Hi everyone, Kevin here. Today, we’re going to learn how to use Shopify. Shopify makes it so simple and intuitive to set up your very own online store. And best of all, you don’t have to know anything about coding. There’s a reason Shopify is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms. You can list products for sale. Customers can add those products to their shopping cart and then they can check out. You can collect payments. You can manage orders. Basically, Shopify gives you everything that you need to run an online store. In this video, we’re going to set up a basic online store for my favorite company, the Kevin Cookie Company. And that’ll show you all of the fundamentals so you too can get started with your very own online store. All right, well, let’s check this out. To get Shopify, head to the following website. You can click on the link in the top right-hand corner, and I’ve also included a link down below in the description. On this landing page, simply type in your email address and that’ll kick off a free trial. You don’t have to provide any payment information. However, if you would like to go beyond the free trial, you will have to choose a paid plan. In this video today, I’ll simply be using the free trial. Once you’ve finished setting up your account, you’ll land on the home screen of Shopify. Over on the left-hand navigation, right up here, we can see that we’re currently on the home screen. In the bottom right-hand corner, we can also see that the trial has just kicked off. That looks great. Right here in the center of the screen, you’ll see a few different questions that will help you get set up, and depending on how you answer these questions, that’ll cater a setup guide to your needs. Now, I don’t think I need that right now, so down below, I’ll click on I don’t want help setting up. This now gives me the base setup guide. However, depending on how you answered those questions on the previous screen, that could influence what options you see here. You may have more steps as part of your setup guide. In the bottom right-hand corner, I’m going to minimize this message on the free trial starting. I think the best way to start my new online store is to add my very first product. Within the setup guide, over here, I could click on add a product, or over on the left-hand navigation, I have this option for products. I’ll click into this. And this drops me on the products page. Right over here, I can add my first product. Let’s click on this. This now drops us on a page where we can add our very first product. Look at that, we’re making some really good progress. Right up on top, I can type in a title for this product. Now here at the Kevin Cookie Company, I figured the best way to get started with the store is to sell a box of our classic chocolate chip cookies. Down below, I can type in a description for this product, and I find that this is one of the most difficult steps. How do I describe it in an engaging way that will get people to order these cookies? Now, luckily with AI, I can get some assistance. Right in the top left-hand corner, Shopify has integrated AI that will help me generate text for my product description. Simply click on this icon. And over here, I can type in different features or keywords that I want the AI to leverage. So, what other than saying the most delicious chocolate chip cookies in the world? Now, right down here, I can also select the tone of voice. This is a cookie company, so I don’t think we need an expert, but I think maybe playful would be a good type of voice for these cookies. Down below, I could also include some special instructions, but I think this is good. Let’s click on Generate and see what the AI comes back with. Here it says, "Indulge in our box of 12 chocolate chip cookies." Yeah, I think this looks really good. So over here, I’ll click on Keep, and this now adds the text directly into the description. That was so much easier. Here, I’ll remove the quotation marks because I don’t think I need them. Right up on top, you have a variety of different text formatting controls. So that way you can get the description to look exactly how you want it to look. In fact, you could even add some media, like images, or here you could add a video, and then you have some additional options. Now, for the media, I’ll scroll down just a little bit, and here I can add media for my product. And of course, I need to show a picture because the picture is really what sells it. So over here, I’ll click on Upload New. On this page, here, I have a picture of our cookies. I’ll select this and then click on Open. Look at that beautiful picture. These cookies are going to sell themselves. If we go down just a little bit on the page, here we have a section for pricing. This is the price that customers will pay for this product, and we charge $25 for a box of cookies. I think that’s a pretty good deal for premium cookies. To the right of that, you have an option called Compare at Price, and this is a normal price that you charge. A customer will see this price crossed out, and then this is the price they’ll pay. So, for this one, let’s put down $30. That way, customers will think that they’re getting a good deal. You’ll be surprised by how many customers are swayed by that. Right down below, you also have the option to charge tax on this product. And of course, the tax man is very real, so I’ll make sure to check that box. Down below, you also have the option of putting down the cost per item, and each one of these boxes costs us $10. Again, we use good ingredients, and it costs us a good amount of money to make these. And over here, I can see the profit margin. 