[00:00] If you've ever wanted to start your own online&nbsp; store or build a business that works for you 247,&nbsp;&nbsp; Shopify is one of the easiest ways&nbsp; to make that happen. I'm Elizabeth&nbsp;&nbsp; and in this video I'll show you step by step how&nbsp; to create your own Shopify store from scratch.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[00:15] To get started, the first thing you'll&nbsp; need to do is create a Shopify account.&nbsp;&nbsp; Use the link in the video description below&nbsp; or the pin comment to start your free trial.&nbsp;&nbsp; Shopify will then ask you a few questions about&nbsp; your business. If you're just getting started,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[00:30] don't worry if you don't have everything figured&nbsp; out yet. You can choose options like other,&nbsp;&nbsp; just starting, or press the skip button. Once you&nbsp; create your account, you'll arrive at the Shopify&nbsp;&nbsp; admin dashboard. Think of this dashboard as the&nbsp; control center for your entire online store.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[00:46] This is where you'll manage products, orders,&nbsp; customers, marketing, and everything else related&nbsp;&nbsp; to your business. We'll be working through most&nbsp; of these sections throughout this tutorial. Today&nbsp;&nbsp; I'm going to be creating an online store called&nbsp; Scout and Stitch that sells dog accessories.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:04] Before we customize our storefront, let's begin&nbsp; adding our products. There's two ways to do this.&nbsp;&nbsp; And the first option is to import your products.&nbsp; Either by uploading a spreadsheet, and Shopify&nbsp;&nbsp; has a template that you can use, or you can&nbsp; import your products from another platform.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:20] This is a great option if you're&nbsp; already selling your products elsewhere&nbsp;&nbsp; or if you have a large inventory and you don't&nbsp; want to add your products individually. Today,&nbsp;&nbsp; I'm going to be adding my products manually. At&nbsp; the top, I'll start by adding my product title.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:35] Below that, you'll see the product description&nbsp; area. This is where you'll explain the benefits&nbsp;&nbsp; and features of your product. One of the new AI&nbsp; features in Shopify helps you with your writing.&nbsp;&nbsp; Although I've already added some text to my&nbsp; description, I want to add even more language&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:52] speaking as to why someone should purchase this&nbsp; product. So, I'll ask the AI assistant for some&nbsp;&nbsp; help in adding language that explains why someone&nbsp; should purchase this product. Perfect. And that&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:04] just took seconds for the AI assistant to create.&nbsp; Next, I can add my product images. Highquality&nbsp;&nbsp; images are one of the biggest factors in online&nbsp; sales. So try to upload multiple images showing&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:16] different angles. You can upload videos as well&nbsp; and also you can resort your images to display&nbsp;&nbsp; however you like. You'll see that Shopify use the&nbsp; information that we've already provided to select&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:28] the product category. But if this is incorrect,&nbsp; you can always manually select a new one.&nbsp;&nbsp; Now scrolling down, we're going to enter our&nbsp; selling price. I'll enter the price that I&nbsp;&nbsp; want customers to see that the item is listed for.&nbsp; [snorts] There's a bunch of other settings here,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:43] and we're not going to go into all of the detail,&nbsp; but one thing I want to call out is the compare&nbsp;&nbsp; at price. If you want to show customers that&nbsp; they're receiving a discount, you can enter a&nbsp;&nbsp; higher compare at price. For example, I'll&nbsp; add that the compare at price is $22.99.