Last month We Built A Profitable Shopify Store From The Groud Up.

If you’re new to FSO we build businesses from scratch every 30 days…

The Bizathon Challenge!

Last month was a huge success, not just for our team, but for many following this challenge.

The outpouring of love, support and positivity is humbling and validating.

Because of this, we’re continuing with Shopify as the focus for Bizathon4.

This month we’ll scale our Shopify income by adding new general and niche stores to our business – among other things. 

Enjoy our video below as we kickoff Part 1 of this month’s Shopify Chronicles Challege:

We are basically breaking down the Shopify scaling process into chunks.

This first series is all about your first sale! 

So many people struggle to get the first sale – for various reasons. 

But it is so inspiring and feels so good to see your very first conversion. It’s huge motivator.

Literally creating your own money – legally, with the internet and Shopify.

After reviewing emails, checking comments and directly interacting with our clients on calls, we’ve noticed a trend.

Although many of our subscribers followed the Bizathon perfectly and applied every strategy, a vast majority were beginners and still not fully grasping some key concepts.

We noticed small issues like random logo design, ugly font selections, poor color selections etc, which resulted in people not taking their stores seriously. 

That’s totally fine, because this is a learning process and we’re here to help.

We’re creating a checklist of Shopify elements to conquer in order to earn your first of many sales.

Getting Your First Shopify Sale

Literally make a running list of things you need to checkoff prior to driving traffic to your store.

Thank about any time you visit an eCommerce store, you know within seconds if the store is legitimate or not. 

Brandable Store Name

This one sounds simple, but many are getting it wrong. 

When you’re coming up with a Shopify store name, you want to use something catchy, without using the word “store.”

We suggest using LeanDomainSearch, typing in your favorite word, animal or color and then choose one of the 10,000 name suggestions that appear.

Once you find a name you resonate with, head on over to a domain registrar to get your domain name registered. 

We use GoDaddy or NameCheap exclusively. 

Color Scheme

There are several factors to consider when choosing and applying your website colors.

Firstly, choose up to three main colors and stick with them! From Logos to Headlines, remain consistent across your website when it comes to color.

Second, when you apply your website colors, always have them on a white background.

Third, the only time a color on your website will differ from your overall scheme is when it comes your “Add to Cart” buttons.

Which should either be Orange, Yellow or Green according to our split tests.

Pricing Structure

Don’t over complicate this and don’t get fancy.

There are specific pricing structures that most global consumers are already accustomed to.  

You’re going to want to implement these in order to take advantage of familiarity.

People are used to seeing prices that end in either $.95, $.97 or $.99 or $5, $7, $9 – Your site should be no different.

Free Logo Design

Keep it simple and DO NOT overcomplicate this. 

You don’t need to shell out hundreds of dollars for a sharp logo.

When you’re just starting and even if you’re a seasoned vet, Canva is more than sufficient to create a professional Shopify Logo.

Click here to see a tutorial of Canva logo creation.

Website Design

This one is much easier today than most beginners realize.

You no longer need coding skills to have a beautifully designed website. 

Everything is already handled for you in the way of themes. 

We personally use the Shopify Booster theme which is a paid theme from Shopify. 

But if your budget doesn’t currently allow for that type of spending there are plenty of sufficient free options available from within your Shopify Dashboard. 

Here’s how to access them:

• From within your “online store” click “Themes” on the left sidebar. You’ll be able to see your currently installed theme as well as a couple links to free and paid themes.
• To browse the free themes, click “Explore Free Themes” located in the middle left of the page.
• “Brooklyn,” “Supply,” and “Venture” are three of the most popular store themes.

Once you choose your theme and install it, you can now easily edit just about every aspect by clicking “Customize Theme.”

Shipping & Billing Settings

Login to your Shopify dashboard and click “settings” in the lower left-hand corner.

You should now see the following:

• General
• Payments
• Checkout
• Shipping
• Taxes
• Notifications
• Files
• Sales Channels
• Account

These are the settings to pay special attention to:

Account – This is where you’ll handle your billing once your Shopify trial is over. You’ll need to make sure there’s an up to date payment method once the trial ends so your site doesn’t experience down time.

Notifications – Shows all of the emails & notifications Shopify sends to customers on your behalf. These are pre-made so you don’t need to edit them unless you want to, in which case, simple click “customize” which is found next to each.

