Complete Shopify Setup Checklist for First-Time Store Owners: Complete guide

It can be totally stressful and daunting to start your first Shopify store. With 4.82 million live Shopify stores around the world, there's more pressure to get it right on the first try. What's worse is that the stats don't read very well: only 5-10% of Shopify stores have any type of long-term success and the vast majority of failures happen within the first five years.

However, there's no need to be discouraged, if anything, these stats give you insight into the importance of doing so much upfront planning and setup. The main difference between a successful Shopify store and an unsuccessful one usually boils down to how well they're able to navigate the many steps in how to set up their store.

Here is your complete checklist that will walk you through every important step in the setup of your Shopify store, and help you steer clear from the common pitfalls you may encounter, as well as put yourself in the best position for eventual success.

Understanding the Shopify Landscape

Before we get to the actual setup, (set up/installation, you get it), you better understand what you are getting into. Shopify powers upwards of 30% of eCommerce enabled websites in the U.S. Shopify is the leading platform for online retail. More than 2 million merchants use the Shopify platform to sell products, and the platform is evolving quickly.

Their success is no accident. Over 85% of Shopify merchants utilize apps to help them perform, and with 10,000+ apps in the Shopify app store, there are solutions for almost every facet of a business model. With so many choices, we can understand new store owners may find it challenging to choose the apps that make sense for them.

Pre-Launch Foundation: Strategic Planning

Business Model Clarity

Before we mess with any technical settings, let's describe your business model. Are you dropshipping, stocking products, or digital goods? This decision will influence every decision you make afterwards, from the appropriate Shopify Account to your decision on a payment processor.

Next, begin with documenting your target audience, pricing, and position to the competition. This document will help you in the selection of your store design, product presentation, and marketing strategy. Many failed stores I know of, skipped this planning phase and just started designing their store without knowing anything about their market.

Legal and Compliance Preparation

When you're preparing to launch your business, be sure to create the legal structure before you hit the ground. You'll want to have your business registered and ordered tax identification, as well as understand the obligations you have related to collection of a sales tax. Even though Shopify has some useful tools to help you with tax calculations, you still need to make valid choices depending on where you are and what type of business you're operating.

Make the effort to check on the legal aspects of the category of product you have. There can be specific regulatory frameworks for products; there can be regulated labeling, and restrictions on how they can be sold online.

Technical Setup: The Core Infrastructure

Domain and Hosting Configuration

When you come up with a domain name, it needs to match your brand and be something memorable. Shopify gives you myshopify.com subdomains for free but buying a custom domain gives you instant credibility. You're now likely to have your own domain and you need to have your settings correctly set up including your SSL certificates which Shopify already takes care of when using a custom domain.

If you are coming from a different platform, make sure you're set up with redirects. If you have broken links, they'll hurt your search engine ranking and anger customers who find your shop via search engines.

Theme Selection and Customization

The theme you choose can have a significant effect on user experience and conversion rates. If you are nervous about spending, start with Shopify's free themes, but if there is a premium theme that you absolutely love, it may be worth the money to better align with your brand vision and values. You can always upgrade and improve your store later!

You will want to customize your theme, and make it your own! Use your brand's colors and fonts, and think about the overall look and feel of your online store. Still, avoid excessive customizing,, so as not to impact the load speed of the pages. Page speed can directly affect conversions and ranking in the search engines.

You will also want to ensure that your site is responsive on mobile. With mobile commerce accelerating with the advent of COVID-19, your store must work well on all devices. Make sure to test your theme on different sized screens and devices thoroughly before launching!

Payment Gateway Setup

It's best practice to have multiple payment options so that you can accommodate different customers' preferences. Shopify Payments is obviously the most integrated option, but consider adding PayPal, Apple Pay, and any additional regional payment methods that suit your target market.

Take time to ensure that you have set up your payment processing properly. When payments are not set up correctly this can result in failed transactions, delayed payouts or compliance issues. If you have multiple payment options, understand how much they charge you and how that will tie into your pricing strategy.

Product Catalog Development

Product Information Architecture

Create a logical product catalog structure with clear categories and subcategories, which will impact user experience and SEO. Choose descriptive category names that customers would typically search for.

You will also benefit from developing a consistent product naming convention; creating the same product name for location in SF and location in Houston will help with inventory management and make it easier for customers to find a product when they search. Use keywords in the product title and include a variety of reasonable formats; ensure the keywords make sense and are easy to read!

Product Photography and Media

Be sure to invest in good product photography. One of the quickest ways to scare away potential customers is through bad images, and image quality can often vary from one product photo to another. Take multiple angles of the product, show the product in use, and ensure that the lighting and styling is consistent across your entire catalog.

If appropriate, add product videos to your product pages. Video content can also really help with your conversion rates, especially for products that need a demonstration, or are more complex.

Product Descriptions and SEO

Create attractive and informative product descriptions for customers that address their needs, wants, or concerns, including bullet points for main features, descriptive sizes, and address common questions. Remember the purpose of the product descriptions serve the customer and search engines alike.

Optimize your product pages for search engines. Use relevant keywords Billingsly naturally within the titles, descriptions, and meta tags, but avoid keyword stuffing your descriptions as this will hurt both user experience and your rank.

Store Configuration and Settings

Shipping and Fulfillment Setup

Be careful while setting your shipping settings. The most common reasons for cart abandonment are unexpected shipping costs and unexpected delivery times. You need to be open and explain about your shipping costs and time frames.

Set shipping zones and rates given your fulfilment capabilities. If you are in dropshipping make sure you are working with your suppliers to have good delivery estimates. You might even find free shipping, given a certain order amount to help drive average order value.

