Shopify Australia — How to set up your Online Store
Shopify Australia has made it easier for people to set up their online stores allowing them to efficiently sell products or services on the internet. This ecommerce website builder has enabled many businesses to have an online presence and give them the opportunity to reach a wider clientele via their online store.
With the boom in ecommerce and the emergence of companies like Shopify Australia, setting up an online store has never been easier for an entrepreneur to do. So, if you haven’t set yours up yet, you’re leaving money on the table!
In this blog post, we will introduce you to Shopify Australia and go over the platform’s features in order to show you how you can set up your very own online store, load products onto your website, set up payment gateways and how to set up order fulfilment so you can ship your products to customers.
What is Shopify Australia and how do I set up an online store?
Shopify is a cloud-based ecommerce platform where business owners can set up their online store to sell physical or digital products worldwide. Think of Shopify as a marketplace, and you, as the business owner, can rent a stall in said marketplace to sell your products to eager customers. The entire Shopify Australia ecosystem allows for the acquisition, selling and shipping of products to anywhere in the world.
What are the benefits of setting up a Shopify Australia online store?
Shopify Australia is the perfect platform to begin your ecommerce empire.
Here’s a list of advantages for using Shopify Austalia:
1. Ease of setting up and navigation:
Shopify excels at creating a fantastic user experience. The platform is convenient to use and intuitive. It will host a custom domain of your choosing and you can manage all aspects of the sales process from within the platform. They take care of all the server/developer backend for you as well so you can just focus on selling.
2. Integrated with third-party ecommerce tools:
Shopify is armed with all the best tools, which makes it extremely easier for business owners to sell their products. These tools include third-party services that you can use to optimise your store’s functionality, implement enterprise grade sales services (like dropshipping) and ensure your customers keep coming back.
3. Store template options for great aesthetics:
Shopify’s user-friendly themes are easily customisable. They have store templates preformatted to fit your needs and they also have options for you to have your store designed by a professional web designer (like us) so you can easily stand out from your competition.
4. Allows for easy payments:
Among the platform’s advantages is that the system is integrated with a variety of payment gateways, making it easier for the vendor or the merchant to receive payments.
5. Easily accessible:
You can access your store and be updated with its progress from anywhere in the world that has an internet connection. You can sell on the web, social media, mobile platforms, online marketplaces and even on physical stores of your choosing. Shopify will also take care of the necessary upgrades when there is an uplift in sales so you don’t have to worry about the site crashing if you have a spike in traffic.
6. Great customer support:
The platform also makes it easy for beginners who run into technical issues as they have a fantastic service-oriented team. Their 24/7 customer support service is accessible via mobile, email or a chat service.
7. Reliable security measures:
Shopify handles all security concerns. Your information as well as your customers’ information is safe within Shopify’s databases.
8. Marketing tools for ecommerce:
Your Shopify store has built-in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools, which will help you to rank on top searcg engines like Google. The platform also has analytical tools that will help you understabd your customer demogrphaics and in turn design a suitable campaign based on those results. Also available at your disposal are social media integration tools that will enable you to market your product on various mediums.
What are Shopify Australia’s pricing packages?
Shopify Australia offers a FREE 14-day trial so you can begin setting up your online store.
They have the following pricing packages available:
What do you Need to Setup your Store on Shopify Australia?
Before I get into the technical stuff, you should first think of the following:
1. Your business plan.
At this stage, you need to figure out what you plan to sell, how you intend to sell it and conduct research about whether people actually want to buy this product or service. You will also need to determine pricing and a marketing plan to ensure you get visitors to your site.
2. Your business name.
Ideally, your business name should include a clue as to what you are selling, for easier product or service recall. It will also become the name of your Shopify store so should be unique. Go ahead and conduct a quick search on Namechk to see if your planned domain name and social media handles are still available.
3. Your brand/logo.
You brand is an incredibly important part of your business. I highly recommend creating a brand strategy that aligns your business and services to your desired clientele. It should also be a reflection of you as a business owner and your “why” for starting up this business in the first place.
In terms of a logo, it’s recommended that you have a designer create something custom inline with your brand strategy. However, if your budget is low, you can either create one yourself using simple drag and drop software like Canva.
4. Products or services.
A shop is not a shop without products or services. Have them ready before you set your Shopify account. You need to have product names that are inline with your branding, understand pricing and have appropriate content to describe why a client NEEDS to buy them.
5. Photos.
Clear and eye-catching photos of your products or your portfolio (if you’re selling a service) are key to attracting your ideal customer. To create a listing, you need these photos on hand.
Step by step Guide to Setting up a Shopify Account
The process is fairly simple. You need to:
1. Go to Shopify’s website and make an account (they have a 14-day FREE trial)
Click on the Get Started button and choose a unique name for your store. Fill in all other necessary details and wait for the website’s approval. The next fields you need to fill up will lay the foundation for your Shopify Store.
