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There are lots of e-commerce platforms where you can build an online store. Some of them are pretty good, too. However, for serious brand-builders who want a platform that works with them every step of the way and scales as they grow, Shopify is far and away the best choice. Here’s why:
Shopify is no ordinary platform – it's a full-fledged e-commerce solution using a fully integrated model. That means Shopify is a central hub connecting your physical stores or pop-up shops to your online store. The Shopify Point of Sale (POS) app lets you track orders and inventory across your physical retail locations, online store, and other active sales channels.
Shopify offers everything you need to make selling online easy so you can focus on your brand and your business. As your business grows, you can also scale up to an enterprise level, which comes with additional reporting, analytics, and advanced features.
Shopify removes many of the technical hurdles in setting up your online store. We recommend seeking expertise in creating the store to maximize your conversion rate. However, once the store is up and running, it is a highly user-friendly platform. It’s a one-stop shop where you can easily update your products, customize your storefront, manage orders, inventory and fulfillment, accounts, and create reports without coding or advanced computer skills. This integration lets you focus on the essential aspects of growing your brand.
Thanks to the vast app store, Shopify has endless customization options. These apps enable powerful features like marketing integrations, loyalty programs, and functional improvements like additional payment gateways, back-in-stock, and pre-orders. Almost anything you can think of is available via an app to create a highly personal, effective customer experience.
Shopify takes security seriously, so you won’t have to worry about your store or customers' data getting compromised. Shopify also handles legal and compliance requirements in the background, so you won’t have to spend time on data security technicalities.
I’ve worked with many e-commerce stores, but I prefer Shopify for the vast majority of business cases. After personally building and growing Shopify stores from $0 to eight figures over the last decade, I know the process of creating a high-performing e-commerce website very well.
In this article, I’ll break down the process of building a profitable Shopify store into simple steps with expert insights and tips.
You probably have a few favorite Shopify stores you're using for inspiration. Let’s use those as an example. When setting up their Shopify business, do you think they went head first into designing the website?
Not a chance.
You can guarantee that a great deal of research and planning took place before engaging with a web designer.
Below, we’ll list the essential elements of Shopify market research to ensure success when designing, developing, and launching your Shopify store:
If you don’t know how to conduct this research, we strongly recommend engaging a marketing or branding agency to do it for you. If you are on a smaller budget, consider using inexpensive market research tools to formulate at least a rough market research document.
If you have all (or most) of the above information, building (and scaling) your Shopify store will be much easier. Market research informs everything from branding and marketing to product and customer service and ensures you are moving forward using data rather than gut feeling.
Imagine entering a store where everything—from the logo to the decor to the products—screams sophistication and quality. That’s what a strong brand identity does for your Shopify store. It’s the first impression your customers will get and needs to be memorable.
Your brand identity is more than just a logo or color scheme; it's the essence of your company, encompassing your values, mission, and overall personality. Hiring a professional branding agency will ensure your brand identity is strong, consistent, and aligns with your business goals. This investment lays a solid foundation for all other aspects of your Shopify store.
If you are consulting a branding agency for the first time, here is what you could expect:
Just as a strong brand identity gives your store its visual appeal, a distinct brand voice gives it personality. Imagine if your brand could speak to your customers. What would it sound like? What would it say? This voice should be recognizable and, most importantly, consistent across all channels—from your website and social media to customer service emails.
A copywriter will complete your brand voice alongside your brand identity, which should be included in the final document under a section titled “Voice.”
Developing a brand voice includes:
Other areas that will strengthen your brand voice:
A distinctive brand voice differentiates you from competitors and creates a lasting impression on your customers, driving engagement and loyalty. If you plan on working with a branding agency to develop your brand identity, they can also help build your brand voice.
Think of your Customer Journey Map (CJM) like a treasure map, guiding your customers from the moment they hear about your brand to when they make a purchase. It visualizes the entire customer experience and is a cornerstone of the UI/UX design process. This map helps inform what pages, content, and apps your Shopify store needs. This can be a large undertaking! Because of this, we recommend investing in a professional UI/UX designer or agency to create your CJM.
