How To Develop A Shopify eCommerce Store – Complete Guide

Last Updated on January 21, 2022

If you are reading this article, then definitely you want to learn how you can create your own Shopify Store by which you can turn your traditional business online and increase sales. Well, you are on the right track, in this article we would be telling you how you can easily build an ecommerce store on Shopify and benefits associated with it. But first, let’s understand why creating an ecommerce site is beneficial for your business.

eCommerce has become a giant industry with a global valuation of nearly 3.5 trillion dollars in 2019. It is having a presence everywhere from selling toothpaste to technical equipment, furniture, insurance policies, etc. The global online retail sales figure is expected to reach 17.5% in 2021.

B2B alone is expected to reach a valuation of $6.6 trillion by 2020. However, due to the coronavirus pandemic, these stats can now vary. You wouldn’t believe that the total number of ecommerce web applications across the world lies between 2-3 million. There is no wonder of such a huge number, as more and more consumers are getting used to buying online.

Also, starting an ecommerce business doesn’t require such a huge investment, unlike the traditional brick-and-mortar stores. The future is only going to get digital and those who are on screens will only be going to lead the business race, hence you must not delay the decision of taking your business online and build an ecommerce store.

Also Read: How To Migrate from Magento to Shopify: Complete Guide

Why should You use Shopify for eCommerce development?

There are many popular ecommerce platforms such as Magento 2, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Prestashop, and Shopify is one of them. It meets all the demands of ecommerce business on every scale. It is the third most popular ecommerce platform in the world with a great reputation.

It is a hosted platform and comes with high flexibility to fit with varied industries and markets. Whether you want to sell handmade items or expand your established brick and mortar store, developing ecommerce on Shopify would be the best solution. You will get hosting, order management, and whatever you require to sell your products online.

What makes Shopify a unique ecommerce platform?

Shopify is a complete package of ecommerce features that you require in your ecommerce site. You just have to create a seller account on Shopify and then you can…

• Develop an eCommerce store
• Choice of hundreds of design template to implement in your Shopify store
• Choice of the domain as per your brand or industry
• Add products, with descriptions, images, and videos
• Processing orders from customers
• Taking payment from customers through many different options
• Giving discounts and offers to your customers and a lot more…

How much a Shopify Store cost?

There is a 14-day trial version of Shopify in which you can easily develop your Shopify Store and can check out the Shopify apps. For the Shopify Lite plan, the pricing starts at $9 per month while Shopify Basic version costs $29 per month. If you want to develop your Shopify store on Advanced or Shopify Plus, then you may need to contact the Shopify Sales team for a quote.

Interesting Stats about Shopify

You would be surprised to know that there are more than 2 million active users on Shopify users. It is used by nearly 1 million online businesses.

• In 2019 alone, nearly 218 million buyers make sales worth $135 billion.
• 81% of traffic and 71% of orders on Shopify stores are coming from mobile devices.
• In May 2020, Shopify announced that 26,400 partners referred a merchant to Shopify over the past 12 months.
• On its App store, there are nearly 4,200 apps. Last year, 25.8 million installations were done.
• It is one of the most used ecommerce development platforms in the world, with a 20 percent market share.
• In 2019, there were over 14,700 partners and businesses involved in an international eCommerce business. And around 7,500 partners and businesses in developing countries.

As of now, 1,498,823 live websites are using Shopify and additional 1,857,305 sites that used Shopify historically as per BuiltWith Shopify trends.

Shopify Versions

There are 4 different versions of Shopify:

1. Basic Shopify

It is priced at $29 per month + 2.9% and 30¢ per transaction.

2. Shopify

It is priced at $79 per month + 2.6% and 30¢ per transaction.

3. Advanced Shopify

This advanced plan of Shopify comes at the price of $299 per month + 2.4% and 30¢ per transaction.

4. Shopify Plus

You need to contact the sales team for pricing.

We suggest you use Shopify Payments to avoid extra charges. Refer here for detailed Shopify Plan Prices. Also, paying for one year or more plan will apply a discount.

Advantages of Choosing Shopify as your ecommerce platform

Shopify is a great platform for selling goods with a minimal amount of configuration. Here we have listed some of the advantages of choosing Shopify as your ecommerce platform:

1. Easy to Use

There is no-fuss about the technicality of Shopify. You can easily set up it and start using it. If you want an ecommerce platform that is a complete solution and has no high-level technicalities regarding development or hosting, then it is the best platform.  The backend admin panel is also very user-friendly.

2. Visually Captivating

You will get a lot of Shopify themes or templates as per your industry niche to develop a unique ecommerce store that can attract visitors. It comes with a bare minimum theme but you can hire expert level developers which can make the rich UI and exceptional UX.

3. Integration of Shopify Apps

This is the most exciting thing about Shopify. You can customize your ecommerce from the tons of Shopify apps available on the Shopify app store.