2. Adding products to your store
These are the physical or digital products/services that you will offer in your Shopify Store and require the following info:
Product Description
This is where you put your product title and talk about the benefits of your products or services as well as address common objections (if any) of your potential customer. Make sure to use conversational text so that your customers can easily read the descriptions. You can also provide additional photos, videos, gifs of your products if there are variations.
Product Price
This is the amount people will pay for the product you are selling in your store. You should take into account the cost of the item, the perceived value, overheads, shipping expenses and if there are any other fees/taxes that need to be factored in.
Product Inventory
Shopify has its own inventory management system that allows you to track your stocks on hand and informs you and your customers when a product is sold out.
Product Shipping
Shipping costs, taxes, customs fees (if any) and handling details will be put in this section of your store.
3. Customizing my Shopify Store
Your Shopify store should leave a lasting impression on your site visitors. It not only encourages immediate purchases but also future purchases of your product. You should consider creating an About page, Contact page, some FAQs and a Purchase Policy page. Next you should:
Choose a theme — there are free and paid themes available at the Shopify Theme Store. Make sure to choose the right theme for your online store based on your brand as well as desired functionality.
Optimize your Home Page — add, remove or rearrange the sections that make up your main page. You have to highlight the benefits of your product, lead site visitors to purchase your products and encourage long term loyalty. It is also wise to make sure that the home page design is optimised for desktop and mobile browsing as well as being inline with your brand.
Modify navigation menu — it’s critically important that you understand your site architecture by this point. You need to have a hierarchy of pages and products. From there you need to prioritise the most important pages and add to your main navigation menu. The goal is to make the navigation experience as easy as posisble for your target customer. This includes organizing items in categories and subcategories. Having a “search” bar comes in handy if you have a wide selection of items for sale.
Store Branding — you can go to Theme Settings to edit all pertinent details about your online store to fit your branding (colours combination, typography and your logos).
Set up Shipping details — find a shipping strategy that will work to the benefit of your Shopify online store. Figure out if you will offer Free Shipping anywhere, show real-time rates, charge a flat rate or offer local pickup/delivery. You can opt to change these over time.
4. Set up your Domain
You can buy your domain straight from Shopify or have it set up from another provider.
5. Set up Shopify Australia Payments
Just before you go live, you need to make sure you are ready to collect payment. Below are the two best ways to accept payments from your customers
1. Shopify Payments: This is a fully integrated feature when you set up your Shopify Store. Basically, Shopify collects the payments for you and pays you after a certain period.
2. Apple Pay: Customers have the option to pay using Apple Pay, and you, as the merchant, get paid through Shopify payments.
3. Amazon Pay: Customers can also choose Amazon Pay as their mode of payment. Merchants get paid by Amazon.
4. PayPal: Customers pay using PayPal and PayPal directly pays the merchant.
5. Google Pay: Customers can also pay using Google Pay and the merchant gets paid through Shopify payments.
Once you get a sale, by default, Shopify automatically sends you an email and tells you when a payout is made to your bank account. The email includes information regarding the amount paid and customer details for your review. In case you don’t want to receive these notifications, you can easily turn them on or off through Shopify’s Payment settings.
Merchants can also choose the currency they get paid in. For example, if you sell mostly to the American market, it makes sense to set your preferred currency of accepted payments to USD. On the flip side, if you as the merchant reside in Australia, it would be wise to pay Shopify in AUD. There are also multi-currency options if you are selling internationally.
6. Shopify Shipping in Australia with Sendle
Every Shopify store comes with a built-in shipping suite that will help you calculate everything. For people in Australia, you can take advantage of the lowest domestic and international shipping rates from Sendle at no additional cost.
You just need to make a shipping label from your order page, get a parcel collection scheme and print your shipping labels from there.
Here’s what you need to setup Sendle in your Shopify Australia account:
- Your Australian Business Number (ABN) qualifies you for tax-free shipping on Shopify. Register your ABN by going to Settings and then to Billing;
- Select your items in the “Orders Page” and then click Create shipping labels;
- Choose an existing package or add a new one, enter the total weight of your products, and review the customs information if you’re shipping internationally;
- When all of this is done it’s now time to choose a parcel delivery method;
- In the “Shipping date” section, select the date that you plan to have your products picked up or dropped off. Your customer will receive a shipping confirmation notification on this date;
- You will then purchase shipping labels and print them from a desktop or thermal printer. Afterwhich these labels will be attached to the products ready to be shipped;
- All that needs to be done now is for the item to be picked up or dropped off at a Sendle location.
7. Using APIs to link into other fulfilment services
API is short for Application Programming Interface. An API provides a way for one application to interact with another in accordance with a set of rules.
Thanks to Shopify’s integration with APIs, merchants can now add or update their customers’ information, including the latter’s addresses. This also makes it easier for the merchant to calculate shipping costs and taxes.
If you are using a specialist developer you van even build custom API integrations for more advanced connections with custom pre-existing software.