25 minus 10 is 15, and here I see that our margin is 60%. I think that’s a pretty healthy margin. Now, of course, customers will not see this data. This is purely for internal tracking, so you can stay on top of how much money you’re making on all of your sales. If we scroll down just a little bit, you’ll see that there’s a section for inventory, and you can use Shopify to keep track of your inventory. Like I said, Shopify truly is your one-stop shop when it comes to running your online store. We make about 150 of these boxes per day, so over here, I could enter in the inventory of 150. Now, right over here, you could decide what should happen when you run out of stock. Now, I don’t want customers to be able to order these cookies if I no longer have any stock, but you may have a reason to check this box. Down below, you can also attach this product to a SKU or a barcode to help with your internal tracking. Now, I don’t have that, so I’ll leave it unchecked, and then let’s move down, and let’s look at this shipping section. A box of our cookies weighs about one pound. I’ll enter that in right here. Now, we don’t skimp on any of the ingredients. Keep in mind, these are fairly substantial cookies. With the shipping section, you’ll want to enter in an accurate weight here. Especially if you charge for shipping, this will help Shopify determine what the shipping charge should be. This all looks good, so let’s go down to the variants section. Variants allow customers to choose different sizes, colors, or materials. To add a variant, simply click on this text, and here, you could type in the option name. Now, you’re probably wondering what type of variants are there for a cookie company? Well, we allow customers to choose different chip types. That’s right, there are many different options. Over here, you could type in the different option values. For example, maybe a customer wants semi-sweet chips, or maybe dark, or maybe white chips, so we offer all those different options. I’ll click on Done. Once you type in all of your different options, down below, you can adjust some of the different attributes. For example, you could adjust the price. We charge the same price, irrespective of which one you choose, but over here, you could also type in the inventory that you have on hand, and we make about 150 boxes for each one of these different variants. And over here, you have various settings that you can configure, but this looks good for all the different variants. I think I’m just about done with adding my first new product, but before I do that, at the very bottom, I can preview what the search engine listing will look like. So, let’s say someone searches on Google, this is what it would appear like. Now, if I want to make any tweaks to it, let’s say the title or the text, I can click on Edit right here, but I’m satisfied with how it looks. Let’s go up to the very top, and over on the right-hand side, you can also see how the product is organized. Here, it automatically identified the product category based on the text that I typed in into the description field. So here, it correctly identified that this is a page about cookies, or this is a product related to cookies. Over here, you could also specify the vendor. You could add it to a collection, or you could group it with other products, and here, you could also type in tags related to your product. For now, I’m going to stick with the defaults for all of these, and up in the top right-hand corner, I’ll click on Save. And look at that, congratulations! We have successfully added our very first product. We better start baking some cookies. Right up on top, we can now preview what this product looks like in our store. Right up on top, let’s click this button that says Preview, and this now opens up the product page. Over here, we could see that media, or the picture that we added. I could see the title, the 12 Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies. Here, we could see the price, and also the crossed-out price. Here, we see all the different chip types, or the variants that the customer can choose, and down at the very bottom, we have the description. This is looking really good. Let’s now go back into Shopify. Now that we’ve added our very first product, next, I want to configure what this store itself looks like. If you have an attractive store, I think that could really help drive additional sales. Over on the left-hand side in Navigation, you’ll see a category for sales channels, and then there’s an option for Online Store. Let’s click on that. Within Online Store, here, I get a preview of what my store landing page looks like. Now, up in the top right-hand corner, I can also click on View Your Store, and here, I get a full-screen preview. Now, I don’t know if this rowboat scene on a lake is really doing it for a cookie business, so I’ll need to go in here and customize it, but when I scroll down here, here, I see my featured product. Okay, so we’re making progress, but I will need to make some tweaks. Let’s go back to the previous page. Back on the previous screen, here, I can see that my store is currently using a theme titled Dawn, and over on the right-hand side, I can customize this theme, and in a moment, we’ll do this. However, if you just want to use an entirely different theme, if you scroll down the page just a little bit, here, you’ll see some of the most popular free themes available, and you have lots of different options. In fact, you can even visit a