Checkout – This one is very important. Make sure “Customer Accounts Are Disabled” is checked. Now next to “Customer Contacts” select “Customers Can Check Out Using Email.” 

Now do the following – continue scrolling to each as you go along:

• Next to ‘form options’ select “Require First & Last Name Only.”
• Under ‘Address line 2’ click “optional.”
• Under ‘Shipping Address’ phone number select “Required When The Customer Check Out.”
• Check “Use the shipping address as the billing address by default. 
• Under ‘Ask for permission to send promotional emails to customers from your store,’ click “By default, customer agrees to receive promotional emails.”
• Under ‘After an order has been paid’, check “Do NOT Automatically fulfill any of the orders line items.”
• Under ‘After an order has been fulfilled and paid, check “Automatically archive the order.”

Now scroll down a bit further and locate ‘Refund Policy,’ ‘Privacy Policy’ and ‘Terms of Service’ and click “Generate Sample” for each.

Click “save!”

Sales Channels – From within this setting click “Add sales channel” and then choose “Facebook” since we’ll be using it to promote. From the next page, click “Connect Account” and follow the prompts and connect your Facebook (FB) page. 

If you haven’t yet setup a FB page, quickly do so now:

Head over to Facebook’s Page Creator and select create “Brand or Product” and for the category choose “Website.” Select “Connect Page”

Now once again from within the Shopify ‘Sales Channels’ setting, click “Add Sales Channel” and scroll down to “Messenger” and click “Add.” Again, select your FB page from the list on the following screen.

Taxes – This one’s easy. Next to “Tax Settings” check “All taxes are included in my prices.” 

Click “Save.”

Payments – After you click the ‘Payments’ link from within Shopify’s settings, and to the right of the ‘Payments’ on the next screen and underneath ‘Accept Credit Cards’, Click “Add A Provider” and make sure “Shopify Payments” is checked.

Click “Continue.”  

Stripe is the Shopify default payment method.

Now click “Complete Account Setup” and confirm your personal details on the following page. 

Now scroll to ‘PayPal’ and click “Express Checkout.” Now click “Activate.” Enter your PayPal email address and login. This should connect your PayPal account as well.

Shipping – Go through and simply fill out as much of the personal shipping information as you can for now. Since this business is based on drop-shipping, we’ll go more in-depth on this in a future post.

For now, just fill out what you can.

Prominently Display Policy Pages

There are certain pages that search engines like Google deem a ranking factor when determining a websites quality.

When is comes to running an e-commerce business, definitely publish the following pages:

• FAQ
• About
• Privacy Policy
• Refund Policy
• Terms of Service
• Shipping Information

Use my examples, but don’t copy word for word. Be creative and customize each for your own business.

Here’s how to build new pages for your Shopify Store:

• Login and click “Online Store”
• Click Pages on the left sidebar -> select “Add Page”
• Now name the page accordingly and rinse and repeat.

Now that our pages are created, let’s set up our Shopify Store navigation:

• From within Shopify, click “Navigation” on the left sidebar.
• Click ‘Main Menu’ on the following page. 
• Select “Add New Menu” and now add you FAQ & Contact Page by clicking “Link” -> “Pages” and locating the corresponding pages.
• Click “Add” -> “Save Menu.”

We’re keeping this menu simple for now. You’ll also want to delete the “Home” tab by clicking the trash can icon next to it.

We still need to setup our footer menu. The process is very much the same:

• From the left sidebar, once again click “Navigation” and select “Footer Menu”
• Delete the “Search” page on the following screen by clicking the trash can icon
• Now click “Add Menu Items” and name it “Shipping Policy” 
• Click “Link” -> “Pages” -> “Shipping Policy”
• Save

Rinse and repeat this footer menu process for each of the policy pages we mentioned above. 

That’ll do it for Episode 1 – Great work!

Stay tuned for for Part 2 as we continue with our Beginner to Pro tutorial.

Questions, comments or just want to say hi?

We love hearing from you in the comments section below!

Success by choice, not by chance,

-David Aston

P.S.

If you’re not kept in the loop via our #Bizathon definitely sign up today.

The post Beginner To Pro Tutorial [Part 1] – Getting Your First Shopify Sale (#Bizathon4 Episode1) appeared first on Flying Start Online.