These days, setting up an e-commerce site and trying to increase sales by listing products on existing e-commerce sites is quite trendy. In fact, compared to models that involve owning a physical store and warehouse and employing workers, achieving 5-10 times more visibility and profit margin is only possible with advertising and the right strategies. Without setting up an e-commerce site, you can receive payments using services like Shopier and İyziLink. When you want to scale your business a bit further, alternatives like Ticimax, Ideasoft, WooCommerce, and Shopify come into play. The focus of this article is on setting up an e-commerce site in 2022 and leveraging Shopify in the process.
What is Shopify?
Shopify is an e-commerce platform with billions of dollars in volume that you can use to create your online store instantly and effortlessly. You can sign up for a 14-day free trial to test a Shopify account yourself, which is accessible from anywhere in the world in seconds and has no server or maintenance costs. During your trial period, you can create your own online store, test free Shopify apps, and familiarize yourself with the system. All you need to use Shopify is an idea. You don't have to worry about details like setup, security, or server costs. All you need to do is connect your domain name to your store and start your monthly Shopify subscription. Setting up Shopify is a very simple and hassle-free process.
As a Turkish citizen, we understand that Shopify's monthly packages starting at $30 may seem daunting. After all, why spend your money on Shopify when WooCommerce is free? However, over time, a slowing website, increasing security and maintenance needs, and insufficient hosting/server space can come back to haunt you with greater costs and risks within at least a year. Remember, setting up an e-commerce site with Shopify is one of the most popular methods worldwide, and your risk cost is quite low.
How to Set Up an E-Commerce Site with Shopify?
Advancing technology is gradually breaking down the barriers between countries and people, and the world is getting closer every day to the concept of a "global village," once considered an impossible dream. Among the advantages provided by the internet and technological developments is the transformation of e-commerce into a unique opportunity. E-commerce helps everyone involved in trade make significantly more sales and achieve much higher profits compared to traditional trade methods, while also offering customers unique conveniences. Given this, it is inevitable that all companies want to enter the world of e-commerce. So, do you know how to enter the world of e-commerce, how to set up an e-commerce site through Shopify, and what to pay attention to during this process? If you want to move your business to digital platforms and easily sell products all over the world, you can benefit from this comprehensive guide we have prepared especially for you. Once you've finished the guide, reaching out to us to address your needs regarding Shopify support and setting up an e-commerce site with Shopify is also an option.
What is E-Commerce, and How is it Done?
According to data released by the Electronic Commerce Operators Association (ETİD), e-commerce reached a volume of 400 billion liras in Turkey in 2021 and continues to grow rapidly worldwide. E-commerce, which showed rapid growth worldwide, especially in 2020 and 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic, has a volume of $672 billion in China, $340 billion in the US, and $99 billion in the UK. These figures are expected to increase by an average of 10% to 15% each year, and it is predicted that 95% of all commercial transactions worldwide will be conducted online within the next 20 years.
From this perspective, it is clear that issues such as setting up and managing an e-commerce site have become central to the world of commerce. For this reason, it is considered essential for everyone involved in commerce to adapt quickly to this change and move their commercial transactions to internet platforms in order to survive. Whether you have a long-standing commercial history or are just starting out in the business world, one of the first things you need to do is set up your e-commerce system and offer your products to both local and global markets via the internet.
Setting up an e-commerce site ranks among the top basic needs for those who want to engage in commerce in 2022. For this reason, learning how to set up your own e-commerce site is crucial for getting your business off to the right start. So, how do you set up an e-commerce site, and what should you pay attention to when doing so?
When setting up your own e-commerce site, Shopify is one of the most corporate, well-established, and successful global companies you can choose. Headquartered in Canada, Shopify is a multinational company and one of the most preferred e-commerce platforms worldwide. Operating in over 175 countries and hosting more than 1,000,000 stores, Shopify offers you unique advantages to simplify the process of managing your e-commerce operations. Using Shopify's infrastructure, you can easily create your e-commerce store, list your products effortlessly, and sell them worldwide. With Shopify's infrastructure, you can collect payments quickly and securely and keep your customers' personal information safe. You can also carry out your shipping operations extremely quickly and complete every stage of the sales process as quickly and securely as possible.