Tax Configuration

Set up timely, accurate tax calculations from the beginning. Shopify can handle tax calculations automatically for you, but you need to configure tax calculations correctly based on your business location, as well as where you are required to collect taxes.

Be aware of tax obligations as they change. E-commerce sales tax requirements for online businesses continue to change, and non-compliance may expose you to potential large penalties.

Customer Account and Checkout Settings

You gotta decide whether to force people to create accounts or let customers checkout as a guest. Customer accounts can help with repeat business, but requiring registration often leads to cart abandonment. You might even just want to give customers both options.

Make your checkout flow as optimized for conversion as possible. Remove unnecessary steps, prominently display security badges, allow multiple payment options and consistently test the checkout flow so you know where the bugs are.

Essential App Integration

Core Functionality Apps

Shopify's base functionality is pretty good, but some apps can make a store much better. Focus on apps that solve specific use cases, as opposed to downloading apps just because there is a feature.

Some common essential app categories are email marketing apps, inventory management apps, and customer service apps. 14.8% of stores have downloaded the Shopify Inbox app, and 14.1% use Klaviyo for email marketing, confirming that these systems are high priorities for a lot of store owners.

Analytics and Tracking Setup

Don't forget to install Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel (if you're running Facebook ads) before you press go. These tools take time to amass data, and you want that historical information because it becomes invaluable in analyzing key components of your business.

You also want to set up conversion tracking for everything that counts: purchases, email signups, and other significant customer behaviors. This data will be key in optimizing your marketing strategies and understanding consumer behavior.

Marketing Foundation

SEO Optimization

Optimize your store for search engines from the start. This includes titles, meta descriptions, headings, site structure, speed, responsive mobile sites, content quality and freshness, and backlinks. SEO is a long game that pays off over time by compounding.

Develop a content strategy that includes a blog/knowledge base, product guides, and other helpful content for your target audience. Content marketing can drive organic traffic and establish your brand as an authority in your niche.

Social Media Integration

Connect your store to relevant social media channels. 90% of Shopify merchants have set up their online stores on two or more channels because they understand the importance of multichannel selling.

You can connect relevant social media accounts to your brand, which will engage additional touch points for your customers, leading them to your store.

Quality Assurance and Testing

Comprehensive Testing Protocol

You will want to test everything about your store before launching it. Test the shopping experience and checkout experience. Test your email notifications. Test your store on a mobile device. Ask some friends or family to test and see what they think.

Then, test your store across different devices and browsers as well. What looks perfect on your computer may not look the same on mobile devices or different browsers. If there is a problem, you want to fix them before your customer has to deal with them.

Performance Optimization

Improve the loading speed of your store. Slow loading stores have more bounce rates and lower conversion rates. Use Shopify performance tools to improve it, consider optimizing images, and removing any unnecessary apps.

You should also regularly oversee your store's performance. There are a lot of tools online like Google PageSpeed Insights that can help identify ways to improve your stores performance and track the changes that you've made and track the store over time.

Launch Preparation and Go-Live

Pre-Launch Checklist

Build a complete pre-launch checklist that will cover every facet of your store from product catalog completion to payment processing, shipping settings, and legal compliance.

Make sure you have prepared your customer service setup before launch. This includes FAQ area, contact details, and return policy. Customer service setup helps build customer confidence and reduces the burden on your support team.

Launch Strategy

Plan your launch smartly. Consider doing a soft launch to a small group of people to allow you to find and fix any issues before launching fully, because a first impression is hard to take back!

Prepare your marketing materials and launch announcements ahead of time. Write your social media posts, send out an email campaign, and prepare your advertising materials pre-launch.

Post-Launch Optimization

Analytics and Performance Monitoring

After you launch your store, keep an eye on the performance metrics. You'll want to build a dashboard within analytics to focus on essential metrics that matter - traffic, conversion rate, average order value and the cost associated with acquiring a new customer. Use it to look for areas to improve on.

Create a structure to identify things you should track over time and report back on. Interested in your business trending each month can help you fundamentally understand what direction your business should head.

Continuous Improvement

Successful Shopify stores are never "done." Expect to iterate based on customer feedback, performance statistics, and shifting market conditions. You have to keep working to improve in order to remain successful in the long term.

Expect to need to stay up-to-date with Shopify updates and features. The technology of the platform is always evolving and new features may enable company advantages and help with problems you already had.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

Overcomplication

Many new store owners try to combine too many features all at once. Build your store with the core functionality first, and then layer in features as needed. A simple store that works is preferred to a complex store that has problems.

Neglecting Mobile Experience

As mobile commerce continues to be the fastest growing platform of commerce, you can no longer afford to ignore mobile. Having your store work across all devices and provide a positive experience is critical.

Inadequate Testing

When you rush to launch your store without testing it properly, you will only ensure that you lose customers from the frustration they will have. Invest time testing your store before it goes live and save yourself the headache caused by customer dissatisfaction.

Conclusion

To set up a successful Shopify store, you've gotta be detail-oriented, plan things out, and remember that customer experience is key. Unfortunately, the statistics tell us that most stores will fail in the long-term, but utilizing proper setup and execution should help create a more successful probability.

As you get set up, you must look at it from a systematic point of view: your store is not launching, it's the beginning of your actions towards creating a more sustainable business. You have the time to understand your market, set up for user experience, and implement appropriate tracking and analytics.

It is important to note that launching your store is only the first step to success; ongoing optimization, taking care of your customer, and adapting to changing market conditions is how you will turn your store into a successful e-commerce business. It is possible to be part of that 5-10% group and not be one of the "statistical" stories.

So, by working through this checklist, and evading some common pitfalls, you've increased your odds of creating a potentially successful e-commerce business. Furthermore, all of the investment you are making into developing your store will all pay off, especially long-term when your business has grown and evolved.