Setting Up Shopify Stores: Expectation vs Reality
You’ve got yourself some shiny new Shopify software. Congratulations! You’ve taken the first step toward creating and managing an online storefront with a precision that you’ve never had before. Feels good. Now all you have to do is get everything set up. According to all the advice you’ve read, it should be a snap. Right?
It’d be nice if things were as easy to assemble right out of the box as the nice, neat instruction say, but unfortunately, that’s rarely the reality. Setting up a Shopify online store isn’t necessarily difficult, but there’s a long list of steps to keep track of, which can be difficult for someone who isn’t familiar with the software. With so many different items to potentially troubleshoot, the setup can become a headache quicker than you’d like to imagine.
“Carving out the necessary time to go through a 25-step online Shopify store setup is a big ask, and it’s one you don’t have to do alone.”
Here’s a quick-and-dirty list of everything you need to know, set up a Shopify store, and take care of before your store can launch:
What Steps are Necessary to Setup a Shopify Store?
Choose whether you want to sell online or in person
Select the sales channels where you’d like to list
Consider your pricing plan options
Log in
Password protect your shop
Name your shop
Input your legal business name and address
Input your billing info
Set your default currency
Set your default weight units
Hire staff if necessary
Set up a domain online
Design your site out with an appealing and on-brand theme
Add in your product catalog
Organize products as needed
Set up shipping options
Do all that fun tax stuff
Test your transactions
Test order refunds and cancellations
Test fulfilling both partial and complete orders
Test your order archive system
Remove password protection so customers can access the store
All that social media marketing stuff
All that online advertising stuff
Don’t forget to define your homepage metadata
Yes, that’s 25 steps, you’re reading it correctly. Yikes, right? Not exact plug-and-play. Granted, some of these steps are relatively simple and straightforward, but when you get into the nitty-gritty of inputting each of the products from your catalog along with their information and descriptions or designing a functional theme, things can get unwieldy fast. Before you know it, you’ll have lost hours of time on work that you may or may not end up using.
Don’t get us wrong: Shopify is an incredibly powerful and useful tool for growing your online retail business. We wouldn’t work with it otherwise. Getting your products online and exploring all the available marketplaces is absolutely necessary to succeed in this rapidly growing industry, and a central hub like Shopify makes your job so much easier. It provides a singular dashboard where you can manage your products across channels, see all of your stats, track order history, market through Facebook, and so much more. It’s a powerhouse.
Which is why we understand how frustrating it is to make it halfway through the setup process and then lose the thread. In order to access all of these incredible tools, you have to make it through the build phase, and the build phase can be overwhelming. Whether you’re strapped for time or you’re just not that familiar with website setup, it’s easy to get lost in the weeds.
You’re hardly alone. This is exactly why SKU Agency exists: we’ve been there and we know how it goes. Our personal experience in running our own storefronts has led us to virtually every software configuration you can think of, and hands-down, Shopify has been the best for our needs. We know it’s the best for yours, too. Let our trial-and-error be your gain. With extensive experience in setting up dozens of online stores, we can get you up and running pain-free.
No matter where you are in the process, you’ve got the support you need. Our Shopify experience in selecting and customizing themes, finalizing shipping and tax information, crafting and uploading effective product descriptions, and more makes us the right choice for the job. Owning a small or mid-sized business is a constant juggling act of finding time to manage the business you have, find ways of growing, figuring out how to squeeze in a promotion, and saving time for the dozens of other things you need to worry about it. Carving out the necessary time to go through a 25-step online Shopify store setup is a big ask, and it’s one you don’t have to do alone.
Don’t get frustrated, get help. It’s okay to ask, we promise.
SKU Agency is a certified Shopify Expert.
