There's a reason that Shopify has become one of the world's most popular ecommerce platforms. It's incredibly easy to use and has hundreds of apps that allow any business to have increasingly intelligent functionality and sales channels.
If you're starting to consider Shopify as the new platform for your online store and website here are some essential tips for working with Shopify that you'll be happy you read about.
Assess your Shopify theme thoroughly
Whether you are building your Shopify store yourself or working with a Shopify development team/website company make sure you asses your theme thoroughly. Do you like the way the products display and the checkout works? Do you need more added elements like “Similar Products”? Do you like the internal page design? There are some things that are easy to change and some things that are not. Know your must have checklist and make sure your theme aligns with it.
Load your products into an excel sheet
It’s incredibly easy to upload your products into Shopify. You can do each manually or you can load your product information into an excel sheet and then do a bulk upload. We prefer the excel method because it allows you to standardize the product’s content and works as a check and balance. You will be less likely to miss product information and you’ll also have an offline source for your products.
Build your collections to meet how your customers think
Collections in Shopify are essentially categories that your visitors can shop from. It’s important to build these collections for your customers. That means that they are easy to follow, easy to understand, easy to digest and wanted. Don’t rewrite the book here, if you sell furniture stick to the words people know. Living Room then includes couches, rugs, coffee tables, lamps. All of your collections will display on their own webpage and you can add these collections to your navigation. We like to write out of collection map before we begin loading products.
Payments, shipping, inventory
These three things are incredibly important to ensure that your store is running and that you are making money. Decide how you are going to accept payments, whether that is through PayPal or another source like Stripe. Next decide how you are going to ship your products. Will it be through your countries postal service or through another party like FedEx. Lastly, how are you going to manage your inventory, manually or if you have a bricks and mortar store, through your POS system?
Create a launch checklist
Websites are big entities and when you’ve invested countless hours into building your stores new home the last thing you want to do is publicly launch with errors. There are some common elements of a Shopify store that we see overlooked often like tax and shipping settings, email notifications (for sales) and your meta data. Shopify has put together a basic checklist you can follow, but it’s also a good idea to work with a Shopify expert (like your web company) to make sure all boxes are ticked.
Shopify is a great option for any business ready to move online and customizing your Shopify theme and site can a really fun experience for a business. It's an easy to use platform and with the right theme can make any business look successful.
Need help customizing your Shopify website? Connect with our team of Shopify developers below ask them any questions, were happy to show you the possibilities.