full-blown theme store. Let’s take a look. Within the theme store, you’ll see so many different themes that you can choose from. You have all sorts of different options. It may be a little bit overwhelming. Over on the left-hand side, you can also filter down the different themes that are shown. For example, free versus paid. You can choose based on your industry. Here, you also have the catalog size, or how many products you’ll be selling in your online store. Then, you can also look at various features that these themes support. Now, I’m going to stick with the default theme of Dawn, so I’ll go back to the previous page. Back on the previous screen, here, I can see my current theme of Dawn. And now keep in mind, although here, I see the text and certain colors and fonts and images, you can go in and you can customize the look and feel of this. So, when you’re looking for a theme, just look more for the layout or the features that this theme supports, and don’t focus so much on the specific elements within the theme because all of those can be changed. Over on the right-hand side, let’s click on customize. This now drops us into the theme editor, and we can use this to completely customize what this page looks like. To get started, over on the left-hand side, let’s click into the theme settings. And here, you can modify all different aspects of this theme. For example, you could add a logo. You could adjust the colors that are used, the typography. Here, you can also adjust the layout, and if we scroll down, you can even add stuff like your social media information, and that’ll add buttons on the page. So, you have lots of different items that you can configure here. Now, I want to start by adding the logo for the Kevin Cookie Company, just so that’s incorporated into the site. I’ll click on this, and right here, I can select an image. I’ll click on this and let me upload an image from my computer. Now that I’ve uploaded my image, I’ll make sure it’s selected and then click on done. Over on the left-hand side, I can now see my logo, and look at that, it’s automatically incorporated it into the site. That looks really nice. Now, down over here, I can also adjust the logo width. It looks a little small up here, so let’s make it a little bit wider. Here, I’ll adjust the width, and I think that looks a lot more appropriate. That looks great. Here, I could also add things like a fav icon or the icon that shows as part of the address in the browser. But for now, I think all of this is good, and I think I’m good with the defaults and the settings, so up on the top left-hand corner on the navigation, I’ll click back into sections. Within sections, here, I can see all the different sections that make up the homepage of my store. Here, for example, I see the header section, and it’s made up of two different blocks. Here, I have the announcement bar. When I hover over this, I can see where it is on the page over on the right-hand side. Or here, I could hover over the header, and there I see the header on the page. Down below, I can also see a section for the template or the core of the page. That’s made up of an image banner, and here, I also have some text and a button. And then down below, I also have a featured collection with all of my products displayed. Down at the very bottom, I also have a footer section, and here, when I hover over this block, I can see the footer on the page. Let’s go up to the very top. Here, you could also show or hide different blocks on your page. So, let’s say, for example, maybe I don’t want the announcement bar. Over here, I could delete it altogether, and that’ll remove it. Or maybe I’d like to use it in the future. I could simply click on the eye, and then I’ll hide it for now, but I can always bring it back in the future. To make modifications to any of these blocks on the page, over on the left-hand side, you can simply click on the block, and that opens up what’s called the Inspector. And this allows you to modify all the different settings related to this block. Over here, I’ll click on Back. You can also get to that Inspector view simply by clicking on the block on the page itself. To do that though, you’ll just have to make sure that this icon up above is activated. But as long as that’s activated, here, I could click on the header, and that opens up the Inspector over on the left-hand side. Here, I can modify things like the position of the logo. I don’t know if I like it on the left-hand side. I think I would prefer it in the center. I’ll click on this, and here’s the option for middle-center, and there, it’s adjusted it. I think that looks better. Here, if I scroll down a little bit, I could adjust the way the menu appears, whether the header should be sticky when someone scrolls down the page. Here, if I go down, I could also adjust the color scheme. And when I click on this here, I see a few different variations. I like this blue background with scheme five. When I click on that, that updates the page, and that matches the blue in the logo. So, I think that works well. And here, if I go down, I have many other settings that I can modify. So, you could truly get this page to look exactly how you want it to look. Over on the right-hand side, this image doesn’t at all work well for a cookie company. So, I want to modify this. I’ll simply click on the image, and over on the left-hand side, that updates the inspector for the image banner. And over here, I can select an image, but let’s try exploring some of the free images. I’ll click on that, and up above in the search, I’ll type in baking, and