From March 2020 to March 2022, the pandemic added an extra $218.53 billion to eCommerce’s bottom line. As a result, more people are shopping online more frequently, providing the perfect opportunity to start an online business. However, becoming a Shopify store owner yields many questions: what will you sell? Where will you find your products? How will you fund your store launch? And most of all, where in the world do you start? This guide walks you through how to launch a Shopify store of your own, and provides helpful tips to boost your sales once you launch your store.
Table of Contents
- Why choose Shopify in 2022
- How much does it cost to be a seller on Shopify
- Is Shopify still profitable?
- Pre-store Shopify Checklist: 6 Important Things to Do Before Launching Your Shopify Store
- 4 Money-Making Tips to Boost Your Shopify Store Sales
- Conclusion (and FREE download!)
Launch Your Shopify Store and Never Lose a Sale Again
Notify your customers when products are out of stock so you never lose out on sales again with Back in Stock.
Why Choose Shopify in 2022?
There are currently over 1.75 million businesses globally that use Shopify. With its seamless integration with tools like Google ads, customizable store templates, built-in analytics, and SEO tools, and integration with top payment gateways and help desks, Shopify is known as the clear choice for those just starting in the world of eCommerce. Here are 4 more reasons you should launch your eCommerce store on the Shopify platform.
1. User-friendliness
Shopify is lauded for being an intuitive platform that integrates seamlessly with most other online website platforms. The company boasts membership from multiple billion-dollar corporations, such as Whole Foods, Nestle, and Tesla. The Shopify eCommerce platform makes it easy for an individual to create a digital storefront and add it to their website without hassle. Best of all, you don’t need coding or HTML knowledge to make a modern, fully-stocked online store through your Shopify dashboard.
2. Affordability
Shopify’s subscription prices make running a successful online business attainable for even those with a modest income. Plus, if you sign up for an annual plan, you can get 10% off the price (and 20% off for a biennial plan). Though not the cheapest subscription of all the eCommerce platforms, it’s often considered both the best choice platform for a first-time store operator and an overall great value for the price.
3. Reliability
Shopify can’t be beaten when it comes to answering your questions. The Shopify admin team is available 24/7 to provide you with customer service online or over the phone. There’s also a thriving online community available through the Shopify discussion forums, ready to swap advice and opinions. So whenever you need a Shopify expert, you can turn to multiple resources.
Additionally, you can rest easy regarding the question of security. The Shopify payments provider is PCI compliant, meaning your business and customer data are hosted securely. Plus, every Shopify store comes with a free 256-bit SSL certificate, the same standard of SSL encryption that banks require.
4. Customizability
With over 70 free and premium themes available through Shopify, you can easily customize the look of your eCommerce store to your brand personality. And regarding user experience, more than 6000 apps are available through the Shopify app store, so you can uniquely tailor your customer’s interactions with your brand. Not to mention that these apps can also assist you with every aspect of your business, from inventory management to Shopify shipping to marketing automation, making it easier for you to run your business day-to-day.
How much does it cost to be a seller on Shopify?
Shopify has various subscription options to meet individual business needs. Shopify’s affordable offerings are particularly notable for those just starting out in eCommerce. Plus, every subscription tier starts with a 2-week free trial, so you can see if Shopify is right for you.
For only $5 a month, the Shopify Starter plan lets you sell products quickly on your social media, utilizing Shopify’s POS system, analytics, order management, and customer support. For $9 a month, the Shopify Lite plan allows your small business to sell in-person with the platform’s POS Lite or add a Buy Button to your website for direct embedded sales. Although these plans don’t allow you to build an online store, you can still access many of Shopify’s quality sales features, including order and product management, mobile POS, discount codes, customer profiles, and finance reports.
Source: https://www.shopify.com/pricing
The next three tiers are the primary Shopify store subscriptions. They range from $29-$299 per month, depending on the scale of your business. For first-time store owners, starting with the Basic Shopify subscription for $29 is both sensible and cost-efficient. This tier provides you with everything you need to start your eCommerce business.
Additionally, Shopify makes it easy to update your membership as you scale your store reach. Perhaps one day you might even reach the $2000/per month Shopify Plus tier, which boasts membership from brands like Heinz, Pepsi, and Staples.
Heinz UK partnered with Shopify Plus in 2020 to help target food vulnerabilities in needy communities. The company began offering direct-to-consumer shipping of its food products, a new business model that Shopify helped launch in a single week.
Is Shopify still profitable?
You might be concerned that you’re too late when creating an online store or jumping on the dropshipping bandwagon. After all, there are already 1.75 million sellers on the platform. However, Shopify eCommerce sales are forecasted to continue increasing exponentially. Shopify merchants brought in over $1.2 billion dollars in revenue in the first quarter of 2022, the highest amount ever attained by the platform.
And when it comes to dropshipping, Grand View Research reports that the drop ship market size will reach 557.9 billion dollars by 2025. Whether you decide to utilize drop shipping or invest your finances in purchasing and stocking inventory, online sales are trending ever upward, meaning it’s a great time to get started.
Pre-store Shopify Checklist: 6 Important Things to Do Before Launching Your Shopify Store
You’ve decided you’re ready to move forward and create that Shopify storefront. But before you get overwhelmed, it’s important to do the proper prep work to set yourself up for success. You’ll need to eschew the mindset that the field of eCommerce is a get-rich-quick scheme. Like any business, a significant amount of strategy and planning is involved in achieving success. Here are 6 things you should do before launching your store to boost your chances of making a profit as a Shopify seller.
1. Create a marketing plan
No business can run successfully without a strong marketing plan, so don’t skip this step. An eCommerce marketing plan primarily focuses on how to send traffic to your website and how to turn interested consumers into enthusiastic buyers.
