How Easy Is It To Set Up Your First Shopify Store? Here's My Take

Ever wondered how hard it is to set up a Shopify store? I just set one up for the first time and I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was. Here's my honest take on getting started with Shopify as a complete beginner.

Why I jumped into Shopify

Quick backstory: I'm directing a team that's built the initial release of an automation tool for Shopify product management. We're a small family run start-up, and while the Senior Engineer and the team do the expert technical wizardry, I spend my time running the business, doing UX design and front-end coding (in a nutshell). I wanted to slot in some time to do a proper first-hand deep dive into Shopify, so I could see the whole thing from our customer's perspective.

A little groundwork

I took the Udemy courses 'How To Become a Shopify Expert (From Zero To Hero)' and the 'Complete Shopify Dropshipping Course' before I dived in, which I recommend, not least because I love a good Udemy course, but also because it just gave a great basis before I began. I knowledge-dumped them both on myself at 2.0x speed, and within the first 30 sped-up minutes, I knew how to set-up a basic store. Pre-study isn't necessary though, because Shopify will walk you through the whole process from the moment you sign up with a really intuitive, easy to follow user-interface. So, without further ado, here's what I've learnt on my journey so far.

Getting started with Shopify: great for beginners

1. You don't need technical skills to set up Shopify

One of the biggest things that stood out to me about Shopify is how easy it is to set up and customise. You might think that you need technical skills to do it, but toss that worry out the window because it's a really easy process. Don't worry, I promise I'm not being one of those technical people who say technical stuff is easy. It really is straightforward. From the moment you start your free trial, it takes you through set-up steps, including actions to complete and built-in AI to search keywords to find a custom theme to suit your store.

2. Out-of-the-box store

One of the reasons it's so beginner-friendly is because Shopify provides an out-of-the-box store that's ready for customisation, even with the free trial. You don't have to start from scratch. This includes everything from your home page set up, text, images, titles, subtitles, catalog and contact pages. Shopify themes for beginners make it easy to create a professional-looking store without design experience. The platform offers both free and premium Shopify store themes that you can customise to match your brand.

3. Building your basic shop is a breeze

Shopify gives you a platform that does all the heavy lifting for you. You have themes, customisations and layouts you can move about and change at the press of the button. Don't want something showing on your page? Fine, just hide it. Gone.

You can also choose from a variety of themes that are designed to suit different industries which is great.

In customisation, you have a left-hand menu where you can easily drag and move sections about and switch around how things look. The right-hand side shows visually exactly what each section corresponds to so you can see the changes in real-time.

4. Shopify is easy to navigate and learn

I found that Shopify's user interface is incredibly intuitive and user-friendly. Navigation is straightforward, with call-to-action buttons clear and obvious. It might take you a minute to realise you need to click the 'eye' button next to 'store' though to see your store from a customer's view. When you're working on customisation, if you don't know where something is, there are handy prompts to send you to the right place.

On top of this, when you add your products, or set up checkout, everything is automatically laid out in a way that is user-friendly to your customers. So, the entire process allows you to hit the ground running and get selling fast, rather than wasting loads of time with complicated set up.

5. The Shopify app store is immense

Shopify has a massive app store that means you can add lots of additional functionality to your store at the press of the button. One example is Live Chat, which levels up your customer service, and another being the SEO tools on offer that automatically optimise the SEO of your store. Neat. SEO and marketing tools are built into the platform, making it easier to appear in search results to attract and retain customers, but the app takes that up a notch.

6. Reasonably priced plans with a free trial

Shopify offers a free trial that provides a basic store out of the box, giving you a risk-free opportunity to explore the platform and see if it fits your needs. The free trial is only for 3 days, though, which feels a little bit on the stingy side. But once that ends, I think Shopify pricing plans are reasonable, with various tiers to accommodate businesses at different stages. It's quite flexible, with the basic Shopify plan including everything you need to get started, and advanced plans offering additional features for scaling your business. It means you can start small and scale up when you start smashing out those sales.

Keeping it real

Let's face it there are Shopify experts out there for a reason, so if you want to go beyond the basics there might be a bit more technical knowledge required. Also, even if you're going it alone, setting up certain things like the domain, markets, tax costs etc might require a bit of research or support. And if you ever find yourself down the line with thousands of products to upload and sell, pulling your hair out with all that manual work, and you need a great tool to help you automate everything -- come and find me, because our tool Zap Integrate will do everything for you.

Follow along as I continue to document my journey with learning about Shopify.

Running into issues with product management on Shopify? Contact our team today to learn how Zap Integrate can automate your product listings and save you hours every week.