let’s see what comes back. Ooh, lots of different good options. But here, we have some cookies that have just gone into the oven, and they’re just starting to bake. I think that looks really nice. Ooh, look at that. That’s going to sell these cookies. Down at the very bottom, I’ll click on select. Just like we saw previously in the inspector, I have all sorts of different settings that I can use to modify this block on the page. For example, I could adjust the opacity. Maybe I want to make it a little bit darker. That’s a lot darker. I don’t know about that dark, so let’s go back to 40. You could also adjust things like the banner height. Here, you could adjust the alignment. So again, you have all sorts of different controls that you can use to modify that block. Up above, let’s click on back. Back here, I want to modify this text. So just like we’ve been doing, simply click on the block, and over on the left-hand side, we can see the inspector. And here, I’ll replace it with shop the ultimate treats. Now that I’ve entered in this text, right here on the page, you see it automatically show up. That looks really nice. Up on top, let’s click on back again. To add a new section to your page, over on the right-hand side, you could simply hover over between the different sections, and you’ll see a plus icon. And then you can add a new section. Alternatively, over on the left-hand side in the navigation, you’ll also see these buttons that say add a section or add a block. So right down here, I want to add a new section underneath the featured collection right here. So, I’ll click on add section. This opens up a dialogue where you can choose what type of section you would like to add to your page, and there are so many different options to choose from. You can add a featured collection or a group of products. You could also just add text, an image with text, and you see all these different items you could choose from. Now, I think it’d be really nice to include a video on our homepage showcasing how we make our cookies fresh daily. Here, I’ll click on video. This has now incorporated a new section onto the page. And when I click on that section block, here I get all the different settings related to that. Now, right up on top for the heading, let me type in some text, made fresh daily. And right down here, I want to enter in a URL for a video. So here I’ll delete the placeholder and I can enter in my URL. And there we have a video of the Kevin Cookie Company cookies being made. That looks great. Down below, I can select a cover image. I’ll click on this and then add an image. This image looks great, so I’ll click on done. Now that I have a cover image for my video, over on the left-hand side, I could adjust things like this style. Let me click on this and maybe I apply scheme two. That way I have this nice, banded effect where we have the picture, white, and then we have some gray here when you get down to the video. So far, I’ve been building this page in the desktop view. Up in the top right-hand corner, you can also preview what your store looks like on different device types. Currently it’s set to desktop, but over here, I can also click on mobile. And here we see what the page would look like, say on a tablet or on a phone. And I think this looks really solid. Right up on top, I can go back to the desktop view. And over here, we could also go with the full screen view. So, there you get a good idea of what it would look like on a full screen desktop. I really like how it’s coming together. We’ve been focusing most of our attention on the homepage of the store, but you can also modify any pages within your store. In the center at the very top, currently it’s set to the homepage. But when I click on that, we can see all of the different pages that comprise this store. For example, I can click on products and I can click into the default product page. And here we can see what that looks like. Just like we did on the homepage, you can come through and you can adjust any of these sections to match exactly how you want it to look. You could adjust the look and feel. Now you’re not actually going to come in and adjust the text here. And that’s what you would do in the product view when we added the product. Remember, this is adjusting the theme that all of your different products will use. I feel pretty good about all of these changes I’ve been making, so in the top right-hand corner, I’ll click on this save icon, just to make sure that all of the changes that I’ve made will be kept. Now you may be wondering, well, how do you add an entirely new page to your site? Maybe you want to include information on your refund policy, or maybe you want some about us information, or maybe even you want to post the latest news related to your online store. To do that, let’s exit out of the theme editor. In the top left-hand corner, let’s click on this exit icon. To add a new page, on the left-hand side navigation under online store, go to this option that says pages and click on that. Within pages, we can see that this site currently has one additional page titled contact. To add another new one, in the top right-hand corner, let’s click on this button that says add page. Right here, we can type in a title for this page. I’ll type in about us. Down below, you can then type in the content of the page, and I’ll enter in a little bit of information about the Kevin Cookie Company. Now, similar to what we saw in the new product, here too, you can also format all of the text and you have all of your different format controls. This all looks