationship with influencers can be a powerful way to grow your store and drive sales. Entering into partnerships with influencers can feel like a little bit of an experiment. It is an opportunity for you to directly influence people who already influence their audience.
To ensure that the partnership is beneficial for both parties, it’s essential to start small and establish trust. The best partners are the ones who will truly appreciate, respect, and help build your brand in return. Also, with Shopify Partner Program, there’s never been an easier or more affordable way to start reaching out to influencers on social media and blogs.
5. Leverage Facebook Ads to Drive Sales
One of the most effective Shopify marketing strategies is retargeting Facebook ads. You can use a specific set of tools to put Facebook ads in front of people who have already visited your site or who have clicked on one of your product images through retargeting. Retargeting options on Shopify come in many different forms:
- Dynamic product ads let you place an ad for an item that someone has previously viewed on your site. The ad will be customized to include that particular product image, title and price when displayed during a person’s browsing session on Facebook.
- Carousel ads are similar to dynamic product photo ads, except these are used for displaying multiple images at once. This is especially useful for presenting a variety of products or services simultaneously.
- Video ads may not play as big of a role here as they do with other types of businesses, but they still offer opportunities worth exploring.
6. Employ SEO Rich Content Marketing
Content marketing is a great way to drive sales on Shopify. A blog, in particular, can help you build awareness of your products, how they solve a problem for customers, and how to use them. You can also use SEO tools like Growthbar or SERPstat to figure out what people are searching for online.
Another idea is to create an email newsletter related to the content on your blog. This will help build an audience interested in hearing about new products as soon as they go live.
7. Run an Affiliate Program
Shopify is arguably the number one eCommerce platform globally, used by over 600,000 businesses. Though Shopify doesn’t have a referral program of its own, plenty of individuals and organizations do. The most effective way to find affiliates for Shopify is to use Google. To find them, you can search for phrases like “shopify affiliate program” or “shopify affiliate marketing” to find them.
Work with affiliates on promoting your store and products even further by offering incentives based on specific performance metrics. If they reach a certain threshold in visits or sales within X amount of time, award them with extra cash or some other type of reward. This encourages better performance in the future.
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Pros of Selling Online With Shopify
Shopify holds many benefits for your selling business. Asides from its staggering statistics, here are some worth noting:
- If you’ve never owned a store before, Shopify is one of the most accessible platforms to use and set up your new store.
- If you have experience running a store, you’ll find it easy to take your business online with Shopify.
- The platform has tons of tools that make selling products online easy, but they also do a fantastic job creating point-of-sale (POS) software. In turn, this helps businesses sell their products in person as well. It’s not just limited to online sales, making this platform an ideal option for companies that want to sell simultaneously in-person and online.
- Another great feature of the POS software is that it integrates into your website seamlessly, so there isn’t any confusion when making purchases on your site or in person at your physical location.
Cons of Selling Online With Shopify
As beneficial as learning how to sell online with Shopify sounds, here are some few things that might make you think twice:
If you want to use Shopify, you’ll need to use its payment system, known as Shopify Payments. It has a credit card rate of 2.9% + 30¢ for the advanced plan and above. And a rate of 2.4% + 30¢ for PayPal. There’s no extra fee for debit cards, but if you don’t accept these two types of payments, some slightly lower rates are available, which come with an extra 0.1–0.15% fee per transaction.
Shopify Payments is the only way to accept credit cards on Shopify Basic plans since third-party payments aren’t allowed below this tier. If you want to stick with the cheapest option available, your only choice will be signing up for Shopify Payments’ rates. You can also use third-party payment providers with higher or lower rates instead, but you’ll first have to invest in a more expensive plan.
How Much Does Shopify Charge To Sell On It?
Each plan comes with different features that should fit the needs of most small businesses. For example, the Shopify Lite Plan is suitable for vendors who want to sell on existing websites but don’t require many other eCommerce tools to do it. The Basic Shopify Plan is a popular option for new online businesses and has everything you’ll need to get started selling products online.
On the other hand, as your business grows, you may outgrow the limits of these basic plans and will want to upgrade. Higher monthly prices from the Advanced Shopify Plan or Shopify Plus plan, you’ll still be getting a more cost-effective solution than if you had hired your developers to build an eCommerce store that would likely cost tens of thousands per year.
Conclusion
Now that you understand how Shopify works, it’s time to get started on your store. But first, a word of advice: do not expect to make money right away. Don’t expect to make money at all for a while. Selling any product online takes time and hard work, but you are sure to profit with these tips. There you have it, all you need to know about how to sell online with Shopify.
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