How to sell on Shopify

Shopify is one of the most popular ecommerce platforms for businesses to sell products online. More than 4.4 million websites around the world used Shopify as of April 2023, and more than 700 million buyers are expected to make purchases from stores using the platform in 2023.¹

So if you’re looking at selling products online, you may consider using Shopify to run your store.

In this post, we look at how to sell products on Shopify in six easy steps.

Withdraw Shopify payments
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How to sell on Shopify: Getting started

Shopify makes it relatively easy to set up an online store. But there are some things you need to know and do before you start selling and have money coming in.

Create a business plan

Before starting your ecommerce business, it's a good idea to create a business plan. This will help you to define your objective and the strategy you’ll use to meet them. You will also need a formal business plan document to apply for financing from a bank or other lender.

Your Shopify business plan should Including your business idea, i.e. the product(s) you will sell. It should include the product prices, store name, logo, and domain. The document should set out the details of how you expect to operate the business.

Find products to sell

Do you plan to resell items from a wholesaler or dropshipper? Or will you use a manufacturer to make products for you?

If you plan to source products for resale you need to take the time to choose a reputable wholesale supplier or dropshipper. If you’re wondering how to find products to sell on Shopify or how to sell on Shopify without inventory, you can research dropshipping suppliers who fulfil orders on your behalf.

You should place an order for sample products to ensure they meet your requirements. Some suppliers will allow you to adjust or customize items based on the samples.

If you plan to manufacture products, you need to find the right manufacturer and finalize your product designs. You’ll need to choose materials and confirm the type and style of packaging you want to use to get started.

Set up your business details

Before you can start selling products or services, you need to register a business entity to get a tax ID number.

You need to decide which structure will best suit your business, whether a limited liability company (LLC), corporation (such as C Corp or S Corp), general partnership, or limited liability partnership (LLP). Depending on the state where your business is located, you may need to obtain a sales tax permit. Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon don’t collect sales tax, so store owners are not required to register a business for tax purposes.²

Once you have a business set up, you can open a bank account to receive payments from your customers. Having a business bank account offers the advantage of separating business funds from your personal finances and makes accounting easier.

How to sell on Shopify in 6 steps

Once you have a business entity set up, you can go ahead and launch your online store with Shopify.

1. Register on Shopify

First, you’ll need to register a Shopify account and choose from its various subscription plans. The right one for your business will depend on the type of products you plan to sell, the monthly sales volumes you expect and whether you plan to sell to customers in the US only or internationally.

The more features you need for your store, the higher the subscription tier you’ll need to select. Shopify offers a three-day free trial to test out the platform before you pay for a plan. You can also scale up through the plans as your business grows.

2. Choose which platforms you’d like to sell on

Decide where you’ll sell your products. Are you interested in how to sell on Instagram with Shopify? In addition to the Shopify store, you can create listings to sell products through multiple channels:

• social media apps such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok
• online marketplaces like Amazon and Google
• on an existing blog or website by adding buy buttons
• in person

3. Set up your payment methods

To accept orders and take payments through the store, you need to set up the Shopify checkout. When a buyer adds a product from your store to their shopping cart, the platform checks that inventory is available and holds it while they complete the payment.

There are two ways you can set up payments for your store. You can activate Shopify’s own payment processor, Shopify Payments. This allows you to accept debit and credit cards online and in-person with simple flat-rate processing charges. You can alternatively use a third-party card payment processor, although Shopify adds separate transaction fees for this.

4. Create collections and add your products

Shopify’s dashboard has a Collections tab that helps you to organize products. You can give each collection a title and description for search engine optimization (SEO). You can auto-populate collection pages using tags or other product details such as item type and vendor details as you add products to the store.

Shopify has a products section in its dashboard menu that allows you to easily add product listings. You’ll need to create product images for each of your listings.

Shopify’s product listings include:

• Item title
• Item description
• Images
• Prices
• Inventory data
• Shipping information
• Product options
• Listing SEO
• Sales channels

If you have many products to list, uploading each one manually can be time-consuming. However, you can import them in bulk by uploading a CSV file with the details and Shopify will automatically create listings for all of them at once.

5. Build your Shopify store

Once you have set up your product listings and collection pages, you can design and build your store using Shopify’s customization features:

• Choose a theme. Shopify offers several free themes you can select from or buy a premium theme to suit your store branding.

• Change theme settings. You can customize colors and fonts to personalize your store. You can also add new sections and blog content.

• Customize the home page. Each Shopify theme has preset sections for the home page enabling sellers to launch a new store quickly. But you can build tailored sections using featured products, slider images, collages, and contact forms.

• Edit the store header and footer. Enter the content that appears at the top of each page, including the store name and/or logo. Enter the content at the bottom of each page. Customize the store’s SEO title and metadata to help increase your store’s visibility in search engine results.

• Create store menus. You can set up store menus from the Navigation tab. The header menu is populated with product collections. The footer menu includes links to contact information and policy pages at the bottom of every page.

• Connect a custom domain name. The URLs for Shopify stores are in the https://yourstorename.myshopify.com format by default. But if you want to add a custom domain such as yourstorename.com, you’ll need to buy a domain name through Shopify or a third party and add it to the Domains tab under Settings.

Shopify offers access to more than 8,000 apps from itsApp Store to help you further customize and add functionality to your store. However, you might choose to keep it relatively basic from the beginning and add apps as the business grows.

6. Take your store live

Once your site is populated and customized during the free trial period, you can choose a Shopify plan to take the store live. You can still sell products during the free trial. Place a test order and once it successfully appears on the dashboard, the store is ready to go live.

Is selling on Shopify free?

How much does it cost to sell on Shopify? Are there free plans available?

Unlike some other online store platforms, Shopify does not offer a free option, only paid plans. It has five monthly subscription tiers, ranging from a $5 Starter plan to a $2,000+ Shopify Plus option for large enterprises.³

While there are no free Shopify subscriptions, new accounts receive three months of access to select plans for $1 per month.

Conclusion: How do I sell on Shopify successfully?

Setting up your Shopify store is the first step to building a successful ecommerce business. You can follow these tips on how to sell on Shopify to make the process as easy as possible.

One thing that can make a difference to your profit is which business account you choose to receive your Shopify payouts. This is especially true if you sell products to international customers in different currencies.

Wise is a smart online alternative to traditional banks. You can register for free in the US, and simply pay a one-off fee for local account details so that customers can pay you in their local currency.

Find out more about Wise Business

Please see Terms of Use for your region or visit Wise Fees & Pricing for the most up to date pricing and fee information.

When you sell products on Shopify, you can receive payments to your Wise Business account, making it easy to sell internationally while avoiding hidden fees and inflated exchange rates. Sign up for a Wise Business account today to receive fast international payments.

All sources checked June 15, 2023.