While the UI/UX designer handles the heavy lifting, your insights are crucial to ensure the CJM aligns with your business goals. Here’s how you can contribute:
Investing in a professional UI/UX designer to create a detailed Customer Journey Map lays the groundwork for a user-centric Shopify store. This not only improves the overall customer experience but also drives higher engagement and conversion rates, contributing to the long-term success of your business.
In the digital world, words are your most powerful tool. They tell your story, convey your brand’s personality, and persuade customers to take action. From product descriptions to blog posts, it is crucial to craft every piece of your Shopify store's content carefully. This is where a copywriter can help.
As the business owner, your role is to provide the copywriter with all the essential information about your products, brand values, and target audience. Think of yourself as a storyteller sharing the key points of your tale. The copywriter then weaves these points into a narrative that speaks to your customers.
A skilled copywriter can take mundane text and transform it into captivating narratives that wow your audience while also driving sales. From creating an irresistible product description to writing an informative blog post, a copywriter can ensure your content is both engaging and discoverable.
If you are consulting with a copywriter for the first time, here is what you could expect:
Imagine walking into a store where the aisles are a maze, the products are hard to find, and the overall layout makes you want to leave. That’s what a poorly designed Shopify store feels like to visitors, making UI (User Interface) and UX (User Experience) wireframes critical. Wireframes lay the foundation for the design and pages required for your store, preventing costly rework once the site is built.
Think of UI/UX wireframes as the architectural blueprints of your store. Just as an architect designs a house to be beautiful and practical, a web designer creates wireframes that ensure your store is attractive and easy to use. They consider the flow of traffic (user navigation), the placement of web pages, and the overall aesthetic to create a seamless experience.
A designer will create wireframes that map out the structure of your website, ensuring it’s intuitive for users while reflecting your brand personality. These wireframes act as a blueprint, showing where each element will go and how the user will interact with your site.
If you are consulting with a web designer for the first time, here is what you could expect:
Investing in professional UI/UX design pays off by reducing friction for your customers, which can lead to higher conversion rates and greater customer satisfaction. A well-designed site keeps visitors engaged and builds trust faster, ultimately driving sales. Moreover, good Shopify branding and web design dramatically increase customer loyalty (retention), meaning your store will stand the test of time.
Core content is the heart and soul of your Shopify store. It must be engaging and informative, reflect your brand personality, and be easy to navigate. Creating core content is not just about filling up your website with text and images; it’s about telling your brand’s story in a way that resonates with your audience and drives conversions.
High-quality images are essential for showcasing your products. Professional product photography can highlight the details and features of your products, making them more appealing to potential customers. Lifestyle photography can also help customers envision how they might use your products in their own lives.
Videos can bring your products to life in ways that photos can’t. Consider creating product demonstration videos, FAQs, how-to guides, and customer testimonials. Videos can increase engagement and provide valuable information that helps customers make informed purchasing decisions.
3D mockups can be incredibly useful for products that benefit from a detailed view. They allow customers to interact with the product, view it from different angles, and better understand its features and dimensions.
Compelling product descriptions are key to converting visitors into buyers. A professional copywriter can create descriptions highlighting your products' benefits and unique selling points while optimizing for SEO.
Your ‘About Us’ page is an opportunity to tell your brand’s story and connect with your customers personally. Share your mission, values, and the inspiration behind your products. This helps build trust and loyalty with your audience.
Displaying customer reviews and testimonials can significantly boost your credibility. Encourage satisfied customers to leave reviews and showcase them prominently on your product pages and homepage.
Expert Tip: Consider running a sampling program to increase the number of testimonials and user-generated content (UGC) before you launch your store. A sampling agency will send your full product or smaller samples to many people in your target audience. The people sampling your product will submit text or video reviews along with other pieces of content to use on your website and social media. The recommended number of reviews on a product page for optimal conversions is 30-50, but the more, the better.