Set measurable goals and objectives through KPI (key performance indicators), so you can track your business’s progress over time. You should also identify which marketing channels you’ll focus on to drive users to your store. Many eCommerce stores utilize social media and email marketing to find and nurture potential leads. Your marketing plan will also help you to nail down your target audience, which is essential to the success of your business.
How to Create a Marketing Strategy For a New eCommerce Website from Neil Patel
2. Steal from your competitors
Like the best artists steal from their predecessors, the best business owners steal—or rather, iterate on ideas—from other business models. Before you create your site, look at what other Shopify stores in your niche are doing regarding products, design, and customized features. By looking at the successful (and not so successful) blueprints of those who came before you, you can compile a helpful competitive analysis for your future business.
3. Create an account on Shopify
Shopify makes it easy to get started right away; no credit card information is necessary. You can customize your theme, find products to sell, add product descriptions, a payment gateway, and a custom domain, all from within the Shopify app. You’ll be ready to start customizing your store with just a few clicks.
4. Choose your business name
While developing a compelling store name may seem challenging, Shopify makes this task painless with its business name generator, where you can choose a name, check its availability, and claim the domain.
5. Find your suppliers
Shopify simplifies choosing suppliers through its app marketplace, which provides a directory of trusted vendors and hundreds of reviews of their services. You can also utilize quality suppliers outside the Shopify marketplace for additional variety. Wholesale and dropshipping directories like Worldwide Brands and Doba are recommended by Shopify as additional vendors. Just be careful to vet every supplier to avoid seller fraud.
6. Choose your products
This last step in the pre-launch checklist is an important one. The world of wholesale and dropshipping eCommerce is saturated, so it’s essential to find a niche to help your store stand out. Perhaps you might capitalize on a trending item or choose a collection of products that suit your passions. You also want to consider items that will travel well, are easy to use, and have enough unique features that they aren't being sold in every other eCommerce store. Fortunately, Shopify provides plenty of resources for nailing down your niche, including guides and webinars that walk you through finding and sourcing your products.
5 Money-Making Tips to Boost Your Shopify Store Sales
Once you’ve launched your Shopify store, checking off all the tasks in our Ultimate Shopify Store Launch Checklist, it's time to start honing your sales channel strategy. Read on for some quick tips to help you boost your online store sales.
1. Don't miss out on sales because you were out of stock
Nothing can ruin a customer experience faster than when an item is out of stock. When it comes to inventory management, there are many apps you can add to your Shopify account to help automate the inventory management process. However, sometimes due to supply chain errors or customer demand, there's no avoiding a stockout.
When that happens, instead of just hiding the item, you can utilize an app like Back in Stock to help you notify your potential customer when the thing they wanted is back in stock. Email and SMS notifications can rescue both the sale and the customer experience. That way, you never lose out on a potential purchase.
2. Upsell products whenever possible
According to a survey from Invesp, “the success rate of selling to a customer you already have is 60-70%, while the success rate of selling to a new customer is 5-20%.” When a customer visits your Shopify website, you have a great opportunity to increase the sales you’ll get from them using an upsell app from the Shopify marketplace.
Many store owners use a simple strategy to boost sales by cross-selling and upselling products, like those frequently bought together, where they can. An easy way to do this is to use an app like CrossSell to input related products that might interest your customers based on the product pages they decide to peruse. Using this strategy, you can quickly double your sales and keep customers on your store site longer.
3. Use SEO to your advantage
One way to stand out from the competition is to utilize your store’s SEO (search engine optimization) as much as possible. Fortunately, you’re not starting from scratch, as Shopify has SEO features built into every one of its sites. Still, you can do a few things to increase your store’s chances of getting found on search engines.
Add keywords to your page and product descriptions that match what customers might google to find your store. You can add relevant keywords, alt text, and meta descriptions to your image filenames. Additionally, to rank higher on search engines, edit your site’s store structure to make your store easier to understand and navigate.
Shopify marketplace apps like Plugin SEO help you optimize your store swiftly and thoroughly, so you can drive more traffic to it. A strong SEO strategy can make or break a store’s ability to be found online. Take the time to adjust yours and see what a difference it can make.
4. Make a list of goals and keep putting in the time
So you’ve launched your store and made your first sales…congratulations! However, the work doesn’t stop there. The eCommerce industry is ever-changing, and you’ll have to meet this fast-paced environment ready to re-visit and update your business strategy often. To maintain success in this field, you’ll have to continue to think out of the box as you adapt to shifting online trends.
First, bring your creative voice to the table as you plan for the future. Second, continue to grow your knowledge of your industry. Third, set measurable goals for your business that you can track and review throughout the year. And last, pay close attention to what your competition is doing.
5. Leverage Storemapper for Local Sales
Increasing your Shopify store sales isn’t just about online strategies; it’s also about driving traffic to your physical locations. Did you know that businesses with accurate online listings are twice as likely to be considered reputable?* (Source: Google My Business, 2024).Storemapper can help your locations stand out with complete and accurate information, making it easy for customers to find and visit your physical stores before making any decision. By integrating a robust store locator into your Shopify store, Storemapper allows you to display all your store locations on an interactive map, attract more customers, and grow your brand. With Storemapper, you can easily manage your locations, enhance the customer experience, and ensure that potential customers don’t slip away.
Conclusion
When launching a Shopify store, there’s so much to keep track of that it can feel overwhelming. But thankfully, Shopify specializes in making it easier than ever for you to launch and run a thriving online store.
And to make things simpler, we’ve created The Ultimate Shopify Launch Checklist for First-Time Store Owners to help make your journey toward owning a successful Shopify store a little simpler. Best of luck!
