Shopify is an easy-to-use e-commerce platform, even for beginners. It’s a great option for businesses of all sizes, from startups to well-established enterprises.
In this blog, we are creating a Shopify guide to help beginners understand its different elements.
What is Shopify?
Shopify is a platform that helps build online stores. Brands and businesses all over the world use Shopify to launch their products online. It’s reliability is pretty much visibile as it has around 4.95 million active users worldwide.
The platform offers you seamless customizations, payment processing, and extensive marketing tools that will help with the upscaling of the business.
Shopify offers its users a free trial period to start with.
Why choose Shopify for your online store?
- User-Friendly Interface: Shopify helps users to set up their online stores within no time. The drag-and-drop editor makes it easier for people who have no technical know-how.
- Scalable Solution: Beginners can pick up Shopify’s platform and scale it as the business grows. The platform is set to accommodate established businesses as well.
- Fully-Hosted Platform: Hosting is no longer a worry if you plan to choose to set up your online business with Shopify. This also makes the process a whole lot cheaper.
Key Features of Shopify
For Online Store
Authority for merchants over people search for items and optimize for search process. Control over the display and product recommendations of child and parent product categories.
Segregations based on different taxonomy attributes like color, material, size and other taxonomies.
Access metaobjects anywhere within the theme.
Theme editor section has become thinner making navigation much easier within a page
AI ecosystem
Just as the world moves into an AI-driven world, Shopify is making the most out of it. The AI acts as developer’s assistant and help them create GraphQL queries and thus speeding up app development.
Artificial Intelligence helps customers to have a personalized shopping experience.
Adapting to International Growth
Shopify makes it platform equipped for both local and international markets. Applications like transalte and adapt helps local customers to set their e-commerce store for different markets supporting multiple languages.
It also simplifies pricing strategies catering to different regions.
Flexible Checkout
Flexibility in checkout design by bringing easy way out even when there is rush in the store especially during discount sales.
Managed Markets
Managed markets from Shopify helps in dealing 150+ countries globally. Success of a business lies in how it manages its operations. This is brought in by Shopify through custom store designs per market, market specific content, exclsuive shipping rates, etc.
Marketing Benefits
Shopify brings to its users an extensive set up in their email marketing strategies like ability to compare different email ROI strategies, editing email image templates, and specially crafted holiday templates with countdown timers.
Shop campaigns effectively integrated with Meta and Google. These campaigns are also blended with Google Shopping with one-click.
Chatbox personalization with defined profiles and profile images. The Shop Feed is made more vibrant with colors, videos, images and featured personalized reccommendations.
Shopify Guide to Beginners
Create an Account
The first step is to create an account. You can login with your Google, Facebook, or your email ID.
Choosing a Plan
The next step to setting up Shopify is to fix the plan that you are choosing for your online store. The pricing plans are set for solo entrepreneurs, small teams, and as per the growth of the business. The pricing is as follows:
Alternative to the listed pricing plans is Shopify Starter which starts at $5; Shopify Plus for complex businesses at $2300. Enterprise is another that you can pick which offers custom pricing.
If you want to know how Shopify works, you can use their trial period firsthand.
Setting Up Your Store
The next step is choose a store name, set the phone number, and the relevant email ID for the store. You also will require to set up the store currency.
Adding a custom domain is also easy with Shopify. You can either connect an existing domain or create a new domain.
Picking a Theme
Shopify gives you a plethora of options that aligns with your respective niche. In default Shopify will be set in “Dawn” theme.
You can choose from Shopify’s different themes. You can get free themes as well as paid ones ranging from $0 – $350.
Before settling on a theme, especially paid ones, you can test them out and make sure that it supports your niche.
You can start customizing your theme with the Shopify page builder. It gives you access to the basic setup.
Adding Products
The next step is to set up the product catalog for your e-commerce store. All you have to do is to go to the Shopify dashboard and then click on “Products” tab. You can also efficiently do product personalization in Shopify.
Setting up Payment Options
The payment options need to be set and this can be done by going into: Shopify admin’s section > Settings > Payments.
Here you can choose the payment provider, payment capture method, customizations, etc.
You can also set up manual payment methods like Bank deposit, Cash on Delivery, Money Order or even create a custom method.
Launching the Store
Now, after checking setting up everything, you can now launch the store.
Conclusion
This Shopify guide is intended to help you get a basic idea on Shopify and the new trends it setting in for 2025. Hope all the first-timers got a clear idea to start with.
FAQs
- Is Shopify a good choice for beginners in 2025?
Yes, the biggest flex of Shopify is that it is constantly evolving and adapting to the changes across.
- How much does Shopify cost in 2025?
The Shopify Starter plan starts at $5/month.
- Can I use Shopify for small businesses?
Yes, Shopify is a scalable solution. Thus, if you start using it from the ground level, you can gradually adapt higher-priced plans as your business upscales.
- Does Shopify support SEO?
Yes, Shopify has built-in SEO tools like customizable meta tags, sitemaps, etc. These elements help in the organic ranking of the store.