A well-structured FAQ section or Help Center can enhance the customer experience by providing answers to common questions. This can reduce the burden on your customer support team and help customers make informed decisions.
Think of your core content as the foundation of a house. Just as a house needs a strong foundation to stand tall and withstand the elements, your Shopify store needs solid core content to attract and retain customers. While your role is to provide a clear vision and detailed information about your brand, products, and audience, a content creator can help craft persuasive and optimized content for search engines. They can ensure that every piece of content aligns with your brand identity and voice, creating a cohesive and compelling user experience.
If you are consulting with a content creator for the first time, here is what you could expect:
Investing in professional content creation ensures that your Shopify store looks great and has engaging content. High-quality content enhances user experience, improves SEO rankings, and drives more sales. It also makes your store more attractive and trustworthy to potential customers, setting you apart from the competition.
Now it’s time to build your store. Most Shopify web designers will have a development team to build your website but it’s always good to check with them beforehand. If the designer can’t build your store, you’ll need to find a Shopify developer who can.
Keep in mind that your website is not an art display. Yes, you want it to look good, but never, ever, at the expense of being easy to navigate and knowing where to click next to place an order. Best practice is to follow your wireframes tightly to maximize sales and ensure that making a purchase has as little friction as possible.
Building your store includes selecting a theme and customizing layouts to look identical to your UI/UX wireframe. Features for easy navigation and enhanced user experience must also be incorporated. The theme provides a base layer of layout and functionality, but Shopify's customizable nature means you can do almost anything you want with the help of experts.
Expert Tip: Tell your designer to include instructions on incorporating animations when building your website. Animations make your Shopify store pop and improve the user experience.
We can’t stress enough that store design is not just about aesthetics; it's about creating a seamless and intuitive shopping experience that guides customers from when they land on your site to browsing products and then making a purchase. Choosing an experienced Shopify developer is the key to translating your designs into a high-converting online store.
When designing your Shopify store, always consider the following best practices:
When setting up your Shopify store, one of the first decisions you'll face is whether to use a premade theme or invest in a custom design. Think of the theme as the basic skeleton of your customer-facing store. It’s not easy to upgrade or change your skeleton, so you want to consider what works for you now and in the future, as your brand grows and expands. Let’s explore the options.
Pre-made themes offer a quick and efficient way to launch your Shopify store. These versatile templates cater to a wide range of industries and styles. The time and lower cost associated with pre-made themes make them attractive options for startups and businesses looking to launch their ecommerce store quickly.
Why opt for pre-made themes?
When selecting a pre-made template, consider the following:
Pre-made themes via the Shopify Theme Store provide a solid starting point. While they may lack the advanced features and design options you can achieve with a custom theme, they remain a good option if you have limited capital.
However, if you’re reading this guide, you’ll likely have a little extra to work with, and we highly recommend a custom theme. The up-front investment will translate to an enhanced user experience for your customers, which means more sales.
Custom Shopify themes offer a design solution that you can tailor to reflect your brand's personality. You can more easily cater to your specific audience's needs and build features that would otherwise require a separate, paid app.
Unlike off-the-shelf themes, custom templates are built from the ground up to meet your precise requirements, offering your customers a bespoke online shopping experience.
They are usually built using Shopify's Liquid coding language, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to create a cohesive, fast, effective, and visually appealing online store.
Custom-built Shopify templates can be developed and used across all pricing tiers, including Shopify Basic. However, the Shopify or Advanced Shopify plan is recommended. These plans offer better support for custom coding, APIs, and third-party integrations, providing a solid foundation for a unique and powerful ecommerce experience.
In addition to the benefits of design and functionality, custom themes are unique and thus are favored by search engine algorithms (such as Google).
Remember that you don’t have to be an expert in all this—your designer will guide you and explain everything in more depth at every step.
So, what makes custom templates a better choice?
Since a custom theme is coded from scratch, you will work closely with an expert Shopify designer & developer to help you build your theme.
