How to Set Up a Business on Shopify

Thanks to online marketplaces and e-commerce platforms, it is easier than ever for the average Joe to sell their products to a wide-reaching audience. In fact, if you are reading this article, you’ve probably thought about doing this yourself. 

Whether you’ve just purchased a business and need a reliable way to move inventory, or you have an entrepreneurial vision you want to take to the next level, Shopify — one of the most successful e-commerce platforms out there — can help you connect with potential customers and turn your ideas into a profitable enterprise. 

Wondering how to get started? Here’s everything you need to know to set up a business on Shopify.

Shopify Demystified

Shopify has been around since 2006 when it entered the e-commerce scene as a vehicle for selling snowboarding equipment online. Just as Amazon didn’t stick to books, Shopify soon expanded beyond these parameters, becoming an “all-in-one” solution for online stores of every size, selling a vast array of products to a global audience.   

Shopify’s statistics are impressive. According to its website, the platform represents businesses in over 170 countries and accounts for 10% of total US e-commerce — it claims to have “global economic activity” topping $444B, which translates into $5.6B in revenue for 2022, a 26% increase over the previous year.  

For comparison, these figures dwarf those of another recognizable e-commerce platform, Etsy, which generated $2.5B in profits in 2022. Shopify also has about twice the number of online merchants as Etsy — sellers have built 14.3 million e-commerce sites through its platform, as opposed to Etsy’s 7.3 million sellers. 

But let’s back up for a moment. What exactly is an “all-in-one” e-commerce platform? 

Simply put, Shopify allows anyone who signs up for one of their plans to create a virtual storefront, develop a brand to advertise their products, improve SEO rankings, process payments, and ship orders — all from the same dashboard platform. 

We’ll look at some of the individual features and how to set up shop in a minute, but that’s it in a nutshell. From the comfort of your desk, you can launch a retail empire. Shopify’s Help Center can even assist would-be entrepreneurs in deciding what products might be best for them to sell, and its new AI-driven feature, Sidekick, can understand and respond to prompts related to business decision-making.  

Nor does it matter whether the inventory is a physical object, like a vintage dress, or an electronic document, like an ebook. Shopify will allow you to sell either. Through a combination of built-in features and add-ons, you’ll be able to customize your business to suit your individual needs — and because there is no coding required, it is a simple process to create a professional-looking online storefront.

How Does Shopify Make Money?

By Selling Leveled Subscriptions

After a three-day free trial, followed by three months at $1 each — a pretty good introductory offer — Shopify offers three paid levels of support. The main thing that distinguishes these tiers is you’ll pay less to process transactions with the premium levels, so if you have a high volume of orders, the more expensive plan may be worthwhile. 

It’s worth noting that Shopify offers a 25% discount on all their plans if you pay by the year instead of by the month.

• Basic ($79 per month)

Basic gives individuals and small businesses the tools they need to set up a shop, process payments, and ship products. The rate for credit card fees is 2.9% + 30 cents USD for online purchases and 2.9% + 0 for in-person transactions. You’ll also receive basic reports, up to 1,000 inventory locations, two staff accounts, and up to a 77% discount on shipping. 

• Shopify ($105 per month)

When you upgrade to Shopify, the credit card transaction fee drops to 2.6%, and you’ll get up to an 88% discount on shipping orders. You’ll also upgrade to professional reports and be able to have five staff accounts. 

• Advanced ($399 per month)

With Advanced, you’ll pay only 2.4% for credit card transactions, be able to have 15 staff member accounts and gain access to custom reports.

By Selling Add-Ons 

Another way that Shopify earns revenue is by selling its own line of “products” that do everything from improving shipping times to simplifying checkout: 

• You can purchase premium themes for your virtual storefront that allow you to hone your branding and image.  
• You can let Shopify streamline your order fulfillment, returns, and product storage.
• You can set up your store in record time with Hydrogen, a sophisticated development tool, and deploy your plan Oxygen, Shopify’s global hosting solution.
• You can harness the power of generative AI with the suite of tools in Shopify Magic — including a brand-new feature, Sidekick, which provides answers to questions about how best to run your individual business.

Shopify lists pages of products on its website, all designed to boost the performance of your business and/or to augment the basic tools offered in its subscription packages. Some of them are free, but many others are offered at a cost. 

In fact, one of the drawbacks to using Shopify is that its design and deployment tools, albeit adequate, are limited regardless of which tier plan you purchase. If you want to take full advantage of the resources Shopify offers, you’ll have to pony up more dough for add-ons.

Setting up a Business on Shopify

Make a Shopify Account 

When you go to the website, you’ll be asked to enter your email address and guided through a series of preliminary questions. You will enter the name of your store and create a Shopify ID and account password. When you’re in the system, you’ll get to decide which of the three plans is right for you. You’ll enter your business address and payment method (credit card or PayPal). Once you submit the financial information, you are ready to build your storefront.

Choose a Custom Domain

Shopify allows you to use a custom domain that you already own. However, if you don’t have a custom domain for your shop, you can create one right in your account by entering your desired name into the field. Your professional domain name will be used as your business email address, and Shopify automatically forwards any emails your business receives to the email linked to your account.

Decide How Your Customers Will Pay

Shopify Payments allows you to bundle the most popular payment options available in your country and delivers the proceeds from any of the bundled payment options directly to the bank account you have on file. You can also select individual payment options, which may be your only option, depending on the country where you are doing business.

Set Up Shipping and Delivery

Shopify allows you to customize shipping zones, meaning you can decide where you want to ship products. If you create a shipping zone for each individual country, you can customize the shipping rate based on the actual cost to ship the product to each location. 

Select a Theme for Your Online Store

Shopify offers a variety of free and paid themes tailored to specific industries. You can look through all the themes in the library or use their filters to hone in on ones specifically related to your business. Once you have a theme, you can create a logo and choose design elements, such as a branded color scheme. 

Display Your Products 

The theme you use is a website template into which you can input important information about your store. You will most likely spend the majority of your setup time deciding how to display and advertise the products you want to appear on your store’s website. Fortunately, Shopify now comes with AI generative software that will transform your prompts into product descriptions and can even embed keywords to boost your SEO ranking. It also makes it easy for you to display collections of your product on both the home page and landing pages.

Create Your Checkout Page

It’s important to maintain professionalism, especially when customers are about to purchase a product, and one way to do that is to make sure your checkout page is branded with your store logo and banner. Shopify gives you the option to customize other details, like the appearance of text on the page and the use of background images.

Add Final Touches 

Shopify allows you to add pages to your header and footer menus, such as an About Us and Contact page. You can create a Store page that will take your customers directly to the product collections you created. You also have the option of adding a blog and embedding your social channels.  

Preview Appearance on Different Devices

Once you are done creating your online store, you can preview how your store website appears on desktop and mobile and make any necessary adjustments. 

Once you are happy with what you see, it’s time to remove the password protection from your online store. Now, you are open for business and can share your content across other social channels in order to draw in your first customers!