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:00] Shopify will automatically display the&nbsp; savings to the customer. Scrolling down,&nbsp;&nbsp; we now have our inventory settings. Tracking&nbsp; inventory is completely optional. So, if you&nbsp;&nbsp; don't want to keep track of inventory, just go&nbsp; ahead and toggle this off. But if you want to,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:15] then make sure that the toggle is on. Then put&nbsp; in your quantity for this product. So, if I have&nbsp;&nbsp; 50 of these bandanas available, I'll put in 50.&nbsp; And the only way that this number would change&nbsp;&nbsp; is if someone makes a purchase from your shop, or&nbsp; you go back in and adjust the quantity manually.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:33] If you want, you can add a specific&nbsp; skew or barcode to this product as well.&nbsp;&nbsp; And if you're going to be selling a product that&nbsp; perhaps you can produce more of quickly, you can&nbsp;&nbsp; continue to sell when the product is out of stock.&nbsp; But if it's not something you can produce quickly,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:48] I suggest making sure that this is toggled&nbsp; to off. I suggest creating as many different&nbsp;&nbsp; packages as possible early in the process and&nbsp; then naming them based on your product type.&nbsp;&nbsp; This will help save you a lot of time&nbsp; as you continue to build out your store.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:04] Now, let's talk about variance. If you're selling&nbsp; a product that has multiple sizes or colors or&nbsp;&nbsp; other options, this would be where you add them.&nbsp; If you don't, then just ignore this category.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:16] In my particular case, I do offer&nbsp; multiple sizes for this bandana.&nbsp;&nbsp; So, let's go ahead and add those&nbsp; here. I have a small, a medium,&nbsp;&nbsp; and a large size depending on the size of the dog.&nbsp; That's all I need to do. And then I click on done.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:35] Now, you'll notice here that they've added&nbsp; 50 as the available inventory for size small.&nbsp;&nbsp; However, even though I have 50 total available,&nbsp; they're spread out across these three sizes. So,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:47] this is where I would adjust my inventory based&nbsp; on that variant. I have 25 available in small,&nbsp;&nbsp; I have 15 available in medium, and I have 10&nbsp; available in large. If I was selling a product&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:59] that perhaps had different colors, you could add&nbsp; particular images assigned to each one of these&nbsp;&nbsp; variants as well. Next, we have our category meta&nbsp; fields. Meta fields help Shopify better understand&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:12] your products and can be used for things like&nbsp; improving product filtering on your storefront&nbsp;&nbsp; and creating more structured product&nbsp; data for search engine optimization.&nbsp;&nbsp; Shopify is going to prepopulate a lot of these&nbsp; fields based on the information you've already&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:27] added to your product listing, but it's always&nbsp; a good idea to go back and check. For example,&nbsp;&nbsp; they're showing that the color of this bandana&nbsp; is white when in actuality the color is blue. So,&nbsp;&nbsp; I'm going to go ahead and add that. I could also&nbsp; add flowers as one of the colors or pattern types&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:43] by adding that here as well. Likewise, you can&nbsp; add additional information like hair instructions,&nbsp;&nbsp; fabric type, or any specific features that you&nbsp; want to be used for your metadata. We'll talk&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:55] more about marketing later on, but you will be&nbsp; able to see a brief preview of what your search&nbsp;&nbsp; engine listing for this particular product may&nbsp; look like. And you can choose to make edits now,&nbsp;&nbsp; but again, we'll touch base more on this&nbsp; later. And then, when everything looks&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:09] good for your product, make sure to click on save.&nbsp; Congratulations on setting up your first product.