Setting Up Your Shopify Marketplace In Five Easy Steps

November 23, 2021 Marketplaces

Do you want to fulfill your dream of building your ideal Shopify store? You know it requires no coding or programming skills but you’re stuck getting it started. Well, this is your lucky day because this article will show you how to set up your Shopify marketplace in five easy and simple to implement steps. With these easy steps, you can set up your Shopify store and start raking in your cool bucks.

e-Commerce For Business

E-commerce as an industry can be traced back to the 1990s and early 2000s. It refers to any transaction that involves the exchange of goods and services for money over the internet. Now, you can find every imaginable product or service on the internet. The fun fact is that you don’t have to own a brick-and-mortar shop to own an e-commerce marketplace. If anything, platforms like Shopify are doing this every day – giving businesses without physical stores a platform to sell!

About Shopify

Shopify is a subscription e-commerce platform that hosts smaller e-commerce stores. In other words, Shopify lets you set up your e-commerce store, provides you with the best and easy-to-use features for a fee. You have access to an administrative dashboard from where you can manage your store. You can add items, customize your store, check and track orders, and perform other business functions. Shopify has also made different subscription plans available. You can choose any of their plans, depending on the scope of your business. The intriguing part of all these is you have the opportunity to use Shopify for free for 14 days to get a feel of the platform and decide if you want to commit long-term too.

Setting Shopify In Five Easy Steps

1. Use the 14-days free period to start up your store

One of the unique features of Shopify is that it gives a 14-days trial. This trial period is aimed at giving you time to try out its features and decide on a plan. Before starting the trial period, you will need to sign up. On the signup page, you will need to fill some forms. You would be asked to enter the name you want your store to be known as. This will automatically become your default link to your store (i.e yourstorename.shopify.com). You must note that store names become permanent after launch, and cannot be changed. You are only allowed to change the “.shopify.com” at the end of your store link to a “.com” when you buy a custom domain.

Still, on the form, you will be asked for your business logo, the products you want to sell, photos, and so on. You don’t need to fill all, just fill in the ones that are essential if you don’t have many of these things available at this stage. Your Spotify account becomes ready for use after submitting this form.

2. Add your products

The next step is stocking up your store. To add products to your store, navigate to the side of the page. Then, look for the “Products” button, click on it then click on “add products” next. After adding a product, you should then write the product’s title and descriptions on the product page. This is the page where customers read all they need to know about a product; size, color, variation, quantity, and so on. After writing the product title and descriptions, you should then upload clear high-quality pictures of the product on the media section of the product page and insert a selling price too.

3. Customize and Create Key Pages for your Store.

If you added products to your store, then your store is not empty right now. The next thing is to customize your store and make it appeal to your prospective customers. To do this, on your dashboard click on “Online Store.” Then click on “Themes” next. Here, you should see a list of themes to choose from. Choose the theme template you want to install into your store. You should however note that Shopify has both free and paid themes, each has its uniqueness and features. You should also bear in mind that you are not stuck with any theme you choose, you can always change it whenever you feel like it.

After installing a theme, you should add key pages to the store. These pages help to build trust, credibility and help customers understand your business better. To do this, locate the “Online Store” button, then click on “Pages”. You don’t have to set up all the pages before you launch. However, the important ones you should have include:

About Page – which connects with your customers, sharing your business model in the process.
Contact Page – that gives customers ways to reach out to you for inquiries.
Shipping, Returns, and Refund Policy Pages.
A Frequently Asked Questions Page.

4. Set up Shipping, Payment Gateways, and Payouts

Another major step you have to take when setting up an e-commerce website is setting up shipping methods. Luckily, Shopify has different shipping strategies for its users. You can choose a shipping strategy that works for you or even blend a few strategies for your business. To set up your Shipping strategy, locate the settings button, click on it, then click on “Shipping.” The next thing is to decide how your store receives money and how you, the store owner will like to get paid. To set this up, click on “Payments,” still on the settings page. You are advised to contact a tax professional to set up your taxes and remittance to your local authority.

5. Final Touches

See this step as dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s on your Shopify store. Your store is ready and can function optimally without the following touches. However, for the best results using Shopify, we advise that you add the following touches;

Add a custom domain (we have mentioned this earlier, remember?) – click on “Online Store” then “Domain” to view the various options available for your site.
Install relevant sales channels like social media, other marketplaces, and so on. To do this, find the “Sales Channel” button and click on the “+” sign next to it.
Set up your store for marketing (data collection, tracking, and analytics). To set this up, locate the “Analytics” button, click on it and then click on “Reports.”
Customize SMS or e-mail notification. Click on “Notifications” on the settings page to set this up

If you have done all these, then it is time for your Shopify store to go live!

Bottom Line

If you have been setting up your Shopify store while reading this article, then you should be a proud store owner by now. You can now see that you don’t have to be an expert to build your Shopify marketplace. We’re glad we could be of help!