4. Secure and Reliable

You get a high level of security and reliability with Shopify. In ecommerce, you can’t compromise with the security as you are dealing with the confidential information of the customer along with their payment details, and addresses. Also, your ecommerce store must work 24 x 7. Both these requirements are taken care of Shopify.

5. Speed

As per a report, if an ecommerce store is making revenue of $100,000 per day then a delay of 1 second can make you lose sales of $2.5 million every year. Hence, speed plays an important role in determining the success of your ecommerce store. Since Shopify is a hosted solution, there is the super-fast loading speed of it and the site gets loaded in a few seconds.

For further improvement take a look at the Shopify speed optimization guide.

6. Mobile Responsive

As per a recent report of Shopify, mobile phones and tablets account for 69% of total sales.  A mobile application for your business surely helps you in increasing the revenue & sales of your business, in addition to building a trusty brand reputation.

Also Learn: How to create a Shopify app using PHP?

7. Easy Payment

Finding a secure and reliable payment gateway is always a big challenge for an online retailer. There should also be multiple payment options for the customer. But no worries, in Shopify it is very easy. The platform supports the Stripe payment option, giving buyers the liberty to make transactions without paying any extra fees.

8. SEO Friendly

You can’t generate sales if your site is not visible to the potential customers and for this, it should come in search results, and in turn, it should be SEO friendly. Shopify supports custom title tags and meta tags which are highly helpful in the SEO.

Also Read: Magento vs WooCommerce vs Shopify vs Opencart – Best Comparision

How to develop your eCommerce store using Shopify?

Now you will learn how you can easily create an online store using Shopify. Let’s begin with the step by step guide…

Step 1. Start with creating a Shopify Account

The first step is quite easy, you just have to create a Shopify account which is quite similar to any other form.

Just go to the Shopify Website and click on the Start Free Trial button. Enter the details and your store name.

Remember, choose a unique store name since Shopify doesn’t allow you to purchase the domain. On clicking Next, you will redirect to a new page where you have to tell Shopify about your store like what is your plan to sell. After completing, click on Enter My Store.

It will ask you whether you want to develop a brick or mortar store or an online store. In this article we are going to guide you about the online store, so select that option and click on Next.

On clicking next, a page will open on which you have to give your personal details.

Step 2: Adding products to your Shopify store

After getting signed up on Shopify, you will get redirected to the admin panel of your site. Here you can start customizing your ecommerce store and can upload products.

There would be a button “Add Products”. You have to fill product details such as title, description, price, etc. You can fill details on how much you like and then click on save. Remember, images associated with your product are very important, don’t neglect them. You can also make a group of products or categories so if you are a footwear website then you can make groups of Men’s footwear etc.

Step 3: Site look customization

To customize the look of your website, you need to go to the Dashboard and click on the Customize the Look of Your Site button. Now you would be able to customize your whole site from logos to colors.

There would be a Visit the Theme store where you can find hundreds of ready-made themes by which your site will look just amazing. There is the availability of free as well as premium themes.

Free themes are attractive but premium themes are jaw-dropping. You get extra modifications and you can manage every fine detail with them.  You can also hire Shopify expert designers who can make more adjustments by accessing CSS and HTML of the theme. Some of the major customizations that you can make are:

• Fonts
• Color Schemes
• Items appearing on the page
• Related item functionality
• Homepage carousel sliders
• Logos

Step 4: Setting up the domain with Shopify

After customizing the store, it is time to make your store official. For this, you have to select a domain name. First, go to the Admin panel and then click on Add a Domain.

From here you can register for a  new domain of your website. You can take as much time you want to think of the best domain for your store.

Remember, you can either purchase a domain from Shopify or you can also purchase a domain from elsewhere and add it to Shopify.

After purchasing the domain, you will need to select a payment method for your account. Now that your domain is active, you’ll soon be able to see your Shopify store on the Internet.

Step 5: Activation of Payment Processor

Go to your admin panel and click on the Settings option present on the bottom left-hand side. On clicking it, you will find many different options.

Click on the Payments option which will lead you to a page with many payment gateway processors by which you would be able to accept the payment from customers.

Some of the popular payment gateways are Authorize.net, Stripe, and Paypal. There is also a payment gateway of Shopify which is also very easy to integrate.

After choosing the payment gateway processor you need to go through its activation steps as described on the site and then you can receive payments from the customers.

Click on the Launch Website button and your store will get live.

Now you are ready to sell your products.

Is this complete?

Well, actually not! Initially, you may able to launch your online Shopify store but you will require a team of Shopify developers who can make changes and improve your website. You will also require a marketing team to increase the traffic or visitors on your site.

Wrapping Up

At Emizentech, the best Shopify development company, we provide the best ecommerce development services and consultation. Let us know your requirement and we will turn them into web reality.