great. So up in the top right-hand corner, let’s click on the save icon. And just like that, we’ve added a new page. Right down below, we can view what this page looks like. And when I click on that, here we see all the about us information. Maybe later on, I’ll come back and add some photos. But for now, I think this works well. One thing you might notice is there’s no entry point to this page from the top-level header. Let’s go back to see if we could add that. Back within pages, over on the left-hand side, let’s click on the option that says navigation. Within navigation, over on the right-hand side, I can see the main menu. And currently it’s composed of home, catalog, and contact. And about us is not part of it. To add it, let’s click on the main menu. And right here, I can add a new menu item. I’ll click on this. And right up on top, I have the option to search for a page within my site. And here, let’s just type in about us. And it looks like it found the page. I’ll click on that and then click on add. And it’s now added it to the menu items. And I could also shift the order. I could simply drag this and I can move it up. Maybe I’ll place it right before contact. This looks good. So down below, I’ll click on save menu. Now that I’ve added the new page, here I can jump back to my website, and here I see that about us is now part of the top level navigation. That’s exactly what I wanted. Along with adding pages, you can also add blog posts to your online store. So, what’s the difference between say a blog post and a page? Well, a blog post tends to be more ephemeral or timely while a page lives on indefinitely or in perpetuity. So, think of home, about us, contact. That information probably doesn’t change that often. While with a blog post, maybe you have a sale on the latest cookies and you want to announce that. Let’s click into blog posts and let’s add a new post. On this page, let’s click on the button that says create blog post. Right up on top, I can type in a title for my blog post. We’re launching a new store coming up in Hyderabad, and I want to make sure everyone knows. Down below, I can type in all the content for this blog post. With a blog post, you also want to include a featured image. This will serve as the entry point, say on the homepage of your store. Right over here, I’ll click on add image. Over here, this is a great picture of the new storefront. I’ll select his one and then click on open. I think this looks great. In the top right-hand corner, I’ll click on save. And look at that, the new blog post has been created. Right over here, I’ll click on visible so people can start to see this blog post. Again, I’ll click on save. Now that I’ve added the blog post, down below, let’s click on view. And here we can preview what the blog post looks like. There we have that beautiful featured image, and then I see all of the text as part of this post. The only challenge is if I click into the homepage, there’s currently no entry point to all the different news that I publish as blog posts. So, let’s see if we could change that. Let’s go back into Shopify. Back within the main dashboard, over on the left-hand side navigation, let’s click back into themes. And here again, we see the Dawn theme that we customized earlier. Let’s again click on customize. Within the theme editor, over on the left-hand side navigation, here we see all of our different sections. Let’s add a new section. And this time I’ll search for blog. Over here, we can see a section that will display our blog posts. I’ll click on that, and that now adds a new section to this page. Now one note on section, you can also shift the order. Let’s say for example, maybe I want blog posts to appear before this video. Here I could take this section and I can drag it above videos. Or here, let’s say actually I want videos above. Here I could drag it and change that position. Now I’ll click into blog posts and this opens up the inspector. Over here, I have all the different settings related to blog posts. I’ll click on this to select the blog that I would like to feature. And here I see the blog titled news. I’ll click on that and there I see that news update that we just posted. Down below, I’ll click on select. And in the top right-hand corner, let’s click on save. These are all the changes that I want to make to the theme, so in the top left-hand corner, let’s click on the exit icon. The website’s coming together really nicely and I think it’s a really solid store. However, there are a few more things that I need to do to prepare my store for customers. In the bottom left-hand corner, let’s click on this text that says settings. This opens up all of the store settings and first we start on store details. Now currently it’s referred to as my store, but we have a better name than that. So right up here, let’s click on the pencil icon. That allows us to edit this. Instead of my store, I’m going to enter in the Kevin Cookie Company and then click on save. Now that we have a store name, over on the left-hand side, we have all of these other settings, but probably one of the most important ones is payments. I mean, you do want to get paid for orders, don’t you? So, let’s click on payments. This is where you can get set up to accept payments. Right up at the top, you can set up what’s called Shopify payments and this will allow you to accept all major payment methods. So, think of Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover. You’ll be able to accept all of those and more. Right down here, you can click on activate Shopify payments. It is a somewhat