Online shopping has gained more recognition globally since the pandemic, and rightly so. However, many still struggle to set up their small businesses and run them online. They tend to find the process frustrating and very overwhelming. Too many times, college students also look for opportunities to start small businesses but are frustrated by the process.
Thankfully, Shopify exists to ease these problems and make it easier to own a small business online. This platform has a user-friendly interface and offers an affordable price. This makes it ideal for college students to achieve their small business objectives. Here's how to use Shopify to create your online business.
Be clear about your idea.
This is the first step to creating your online business. You must be sure about what you want to do and how you'll execute it. Before you design your website, you must have a clear objective for your business and what it offers to the target audience.
You must know the services or products you want to offer and be clear about your ideal customer. This makes it easier to create an impressive brand image. Once these basics are decided, you can now add other resources.
It's important to consider how to cite a research paper in APA style for your business plan and proposal. You need to include the author's last name and the year of publication in parentheses in the text of your paper. Then, in the references section, provide a complete reference for the source at the end of your paper. The citation should include the author's last name, the year of publication, the title of the paper, the journal name, and other relevant details.
Create a fitting logo
Your logo is an integral part of your brand and gives people the first impression of your company. The best way to create such an impression is to create a logo that the customers can easily relate to, so it sticks longer in their memories. Make the logo design neat, and use simple words and the right colors.
Once you're sure about your brand identity, you can decide to use the logo maker on Shopify or create a design from scratch.
Set up your Shopify account
The next step in creating your small business is to set up your account. Shopify gives its users the first 14 days of free trial, and you can use this period to play around and experiment on the platform with your website. You don't even need to enter your credit card information before signing up for the free trial until you're ready to continue using the platform.
Shopify's pricing is accessible and adaptable to your business needs. It uses your business information to create a customized website for you. To do this, you'll have to write about your company, the nature of your products, and the platforms you're looking to sell in. If your store already exists before now, it'll ask for your current revenue. You also have the chance to design and develop your online store for another person to use it. It's a straightforward process with a few clicks.
Choose and customize your theme
With Shopify, you can choose from several free themes that are highly customizable. When choosing a theme, let the end users be your main objective and think about how they will browse your store.
While Shopify gives a template that's good for your business, you should still try to prioritize the personality and image of your brand. When considering the different themes, check for specific styles, features, and businesses they're most suitable for. This will help you determine the ones that are good for your business.
Once you've added the theme, then try to customize it. You'll see how users will see your store on the interface. You can change the screen view by clicking on the desktop or going to the upper right side of your mobile phone.
As you personalize your chosen theme, remember to always save your progress after each modification at the top right corner. This ensures you don't lose what you've done due to connecting loss as it's saved on Shopify's servers.
Add products
While on your dashboard, you can click the products tab to add or manage your products. Ensure that you only have high-quality images and videos of your products, and write a short but compelling description of each. As far as pricing is concerned, it's possible to show comparison prices for promotion and sales and to enter the cost per product to generate profit and margin information.
You also have an inventory section for your products where you can add product barcodes and SKU numbers and track your stock.
To ship to different locations, the calculation is based on the product weight, but you can also add information about the harmonized system and fabrication place.
It's also possible to add variants of one product based on color and size. This helps you save time if there are many similar products. Shopify lets you see how your product listing will appear on Google and other search engines. You can optimize this to ensure you get more conversions.
At the top right corner of your dashboard, there are more settings to manage your products. This section allows you to add the product type you're selling, the collection, vendor, and related tags. Once you've added this information, change the product status to “Active” so that it can be available in your online store.
Launch your online store
This is the last step to creating your online business with Shopify. This is where it becomes available to the public.
Once you're confident about what you've created, then you can launch the online store. All you need to do is to click “Preference” under Settings and uncheck “Enable Password.” You'll need to choose a payment plan before launching your store online.
Before you launch your store, go through the different pages of your website to confirm that every piece of information on them is accurate and they have a user-friendly layout. You can also try to shop and complete a transaction on your website to see the process before you launch it.
Create a blog
Creating content relevant to your business for your target audience is crucial to running a successful online business. This is why you should create a blog for your small business. This gives you more online visibility and makes it easier for people to find your platform on search engines. It also helps you to build your marketplace authority.
This might mean you have to create text content, but if you can't, you can outsource it to freelance writers like you outsource your college essays to best professional resume writers. However, there are different kinds of content, so you don't have to limit yourself to text content. You can create infographics and produce podcasts and videos, but you must always make your content relevant to the audience and aligned with your brand image values.
Go to the Sales Channel tab to find the necessary tools for developing and managing your online store. A blog post section also allows you to create and upload your website content.
While writing your blog post, you must always note the content and language your customers prefer. This makes it easier to find in search engines by using keywords in the tags and texts. You can increase reader engagement further by using videos and appealing images. Don't forget to add CTAs to your posts.
Lastly, be consistent with your content update. Do it regularly. At least once every week. Always aim to rank high and build your search engine authority.
Conclusion
Shopify makes it easy for students to own and run online businesses with the steps discussed in this article. However, being a student means you may not have enough time to monitor your business. Outsourcing your essays to a pro essay writing service helps you save time for your business.