&nbsp;&nbsp; Once you've done that, you can preview what your&nbsp; product listing will look like in your store,&nbsp;&nbsp; even though we haven't officially set up the theme&nbsp; for our storefront. I've now added additional&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:23] products to my inventory. Remember that you can&nbsp; add products both manually or you can import more&nbsp;&nbsp; products at any time to your catalog. As your&nbsp; store grows, you may want to organize products&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:35] into categories. Shopify calls these collections.&nbsp; Here, I created a collection called bandanas.&nbsp;&nbsp; And once you add a collection type, you can either&nbsp; add future products manually or set it to smart.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:50] Smart then provides parameters that you can&nbsp; give to Shopify for adding products to this&nbsp;&nbsp; collection in the future. In this case, I chose&nbsp; that anytime the title contains the word bandana&nbsp;&nbsp; that those products should be listed within&nbsp; this collection. Now that we've begun to add&nbsp;&nbsp;
[07:06] some products and collections to our store, let's&nbsp; build out our storefront by going back home. Start&nbsp;&nbsp; by selecting customize theme on your dashboard.&nbsp; One of the reasons I like to add products and&nbsp;&nbsp; collections to Shopify before customizing my&nbsp; online store is because Shopify will identify&nbsp;&nbsp;
[07:23] potential themes based off of the images and&nbsp; words that were used in my product catalog.&nbsp;&nbsp; In this case, they got the idea that I have kind&nbsp; of a more foresty nature feel for my products&nbsp;&nbsp;
[07:36] and they suggested this horizon theme,&nbsp; which is a bit more wilderness and outdoors&nbsp;&nbsp; as my default store theme. Now, I can choose to&nbsp; use their suggestion or I can discover additional&nbsp;&nbsp;
[07:48] themes that I might want to use for my store. You&nbsp; can also explore more themes in the theme store.&nbsp;&nbsp; In the theme store, you can filter by themes. You&nbsp; could see here that there's 33 different templates&nbsp;&nbsp;
[08:00] under the category of pets, but all of these&nbsp; require me to pay in order to use the theme.&nbsp;&nbsp; So, another option is to not filter by theme&nbsp; and instead just filter based off of the price.&nbsp;&nbsp; In this case, I can view all of the different free&nbsp; themes that are offered to me. Now, if you skipped&nbsp;&nbsp;
[08:17] ahead and moved on to designing your online store&nbsp; without first adding any products or collections,&nbsp;&nbsp; that's fine. But in order for Shopify to&nbsp; provide a customized template for you,&nbsp;&nbsp; they'll need some more information. But the good&nbsp; news is you can easily add that at any point&nbsp;&nbsp;
[08:33] down here in the prompt to describe in more&nbsp; detail the type of storefront that you have.&nbsp;&nbsp; Once you're happy with the template, you can begin&nbsp; to customize it even more by selecting edit theme.&nbsp;&nbsp; We've now entered Shopify's visual website&nbsp; editor. And one of my favorite things about&nbsp;&nbsp;
[08:48] Shopify is they make the process of customizing&nbsp; your storefront relatively intuitive. So,&nbsp;&nbsp; we're going to walk through all of these different&nbsp; sections on the lefth hand side, starting with&nbsp;&nbsp; our announcement bar. The announcement bar is a&nbsp; great place to welcome customers to your store&nbsp;&nbsp;
[09:03] or to advertise specific features. For instance,&nbsp; I'm going to update welcome to our store&nbsp;&nbsp; to free shipping on orders over $50. And if you&nbsp; decide that you don't want an announcement at the&nbsp;&nbsp; top of your page, that's fine. You can just delete&nbsp; this section. You can also update the font type,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[09:20] whether it's bold, adjust the weight of it, letter&nbsp; spacing, etc. And that's the same for each one of&nbsp;&nbsp; these subsections. The next thing Shopify is going&nbsp; to recommend is updating our logo. And again,&nbsp;&nbsp; completely optional. I'm going to edit my logo in&nbsp; the theme settings, which will then bring me right&nbsp;&nbsp;
[09:36] back to this page. Now that I've updated my logo,&nbsp; it's time to adjust our header. This is where you&nbsp;&nbsp; can find your menu or your navigation bar. This&nbsp; is how viewers when they come to your website are&nbsp;&nbsp;