The three stages of developing a custom theme are:
1. Design Phase: Your brand and vision take center stage. Share your branding guidelines with your chosen Shopify designer. They'll use this to craft a website design that reflects your brand’s personality and resonates with your target audience. You can revise, edit, and provide feedback until everything is just right. The design phase also includes content creation and copywriting. The result should be a wireframe that looks exactly like the finished website.
2. Development Phase: During this phase, your developer builds the Shopify theme using custom code. They'll ensure it seamlessly integrates with Shopify's back-end features and functionalities while capturing your brand’s personality.
3. Testing and Optimisation: In this final stage, your developer ensures your Shopify theme is responsive and functions flawlessly on all devices. They'll do rigorous testing and optimization for speed and SEO, guaranteeing a smooth user experience and increased search engine visibility for your store.
A custom Shopify theme is the way to go for serious entrepreneurs who want to get it right the first time rather than work on a shoestring budget and face barriers to overcome as the brand matures.
One more option offers unparalleled flexibility, allowing a brand to expand beyond the webpage. This is known as Shopify headless CMS and Custom UI.
Shopify's headless CMS separates the front-end design (the "head") from the back-end infrastructure. It allows the creation of a custom UI (User Interface) tailored to provide a unique and engaging user experience. This is for brands wanting to be truly omnichannel and expand beyond a website—we’re talking about native mobile apps, mobile kiosks, and wearable tech. The future is now!
By “going headless,” you can design the front end of your website to be fast, user-friendly, and completely optimized. You can also take that a step further and develop UIs for other forms of engagement with your brand. Multiple front-end UIs speak to a single back-end, tracking orders, customers, inventory, etc.
Why go for a Shopify Headless CMS?
This can be a serious undertaking for brands looking to disrupt traditional markets. It requires far more time, energy, and investment than simply building a custom theme. But if your brand is future-focused, and you see an opportunity beyond a website, you will want to explore Headless Architecture.
Even with a stunning design and seamless functionality, there are always ways to enhance your Shopify store. Adding the right apps can help you boost sales, improve customer engagement, and streamline your operations.
Here are the top 6 apps you should consider for your Shopify store:
Klaviyo is a powerful email marketing tool designed especially for ecommerce. Its robust features include creating personalized email campaigns based on customer behavior, audience segmentation for targeted messaging, and detailed performance tracking for email. Through effective email marketing strategies, Klaviyo can help you build stronger customer relationships, drive repeat sales, and increase overall revenue.
Key Features:
Yotpo helps you collect and display customer reviews and user-generated content (UGC) on your store. Testimonials and reviews can significantly increase trust and conversion rates. Knowing this, Yotpo efficiently leverages your happy customers' voices to attract new buyers.
Key Features:
Appstle Subscription is a powerful subscription app designed to help you sell subscriptions, set up recurring orders, create custom loyalty programs, and more! With features like its user-friendly customer portal, reward programs, and 1-click checkout, Appstle Subscription ensures a top-tier, seamless experience for your subscribers, which in turn helps you build a loyal customer base.
Key Features:
Privy is a versatile app that helps you grow your email list and increase conversions through pop-ups, banners, and email marketing. Privy enables you to capture more leads and convert visitors into customers. Its exit-intent pop-ups are particularly effective in reducing cart abandonment and increasing sales.
Key Features:
Tidio is an all-in-one customer service platform that combines live chat, chatbots, and email integration to help you provide exceptional customer support. With Tidio, you can offer real-time assistance, automate responses to common questions, and capture leads even when you’re not online. This ensures that your customers receive timely and accurate support, which can lead to increased sales and customer loyalty.
Key Features:
Fabrikatör is a comprehensive inventory management tool designed to help you efficiently manage your stock levels, forecast demand, and streamline your supply chain. By integrating Fabrikatör with your Shopify store, you can keep track of your inventory in real time, reduce stockouts, and optimize your replenishment process.
Features:
Using the right apps can significantly affect your Shopify store's operations and performance. These tools streamline your processes and enhance the customer experience, leading to higher satisfaction and even increased sales.
