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Launch a successful online store in moments with the help of the most popular ecommerce platform on the planet
As the platform of choice for over 1 million businesses in over 175 countries, Shopify powers everything from small local stores to multi-million-dollar ecommerce operations. There’s no question you can make it work for you. But how can you get started?
In Shopify For Dummies, ecommerce exec, adviser, and speaker Paul Waddy wastes no time showing you how to create and open a thriving online store. You can do it all, from marketing and customer engagement to payments and shipping.
The book will help you:
Perfect for anyone who’s ever dreamed of getting their own online store off the ground, Shopify For Dummies helps you unlock the full potential of the most popular ecommerce platform in the world today.
Paul Waddy is an experienced ecommerce advisor with over 15 years of experience. Paul is the founder of Paul Waddy Advisory and www.learnecommerce.com.au, and the co-founder of Ecom Nation. Paul’s expertise is in helping online retailers scale profitably.
Introduction 1
About This Book 2
Foolish Assumptions 2
Icons Used in This Book 3
Where to Go from Here 4
Part 1: Getting Started With Shopify 5
Chapter 1: Introducing the Ecommerce Essentials 7
Explaining Ecommerce 8
Introducing Shopify 9
Planning for Ecommerce Success 10
Getting Creative: Setting Up Your Shopify Store 11
Making Friends with Your Customers 12
Taking Care of Business: Managing Stock Levels and Delivering Orders 12
Growing Your Business through Marketing 13
Going Live! 14
Chapter 2: Finding Your Way Around Shopify 15
Choosing a Shopify Plan 15
Basic Shopify 16
Shopify 16
Advanced Shopify 17
Shopify Plus 17
Shopify’s Support Services 19
Deciding on Your Domain Name 21
Where Am I? Signing Up with Shopify 22
Navigating the Shopify Admin Panel 25
Home 26
Orders 27
Products 27
Customers 27
Analytics 27
Marketing 30
Discounts 30
Apps 30
Sales channels 30
Settings 32
Using Shopify to Sell In-store and Digital Products 32
Shopify POS 32
Using Shopify to sell digital products 33
Chapter 3: Sourcing Products and Identifying Sales Channels 35
Sourcing the Right Products to Sell 36
Locating products to sell 36
Supply and demand: Tools to check for trending products 37
Checking trending products in Shopify 40
Introducing Online Sales Channels 41
D2C: Direct to consumer sales 41
B2C: Business to Consumer sales 42
B2B: Business to Business sales 43
All about Dropshipping 44
Comparing the different kinds of dropshipping 45
Considering the pros and cons of dropshipping 47
Dropshipping on Shopify 47
Selling on Online Marketplaces 48
Part 2: Preparing Your Store For Launch 53
Chapter 4: Designing Your Shopify Store 55
Coding, Web Developers and Shopify 56
Finding Your Way: Website Architecture 57
Team with the Theme: Exploring Shopify Themes 59
Choosing a theme 60
Eureka! You’ve found your theme 60
Publishing your theme 61
Customizing your theme 62
Designing Your Shop Window: The Homepage 62
What’s on the menu? 63
Styling your homepage 64
Adjusting your theme’s settings 74
Adding Menus and Pages 76
Creating a page 77
Creating a menu item 79
Chapter 5: Filling Your Virtual Shelves: Creating
Products and Collections 81
Nuts and Bolts: Adding Products to Develop Your Collections 82
Creating a collection 82
Using product tags to refine your collections 86
Adding collections to your menu 89
Adding a new product to your store 90
Merchandising Your Collections 106
Activating Products in Your Store 107
Chapter 6: Setting Up Shipping and Receiving Payments 109
One Size Does Not Fit All: Exploring Shipping Options 110
Free shipping versus paid shipping 110
Express shipping versus standard shipping 115
Shopify and shipping 117
Getting Started with Shipping in Shopify 120
Adjusting your default package type 121
Shipping rates and profiles 124
Tax Time: Setting Up Tax Rates 129
Setting up tax collecting in your store 130
Including tax in your product price 133