[09:48] able to navigate between pages. Now, one of the&nbsp; funny things about Shopify is you can't actually&nbsp;&nbsp; make edits to this menu within the website editor.&nbsp; Instead, you'll need to go back to your dashboard&nbsp;&nbsp;
[10:00] and click on content. And then once you're&nbsp; in menus, you can make those changes.&nbsp;&nbsp; So, I'll select main menu. And instead of&nbsp; contact, I want to instead call this about us.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[10:14] Then I can save it. And I can also reorder this&nbsp; if I want. So I can drag about us right there.&nbsp;&nbsp; And then once I click save, you'll see that&nbsp; the header bar has automatically updated&nbsp;&nbsp; to remove contact and replace it with about&nbsp; us. Next, we have what's called the hero,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[10:31] which is really the main focal point that&nbsp; a viewer will see when they come to your&nbsp;&nbsp; store. [snorts] It's suggested that you have an&nbsp; image here, but of course, you don't have to.&nbsp;&nbsp; You can either explore free images or&nbsp; video from Shopify or you can add your own.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[10:46] Once you've uploaded your image, you can make&nbsp; additional edits to it within the design tool.&nbsp;&nbsp; Now, in this case, I don't want any other text to&nbsp; be on my image. So, I'm just going to remove this.&nbsp;&nbsp; Likewise, I don't want this button here, so I'm&nbsp; going to remove that as well. But again, if you&nbsp;&nbsp;
[11:03] want to keep those things there, you're able to&nbsp; make adjustments within the text editor. Next,&nbsp;&nbsp; the template has included our featured collection&nbsp; of products. But let's say that this is not what&nbsp;&nbsp; I want a viewer to see. Let's [snorts] go ahead&nbsp; and see what other sections are available to me.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[11:18] Now, here you have a lot of different options.&nbsp; I'm going to scroll through, and I would actually&nbsp;&nbsp; really love to see a collection list here since&nbsp; we took the time to add products to a collection&nbsp;&nbsp; earlier in this tutorial. So, I went ahead and&nbsp; selected that. And now it's going to give me&nbsp;&nbsp;
[11:36] the opportunity to select which collections I want&nbsp; added. So I want to actually go ahead and add all&nbsp;&nbsp; of these here. So I've clicked into that. And now&nbsp; you can see here that it has added this carousel&nbsp;&nbsp;
[11:50] that viewers can scroll through of the&nbsp; different product categories that I have.&nbsp;&nbsp; Now you'll notice here that one of these images&nbsp; looks a little off compared to the other ones.&nbsp;&nbsp; And that's not a problem. I can go back into this&nbsp; product, make updates to that image, and then as&nbsp;&nbsp;
[12:06] soon as I come back to the editor, you'll be able&nbsp; to preview the resized image. And that goes for&nbsp;&nbsp; all of your products. If you ever need to make a&nbsp; change, whether it's to the text, the price, the&nbsp;&nbsp; image, etc. Update that in your product catalog&nbsp; and then the changes will be made across your&nbsp;&nbsp;
[12:21] entire site. Next, I have the products. I kind of&nbsp; like having all of the products on the main page,&nbsp;&nbsp; so I'm going to leave this as is. But again, if&nbsp; you want to make any changes to it, simply click&nbsp;&nbsp;
[12:33] in and on the lefth hand side, it will walk you&nbsp; through everything. Now, let's talk a little bit&nbsp;&nbsp; about the page settings before we move on because&nbsp; you'll notice that this template had a plain white&nbsp;&nbsp; background and a standard font that they used,&nbsp; but maybe you want to make changes to that.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[12:48] So, here on the lefth hand side, you're going to&nbsp; click on theme settings. And here, you're going&nbsp;&nbsp; to be given some additional options. The first one&nbsp; is colors. Here you can change your color scheme&nbsp;&nbsp; to be applied through specific sections&nbsp; or throughout your entire online store.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[13:04] Likewise, typography. You can adjust the different&nbsp; type of font and size used across your store.&nbsp;&nbsp; And this is also where you can make changes&nbsp; to things like buttons on your page.&nbsp;&nbsp; So again, if you have a very specific type of&nbsp; style that you want used on your page, you can&nbsp;&nbsp;
