I am opening a few stores on Shopify. To date I have received 4 email prompts of different variety, the latest an invite to sell product, even if no product I have to sell and a link to obtain product.
Much better than the usual I receive from websites.
My interest is more service orientated but I think I will look at the product link as well.
It will take a few weeks, and I do have a very specific strategy in mind, but I will let you know how it works out.
Tinker
Look forward to reading about your ‘hands-on’ experience.
Did you make any comparisons before choosing Shopify for your stores or just know it was the best?
I can do things less expensive on something like godaddy to accomplish my purposes, but your talking on $25 a month difference, so even if I build 10 websites that is only $250 a month, which is nothing in business terms. My site needs are very basic at this time (I already have a custom expensive site for my business, and these sites will have far fewer requirements).
So I chose Shopify both because I own stock and because I want the ease of use and easy integration of any component I may want to plug in, even for simple sites. Also I want to learn how to do this for real.
Tinker
Please Tinker - share what you learn. I have a very simple idea, and I could use some help.
~Tracy K
Tracy,
A good start is look at some of these Utube videos:
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q…
I have utube videos with a few thousand reviews (disappointing in the scheme of things, and was my first go about it, thus personally embarrassing, but for business purposes it may be just fine).
I notice that one of these links is how to start your own tube channel with Shopify. That would be of interest to me as I could then start creating my own videos, in my own way, and self-market them, on each of my micro sites. Need to get my son to turn his iPad around from playing games on the screen to filming.
But that is more advanced stuff.
My first website is very basic. I will look up this more advanced stuff once I get a few websites out there.
The 2016 32 minute long video in the above search would probably be a good start for you. Shopify also has their own corporate produced videos showing how to set up a store, put inventory in, shipping, etc. the one I saw was 1 hour and 15 minutes. Most of it was not applicable to my needs as it focused on product and inventory and pricing, and lots of good stuff. It may be exactly what you need to view though. I don’t have that link on me but you can find it on Shopify.
A few hours of self-education will probably pay off for you. I am swamped for time, and I have no inventory, just intellectual property, so I did about an hour of pre-education and then just went and tried it, and learned, sometimes frustrating for a bit, as I went. My sites are marketing sites for a service, so they will differ from what most people use Shopify for. Nevertheless, it worked! And Shopify has all these features I can add to my websites over time.
I will tell you, looking at the how to videos, Shopify provides practically everything a vendor of products will need. Just like you see it on Amazon. I also believe you can sell digital products as well, but that is another advanced feature that I will look into later.
So the key is, do some self-education, here is a basic primer on SEO from Shopify: https://help.shopify.com/manual/products/promoting-marketing… Important to know this as you will get to set this up in your store (not a problem, you will figure it out as you go, and also in the videos).
That is a good start. I am also finding it amazing just how much better focused my message is when I put it all together myself, than it is when I had expensive consultants working everything. We are talking thousands of dollars per month to run the website at some period of time, and my message is far more focused and crisp doing it myself.
The other key is, it is better to get something done than to get something done perfectly. Ask Tesla or Amazon about this. Get it going as best you can, learn as you go, and fix it as you go.
Yes, it is a great platform from the very basics, including SEO customization throughout the site you make, to much more advanced features.
Tinker
https://help.shopify.com/manual/your-account/daily-workflows…
This is an excellent link to the text editor on Shopify. I built my entire website, blogs and all without it. But if you want to put hyperlinks, or tube videos, or make more detailed formatting, you need to use the text editor. And just going through it puts many of the features into context.
So now I know how to put hyperlinks on my site. If you want to link internally to your own site there is another function for this, but that is in a separate article.
This stuff should be enough to get you going Tracy. I am sure with this stuff, and playing around with it, you will get everything down.
Keep in mind that the inventory system, in an intuitive fashion, is sophisticated enough that you can even enter in your starting inventory, and you will be notified when the inventory is exhausted and you can set it to specify “out of stock” or to even make it invisible when inventory hits a certain level, not to mention setting up shipping. Not sure how returns will work, but that is something else I am sure you can look up how to do.
Easy to use this sort of functionality. Have fun! I will be working it more tonight. Given what I have picked up in just two days I will probably have a dozen different micro sites up within the next 30 days. Anymore and I might not be able to keep up with monthly content. But that is my strategy and need. Most people just put up one store, but you can strategize and create your own marketing strategies. Start simple and learn as you go.
Yes, this is empowering. You don’t need to know anything about HTML or computer programming at all to put up a professional store. I understand programming, and HTML and such, so I understand the logic behind what SHOP does, which may be helpful, but you don’t even need that sort of sophistication to get a basic site up, or to even install more sophisticated features like utube videos, or contact us forms, email us, that sort of thing. You can do it all in the text editor using third party plug-ins that are mostly plug and play sort of things.
But enough, it is a great product. Good luck with your store. Let us know how it works out if you pursue it Tracy.
Tinker
I am live! 4 blogs to start. Simple, basic, but you know what, I am putting up critical and unique information you won’t find anywhere else with such detail and competence and specificity. I will add more sophistication later.
I plan on putting up my second website on Wednesday. Once you get the hang of it, it is easy and fun to work with, even though I am still just at the basic level.
So have at it aspiring entrepreneurs.
Btw/ I can feel the culture of Shopify, the community, and I have not even been to the Shopify store yet, nor read the user forums. I did just receive an email regarding an ex-con who started his own store with 10 products and dun good.
It takes a few days to a few weeks to really start ranking on search engines, but hopefully I will have my planned dozen sites or so up within 30 days, and then will track how I do in the next 60 to 90 days. I have a real gut business sense that it will work out spectacularly. This is because I am doing something that my very well financed competition simply is not, nor will they. I am being meticulous about running a detail plan (which of course I am not giving away), and the ease and power of Shopify will enable me to pull it off.
Now to beer drinking. Ciao all.
Tinker
I sent Shopify an email question to customer service last night regarding templating my new website so I can link it to different URLs and then custom each template by changing my blogs and text but keeping the pictures and formatting the same. So a sophisticated question. A detailed response with multiple possible solutions and links to educational material that delivered by a real person before noon today.
That is customer service!
Tinker
Thanks Tinker, exactly the crucial small insight into a company’s attitude to the customer I wanted to hear.