The Fun Part: Getting Paid 133
Setting up Shopify Payments 134
Accepting other payment methods 136
Viewing your Shopify Payouts 137
Setting up multiple currencies in Shopify Payments 138
Setting up a third-party payment provider 139
Fraud prevention 139
Investigating suspicious orders 139
Processing chargebacks 141
Part 3: Curating The Customer Experience: The Customer Is Always Right 143
Chapter 7: What’s the Difference? Customer Service and Customer Experience 145
Customer Service 101: Communicating with Customers 146
Creating clear policies and product information 146
Customer service channels to consider 149
Using Customer Service Metrics 154
Maximizing Customer Experience 155
Providing an excellent customer experience 157
Measuring customer experience 158
Checking Customer Satisfaction 160
Chapter 8: Reviews, Customer Loyalty and User-Generated Content 161
Why Reviews Matter 162
Onsite product reviews 163
Offsite customer reviews 164
Selecting a review platform to use with Shopify 166
Free offsite review platforms to use 168
Why Loyalty Matters 169
Understanding the lifetime value of a customer 169
Loyalty, referral programs and Shopify 172
Utilizing User-Generated Content 174
Customer Reports: Loyal and At-risk Customers 177
Using customer reports in Shopify 177
Customizing your customer reports 184
Chapter 9: Understanding the User Experience 189
Understanding the Basics of a Good User Experience 190
Getting to know how users behave 190
Considering the theory 191
Improving Your User Experience 193
Conducting user research 194
Monitoring and maintaining your page speed 198
Fixing broken links 199
Running your own device analysis 199
Optimizing your website’s internal search 200
Implementing AB Testing 200
When can I start running AB tests? 201
I’ve got the traffic, so how can I AB test in Shopify? 202
Chapter 10: Getting Personal: Personalizing Your Website 203
Creating a Personalized Shopping Experience 204
Tailoring Your Store to Suit Your Customers 206
Personalized banners 208
Product recommendations 209
People also bought 210
Product quizzes and guided selling 210
Recently viewed items 211
Bestsellers 211
Personalize by location 212
Location-based sizing 213
The Gift of Giving: Creating and Fulfilling Gift Cards 213
Issuing a gift card 214
Making gift cards available for purchase 215
Giving Little Unexpected Extras 218
Handwritten notes 218
Gift with purchase 219
Personalized video 219
Show off your personal side 219
Part 4: Taking Stock Of The Situation: Inventory, Logistics And Orders 221
Chapter 11: Stocked Up: Buying, Receiving and Managing Inventory 223
Defining Inventory Management 224
Starting from Scratch: Your First Purchase Order 227
Creating a purchase order 228
Receiving a purchase order 229
Storing Your Inventory 234
Shelving equipment 236
Locations 236
Layout and design 237
Putting Your Stock to Work: Listing Inventory Across Sales Channels 238
Changing a product’s availability status 239
Making products available to your sales channels 239
Catch Me If You Can! Tracking Stock Movement 242
Using Inventory Reports 243
Month-end Inventory Snapshot 244
Average Inventory Sold Per Day 244
Percent of Inventory Sold 245
ABC Analysis by Product 245
Chapter 12: So, You’ve Received an Order — Now What? 247
Receiving and Confirming Orders 248
The Three Stages of an Online Order 249
Order placed: Capture payment 249
Order paid for: Fulfill the order 251
Order has been paid for and fulfilled: Archive the order 251
Creating Draft Orders for Customers 253
Managing Orders 255
Viewing an order 255
Viewing an order’s Timeline 256
Editing an order 257
Contacting a customer about their order 258
Checking an order’s status 258
Refunding a customer 259
Creating returns 260
Checking an Order for Fraud 262
Fraud analysis indicators 262
How to handle potential fraud in your store 264
Chapter 13: From Here to There: Fulfilling Your Orders 267
Fulfill Your Own Orders 268
Fulfilling your orders manually 268
Fulfilling your orders automatically 275
Using a Fulfillment Service 276