[13:21] change all of that here under settings and then it&nbsp; will be applied automatically to your storefront.&nbsp;&nbsp; Likewise, you can see how your store views&nbsp; on a mobile device as well and make changes&nbsp;&nbsp;
[13:33] accordingly. So here I can see that I have a very&nbsp; similar setup on the mobile device as I do on&nbsp;&nbsp; a computer and I think I like the look of&nbsp; that. But again, if I wanted to make changes,&nbsp;&nbsp; I would click into each one of these sections. And&nbsp; you'll see that there's an area for mobile media.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[13:50] Here is when where you can make edits specifically&nbsp; for a mobile device. So now, let's take a look&nbsp;&nbsp; at what I've built so far. In just a few&nbsp; minutes, I've been able to put together a&nbsp;&nbsp; really good-looking store. And if someone were to&nbsp; come to my website, they would be able to easily&nbsp;&nbsp;
[14:06] navigate through what I've built. But there's&nbsp; one problem. When I click here on about us,&nbsp;&nbsp; it's taking us to the old contact form. If you&nbsp; remember, we updated this navigation bar to about&nbsp;&nbsp;
[14:18] us instead of contact. So now we need to go back&nbsp; and actually make an edit to that page. You'll&nbsp;&nbsp; see the template for the contact us form that&nbsp; Shopify provided as part of the default template.&nbsp;&nbsp; Your first step could be to delete all of this,&nbsp; but in my case, I want to keep the contact form&nbsp;&nbsp;
[14:34] and just add some additional information about&nbsp; my company above the contact us form. So,&nbsp;&nbsp; I'm going to add a section to the template. You&nbsp; could preview what some of the different design&nbsp;&nbsp; options are here. In my case, I want to add an&nbsp; image before I enter some information underneath,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[14:50] which will be text. First thing here, I'm&nbsp; going to change new arrivals to be about us. And as far as the text here, I don't need&nbsp; this, so I'm just going to remove it.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[15:06] Likewise, I don't need this button,&nbsp; so I'll remove this as well.&nbsp;&nbsp; Now, one thing about Shopify is you can't&nbsp; easily move things like text around the page.&nbsp;&nbsp; But what you can do is adjust the placement. So,&nbsp; in this case, I want to actually move this text&nbsp;&nbsp;
[15:22] up on the image. So, I can do this here by adding&nbsp; some padding to it, which will bring the text up&nbsp;&nbsp; slightly. And now, I can double click into the&nbsp; image and select what I want for my computer. But&nbsp;&nbsp; now that I have my image, I actually don't like&nbsp; the text over it. So, I'm going to remove this&nbsp;&nbsp;
[15:38] and instead I want to create a header&nbsp; similar to this contact section. So,&nbsp;&nbsp; instead of adding a new section, I just want to&nbsp; copy this. So, I'll rightclick, press duplicate,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[15:50] and now I can change the text of this to about us. Now that I have this new section in, I'm going to&nbsp; want to create some text. So once again, in here,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[16:06] I'll select a new section and I'm going to add&nbsp; text. I'm going to remove the text here and add&nbsp;&nbsp; my own. Remember, you can also use Shopify's&nbsp; AI assistant to help you generate text. Now,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[16:19] I have all of this text here, but I really don't&nbsp; like the layout. So, similar to everything else,&nbsp;&nbsp; you can go ahead and make changes to that. I'm&nbsp; going to set the width at fill and then I am&nbsp;&nbsp;
[16:31] going to remove the max width and I'm going to&nbsp; adjust the alignment. This makes it a lot more&nbsp;&nbsp; pleasing to the eye. And I still have the contact&nbsp; us form below. Now I would like to add a little&nbsp;&nbsp; section break in here in order to make it a bit&nbsp; more stylistically pleasing. So to add a divider,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[16:48] I'll click here to generate a new block. And&nbsp; all I need to do here is search for the divider.