involved set up process. You’ll have to provide your address, your bank account information, your tax ID. However, once you have it all set up, you’ll be ready to accept payments. Right here, there are also other payment providers, but from what I found, Shopify Payments tends to have some of the best and most competitive rates that you’ll find, and you’ll be hard pressed to beat what they offer. Down below, you can also accept other payment methods. For example, PayPal as another option. Once you set up all of your different payments, over on the left-hand side, let’s click on shipping and delivery. On the shipping and delivery page, this is where you can define how much you charge to ship and also how quickly you’ll get it out. Right up on top, here we can define the different shipping rates. Here, you could set the delivery date, so how quickly you can process the order before it goes out to the shipper. You could also specify whether you offer local delivery or local pickup. At the very top, let’s click in and see if we can modify some of these shipping rates. I’ll click on this. On this page, at the very top, I can see what products these shipping rates will apply to. Now, I only have one product, so I’m going to adjust the shipping rates for this. But you can also set up multiple profiles. So maybe you sell some large objects and some smaller objects. You can define different shipping rates depending on what type of product it is. But again, I just have one product, so it’ll be a simple example. Right down below, I can see all of the different shipping rates and these are just set up by default. Now, one thing I’ve always heard is that if you offer free shipping, you tend to get more orders. So right down below, I don’t want to charge based on these different weight classes. So here, I’ll click on the ellipsis and let me delete some of these different options. Right up here, it currently says that if an order is 50 and up, we’ll offer free shipping. But I want to modify this so that someone gets free shipping no matter what the purchase price is. So over here, I’ll click on the ellipsis and then click on edit rate. Here, I could define all the different aspects of this shipping. Here, for example, I could define the transit time. You could also set the price and you can also set different conditions. Now, I want to remove the conditional pricing because I just want it to be free. So here, I’ll click on remove. And over here, I’ll click on done. So here, we just offer free shipping. But again, you can define based on the size or the order total, whether the customer gets free shipping or how much they have to pay. Down at the very bottom, you can also specify what it costs for international shipping. But again, mine is going to be very simple. I’m just going to offer free shipping and it’ll take five to eight business days. Our cookies have good shelf life. Right up on top, let’s click on save. Over on the left-hand side, you have all sorts of other settings that you can configure. For example, you could set up the taxes. You can also define the markets that your products are available in. You could even upload your brand information, so your logo shows up across all of the different materials. There are all sorts of different settings that you can configure, and it’s well worth looking through here to see what all you can do. The last item that I want to set up before I launch my store is to configure a custom domain for my store. Right down here, I’ll click on domains. With a domain, someone can navigate to KevinCookieCompany.com and then that will drop them directly into my new store. Over here, you can buy a new domain name. Now, there are lots of different places where you could buy domains, but the benefit of buying a domain directly through Shopify is everything will be automatically connected. There’s not really much for you to do. Right over here, I typed in KevinCookieCompany and here I see the different options that are available. Once you have a domain, you are just about ready to start selling. However, first, you’ll need to choose a Shopify plan. Over on the left-hand side, let’s click on plan. And in the bottom right-hand corner, let’s click on choose plan. On the plan page, you’ll see all of the different options. You have basic, Shopify, Advanced, all the way down through Retail and also Starter. In general, the more advanced the plan is, the more functionality that you’ll get, but also the more expensive that it’ll be. Now, one thing to call out, when you look at the different plans, you’ll notice as the plan becomes more advanced, the transaction fee goes down. So, it may actually be more affordable going with a more advanced plan if you have enough volume. The savings may make up for the more expensive price. Once your store goes live and you start receiving orders, over on the left-hand side, you can click into orders, and this will show you a view of all of your different orders that have come in, and then you can fulfill those orders. Over on the left-hand side, you can also see customer information. You can also open up analytics, shows you where your customers are coming from, what products they’re ordering. You’ll have all sorts of different information to look at and also analyze to optimize your store. All right, well, hopefully your new store is now up and running. If you would like to see future videos on Shopify, let me know what you would like to see down below in the comments. To watch more videos like this one, please consider subscribing, and I hope to see you in the next video.