Activating a custom fulfillment service 277
Deleting a custom fulfillment service 278
Using a fulfillment service with an app 279
Printing Shipping Labels and Customs Forms 280
Creating and printing shipping labels 281
Printing a customs declaration form 284
Printing packing slips 286
Using Local Pickup 287
Setting up local pickup 287
Managing local pickup locations 288
Customizing pickup notifications 289
Part 5: Attracting Attention: Sales And Marketing 291
Chapter 14: Pricing, Discounts and Promotions: Creating Eye-Catching Offers 293
Pricing Your Products 294
Preparing to Run Sales and Promotions 296
Setting Sale Prices for Products: The ‘Compare At’ Price 298
Delivering Discounts 301
Creating discount codes 302
Create a free shipping discount 311
Discounting Shortcuts 312
Promote a discount using a shareable link 312
Filter discounts 313
Edit a discount 314
Disable a discount 314
Re-enable a discount 315
Chapter 15: Getting Discovered: Finding New Customers 317
Introducing Digital Marketing 318
Building a Marketing Plan 318
Step 1: Define your unique value proposition 319
Step 2: Know your customer 320
Step 3: Choose a marketing strategy 320
Step 4: Consider how to measure the success of your marketing 321
Step 5: Create a marketing channel plan 323
Step 6: Review performance 323
Implementing Marketing Campaigns and Automations 324
Automating your marketing with Shopify 325
Creating your first automation: Abandoned Checkout Emails 325
Exploring other automations 328
Chapter 16: Advertising and Promoting Your Online Store 333
Getting Started with Facebook Marketing 334
Audience building ads in Shopify 337
Creating your first audience building ad 338
Creating dynamic retargeting ads 342
Trying Search Engine Marketing with Google Ads 343
The Google sales channel in Shopify 344
Create a Google Smart Shopping campaign 348
Track the performance of your Google Smart Shopping campaign 349
Making the Most of Search Engine Optimization 350
Using SEO keywords in your Shopify store 351
Keeping your online store SEO-friendly 356
Experimenting with Email Marketing 357
Email marketing using Shopify 358
Installing the Shopify Email app 359
Creating an email marketing campaign using Shopify Email 360
Chapter 17: Getting Social: Using Social Media to Grow Your Business 363
All About Socials: The Rise and Rise of Social Media in Ecommerce 364
Meeting the Social Media Marketing Channels 365
Facebook 366
Instagram 368
TikTok 373
Pinterest 374
Snapchat 375
Linking Your Social Media Profiles 375
Tapping In to Influencer Marketing 376
Part 6: The Part Of Tens 379
Chapter 18: Ten Helpful Apps for Your Shopify Store 381
Gorgias: Customer Service 382
Okendo: Product Reviews 382
Klaviyo: Email Marketing 383
Glew: Data and Business Intelligence 384
Oberlo: Dropshipping 384
PushOwl: Web Push Notifications 385
Back in Stock: Customer Alerts 386
Foursixty: Shoppable Instagram and User-Generated Content 386
ReferralCandy: Referrals 387
Plug in SEO: Search Engine Optimization 388
Chapter 19: Ten Ways to Improve the Customer and User Experience 389
Check Your Page Load Speed 390
Optimize Your Site for Mobile 391
Fix Broken Links 391
Include a Search Function 392
Use AB Testing as Your Business Grows 393
Give Little Unexpected Extras 393
Offer a Personalized Experience 394
Create Surveys to Help You Understand Your Customers 395
Get to Know How Your Customers Behave 396
Use Logistics as a Point of Difference 396
Chapter 20: Ten Ways to Prepare to Go Live 399
Pop Quiz: Are You Sure You’re Ready? 399
The Price Must Be Right! 401
Manage Your Expectations 402
You Can’t Be All Things to All People 403
There’s an App for That! 404
Believe the Hype (Phase) 404
Not Too Heavy, Not Too Light: Getting Ordering Just Right 405
Shopify Reports to Watch 405
Last-Minute Checks Before You Go Live 406
Ready, Set, Go: Time to Go Live! 408
Index 409
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The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.
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