[17:01] Perfect. And now when I click on about us, I'm&nbsp; able to see the new page with my graphics, all&nbsp;&nbsp; of the text, and I still have the contact us form&nbsp; down below. Now, where does this contact form go?&nbsp;&nbsp;
[17:15] Let's explore some of the additional features of&nbsp; your Shopify store. Your account settings can be&nbsp;&nbsp; found in the bottom lefth hand corner and that's&nbsp; what we're going to explore next. Let's start with&nbsp;&nbsp; notifications. When a customer fills out a contact&nbsp; us form, it's going to be sent to the email&nbsp;&nbsp;
[17:30] address that you have on file under settings. Now,&nbsp; you'll note here that Shopify is letting us know&nbsp;&nbsp; that when a customer receives an email, it's not&nbsp; going to be from this address because it's not&nbsp;&nbsp;
[17:42] a custom domain. We'll talk about domains in a&nbsp; little bit, but this is important to recognize.&nbsp;&nbsp; If I were to continue without connecting a custom&nbsp; domain, customers instead of seeing my Scout and&nbsp;&nbsp; Stitch email will instead see the generic Shopify&nbsp; email that's listed here in the announcement.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[18:00] Now, let's talk about the types of&nbsp; emails that customers are going to get.&nbsp;&nbsp; Let's click into customer notifications. You&nbsp; can customize all of these email templates,&nbsp;&nbsp; but let's take a look at what the default is for&nbsp; order confirmation. Here's the preview of what the&nbsp;&nbsp;
[18:14] default order confirmation email will look like&nbsp; when a customer places an order on your site. If&nbsp;&nbsp; this all looks good to you, then don't worry about&nbsp; customizing the emails. But again, if you want to&nbsp;&nbsp; create any sort of customization, you can do that&nbsp; on the previous screen. Now, let's talk about&nbsp;&nbsp;
[18:30] something very important, and that's payments.&nbsp; Shopify payments is usually the easiest option&nbsp;&nbsp; because it's built directly into Shopify.&nbsp; You'll just need to follow the prompts to&nbsp;&nbsp;
[18:42] connect your business information and all&nbsp; of your banking details. And this way,&nbsp;&nbsp; clients can purchase directly on your shop and all&nbsp; of your payments go directly to the bank account&nbsp;&nbsp; that you enter into your account information.&nbsp; Now, let's talk about shipping and delivery.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[18:57] Here, under the shipping tab, you'll define how&nbsp; much customers pay for shipping and where you're&nbsp;&nbsp; willing to ship your products. Most stores choose&nbsp; from one of three common options: free shipping,&nbsp;&nbsp; flat rate shipping, or carrier calculated rates.&nbsp; So, let's walk through all of this together.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[19:14] The first thing that you're going&nbsp; to want to decide is what carriers&nbsp;&nbsp; you want to utilize for your shipping needs. And&nbsp; you can manage that here under preferred carriers.&nbsp;&nbsp; The next thing you're going to want to do is&nbsp; ensure that all of the different size packages&nbsp;&nbsp;
[19:29] are set up in here under settings. Now, I&nbsp; created all of my different package sizes&nbsp;&nbsp; when I set up my product catalog, but if you&nbsp; skip that, this is where you would add all of&nbsp;&nbsp; that package information. And don't forget to add&nbsp; packing materials to the weight of those packages.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[19:47] Next, you're going to determine what&nbsp; some of those shipping costs look like.&nbsp;&nbsp; Now, it's important to note that Shopify&nbsp; does provide discounting shipping labels.&nbsp;&nbsp; In order to find out how much a shipping label may&nbsp; cost, you can go here and put in some test data&nbsp;&nbsp;
[20:05] to determine what that might look like. For&nbsp; example, I could use one of these packages as&nbsp;&nbsp; a sample and see what the rate would be using&nbsp; Shopify's discounted rates to ship a dog leash&nbsp;&nbsp;
[20:18] from Seattle, Washington to New York City. The&nbsp; default settings that Shopify is giving us is&nbsp;&nbsp; a flat rate of $15 for express delivery and&nbsp; free standard delivery for orders $70 and up.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[20:32] Now, let's go ahead and make some changes to this&nbsp; because I advertised on the main page that I will&nbsp;&nbsp; offer free shipping for all orders over $50. So,&nbsp; I can make that edit here. Now, when I looked at&nbsp;&nbsp;