Now that you have a beautiful Shopify theme and your core content is ready, it’s time to set up and launch your store! This exciting phase involves several essential steps to ensure everything runs smoothly from day one.
Here’s a list of what you and your developer will need to do to get your store up and running.
The developer will install and configure the custom theme on your Shopify store. They will ensure that all design elements and functionalities work as intended and that the theme is responsive across all devices.
If you wish to integrate apps into your stores, the developer will handle this. This includes configuring each app to work seamlessly with your theme and ensuring they meet your business needs.
The developer will also ensure that your store is optimized for search engines. This includes setting up meta tags and alt text for images and making the site structure SEO-friendly.
Before the launch, the developer will conduct thorough performance testing to ensure your store loads quickly and operates smoothly. This involves testing across different devices and browsers to identify and fix any issues.
Enter all essential store information, including your business name, address, and contact details. This information will be displayed in your store and is crucial for establishing customer trust.
Provide your bank account information to set up your payment gateways. Shopify supports multiple payment providers, so choose the one that best fits your business needs. This step is essential for receiving payments from customers.
Configure your tax settings based on your business location and the regions you sell to. This includes setting up tax rates and ensuring compliance with local tax laws.
If you sell physical products, you’ll need to define your shipping options, including rates, methods, and regions you will ship to. Consider integrating with a shipping app for real-time shipping rates and automated fulfillment.
Create and upload important legal pages such as Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and Return Policy. These pages help protect your business and inform customers about their rights.
Review product listings to ensure the correct information is displayed, including images, inventory, price, and copy.
Purchase a custom domain and give your developer access to connect your Shopify store to the domain and make it discoverable by humans and search engines.
Congratulations! Your Shopify store is live, and you’re ready to welcome customers. To ensure ongoing success, consider the following steps for effective marketing and efficient management.
An ecommerce marketing agency can help you develop and execute a comprehensive marketing strategy. They’ll manage your social media campaigns, SEO efforts, pay-per-click advertising, email marketing, and more. Their expertise ensures that your marketing efforts are both effective and efficient.
Update your blog regularly with valuable content that resonates with your audience. This will help with SEO and position your brand as an authority in your industry.
Use Klaviyo to send personalized email campaigns to your customers. Segment your audience based on their behavior and preferences to send targeted emails that drive engagement and sales.
Utilize Influencer Marketing
Partnering with influencers in your niche can help you reach a larger audience and build credibility. Influencers can showcase your products to their followers, driving traffic and sales to your store.
Maintain an active presence on social media platforms where your target audience hangs out. Engage with your followers, respond to comments and messages, and create content encouraging sharing and interaction.
Set up GA4 with easy reporting via Looker dashboards to measure your marketing performance and gain insights for optimizing your design and content.
If you need help, consider hiring a freelance or full-time store manager to take over day-to-day operations. They can ensure your store runs smoothly by managing inventory, processing orders, and handling customer inquiries.
To keep customer satisfaction high, it is crucial to provide excellent customer support. Use apps like Tidio to manage customer conversations and respond to inquiries quickly.
Keep track of your inventory levels and restock products as needed. Consider using an inventory management app to automate this process and avoid stockouts.
Review your store’s performance regularly using Shopify’s built-in analytics tools or your custom GA4 and Looker dashboards. Track key metrics such as sales, conversion rates, and customer behavior to identify areas for improvement.
Stay updated with the latest ecommerce trends and continuously seek ways to improve your store. This could involve tweaking your product offerings, optimizing your website, or experimenting with new marketing strategies.
Your store's long-term success hinges on two main pillars: effective marketing and efficient management. Without these, growth can be challenging. Investing in professional services and maintaining a proactive approach will attract more customers, keep them satisfied, and drive sustained growth for your business.
Your journey in building a successful Shopify store doesn’t end here. Keep refining your strategies, stay customer-focused, and remain persistent. Most importantly, focus on building a team of highly skilled people who are masters of their craft.
Best of luck with your new venture!