[20:45] some of those rates for the discounted shipping&nbsp; labels, shipping is actually more expensive than&nbsp;&nbsp; what Shopify is giving us here as a default. So,&nbsp; I'm going to go ahead and adjust this flat rate&nbsp;&nbsp;
[20:57] for ground shipping to be $10. Shipping is going&nbsp; to default to domestic shipping. But, if you want&nbsp;&nbsp; to ship international, you can always add that&nbsp; as a market. Here, you can create international&nbsp;&nbsp; markets. And then you can create shipping zones&nbsp; to charge different rates for different regions,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[21:13] such as domestic versus international&nbsp; orders. Once you've configurated your rates,&nbsp;&nbsp; be sure to test the checkout process in order&nbsp; to verify that customers are seeing the correct&nbsp;&nbsp; shipping charges before launching your store.&nbsp; And now, a topic that's not so much fun, taxes.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[21:29] Shopify will automatically handle much&nbsp; of the tax calculation process for you,&nbsp;&nbsp; but it is a good idea to review all of the&nbsp; settings for your particular country or region.&nbsp;&nbsp; Depending on where you operate, you may&nbsp; need additional tax registration or permits.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[21:45] And it's always a good idea to consult a tax&nbsp; professional if you're unsure. Right now,&nbsp;&nbsp; if someone wanted to visit my store, they&nbsp; would need to go to this website address, which&nbsp;&nbsp; isn't probably going to drive that much traffic.&nbsp; So, you have a few options. The first thing I'm&nbsp;&nbsp;
[22:00] going to do is change my myshopify.com domain.&nbsp; Another option is to connect an existing domain&nbsp;&nbsp; or to purchase a new one from Shopify. This way,&nbsp; instead of having scoutandstitch.mmyshopify.com,
[22:15] I could purchase a domain if it's available called&nbsp; scoutandstitch.com, driving more traffic to my&nbsp;&nbsp; website. and a custom domain often increases&nbsp; credibility and makes your business easier&nbsp;&nbsp;
[22:27] to remember. Before we check out a preview of&nbsp; our finished store, let's talk about policies.&nbsp;&nbsp; These can include shipping policies, privacy&nbsp; policies, and your return and refund policy.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[22:39] The first thing you'll want to do is click on&nbsp; manage and select what your return window is&nbsp;&nbsp; and what your return shipping cost is. You'll&nbsp; also need to mark whether you're going to charge&nbsp;&nbsp; a restocking fee or if any items are final sale.&nbsp; You can also adjust the language of your return&nbsp;&nbsp;
[22:56] and refund policy as well as any other policy.&nbsp; So, you could use just the default template and&nbsp;&nbsp; the return rule summary or you can enter your own&nbsp; legal language here. And once you've done that,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[23:08] you can click on publish. So, now I've built out&nbsp; this great store and I can begin driving traffic&nbsp;&nbsp; to my website. I don't have any data yet since&nbsp; I just built this website, but under marketing,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[23:21] you can begin to track the website traffic that&nbsp; you're receiving and attribute those to sales.&nbsp;&nbsp; You can also create specific campaigns to&nbsp; determine how specific marketing initiatives are&nbsp;&nbsp;
[23:33] driving your business goals. You can also connect&nbsp; your Shopify account to popular third party apps&nbsp;&nbsp; that can assist you in the advertising and&nbsp; marketing of your new Shopify store. Before&nbsp;&nbsp; launching your store, let's take a quick look at&nbsp; Shopify's pricing plans. Shopify offers several&nbsp;&nbsp;
[23:49] plans designed for businesses at different stages&nbsp; of growth and definitely take advantage of the&nbsp;&nbsp; free trial to test things out. The link to sign&nbsp; up is in the video description and pin comment.&nbsp;&nbsp; The basic plan is the most popular option for&nbsp; new store owners. It includes everything you need&nbsp;&nbsp;
[24:04] to build an online store, process payments,&nbsp; manage inventory, and start selling online.&nbsp;&nbsp; And as your business grows, you can always&nbsp; upgrade. Now, one thing to keep in mind is that&nbsp;&nbsp; Shopify charges both a monthly subscription fee&nbsp; or a yearly subscription fee, as well as payment&nbsp;&nbsp;
[24:21] processing fees on each sale. The exact amount&nbsp; depends on your plan and payment provider. Thanks&nbsp;&nbsp; for watching, and don't forget to sign up for&nbsp; our weekly newsletter for more videos like this.