How to Set Up an E-Commerce Site with Shopify?
To set up an e-commerce site with Shopify and begin the e-commerce management process, you first need to create a personalized account on shopify.com.
To create your account, you are first asked to enter your email address in the box you see on the screen. Then, you can click on the "Start Free Trial" button immediately to the right of the box and start the free trial period. During the free trial period, you can try Shopify services for 14 days without entering your credit card information. You are not allowed to make sales during this period. In other words, the free trial period is provided for you to learn the Shopify infrastructure and panel, preventing you from wasting time learning the system once you start paying.
When creating your account, you also need to enter your store name. Once you enter your store name, your e-commerce site's Shopify domain address is created, but it is very important to change this address later. The domain provided by Shopify will be in the format of yourstore.myshopify.com, and this address is certainly not sufficient for a prestigious e-commerce site. For this reason, purchasing a custom domain specific to your brand from any hosting company and linking your site to this domain after completion greatly contributes to your brand prestige.
You can also use Shopify Discount Codes to create coupons for customers that they can use at checkout, offering either a percentage or fixed discount. You can apply these coupons automatically site-wide or require customers to enter them during the payment step. Managing advertising campaigns through coupons is also quite easy. In the same panel, you can run campaigns such as "Buy 3 products, get 50% off 2 products!"
After specifying your store name, you will be asked to enter your company's legal address information. As one of the world's most trusted and prestigious companies, Shopify takes the fulfillment of sellers' legal obligations very seriously and verifies all the information you provide. Therefore, if you do not enter your company's legal address information completely and accurately, your store may not be allowed to make sales.
If you complete the steps up to this point smoothly and completely, you can access the user dashboard. The following tabs are located on the left side of the seller dashboard:
- Orders: Manage orders for your products
- Products: Listing products, pricing, and removing from the list
- Customers: Access customer information
- Analytics: Access analytics information related to your sales
- Discounts: Manage the discounts you offer.
On the right side of the panel, you will find the following tabs:
- Total Sales: Your total sales
- Total Sales Breakdown: Your canceled sales
- Total Sales by Channel: Total sales by sales channel
- Top Products: Your most popular products
- Activity: Your store's account activities
In the middle section of the page, there are buttons that allow you to view your sales, orders, and your store's current visitor count in real time.
This panel is one of the areas where Shopify users will spend the most time. The main panel, where you can monitor your site's visitors, the conversion rate of visits to sales, your sales, your profit, and your canceled sales, also helps you perform basic tasks such as entering product and price information.
How Much Does Shopify Cost?
Many users planning to sell with Shopify are seeking answers to questions like, "What is Shopify, and is it paid?" Since Shopify is a paid platform, you need to proceed to the payment section immediately after setting up your store. At this point, you are offered three different options. Shopify, which can serve businesses of all sizes, recommends the Basic Shopify package for a simple e-commerce site setup, the Shopify package for a site with advanced features, and the Advanced Shopify package for high-volume businesses.
The monthly fee for the Basic Shopify package is $29. This package also includes a 2% commission deduction from each sale. This package, which can be called the basic Shopify package, offers services such as easily creating your own e-commerce site through modules, payment security, and keeping user data safe. Basic Shopify also allows you to create two different user accounts. This means that a single store account can be managed from two different profiles.
The monthly fee for the Shopify option, which is the intermediate package, is $79. Only a 1% commission is charged on sales made with this package. The Shopify package provides you with various features that will help you increase your sales, in addition to all the capabilities and advantages of the basic package. Features such as gift card creation increase your chances of reaching more customers and making higher sales. The Shopify package also includes additional features that help you analyze your sales and develop strategies. The Shopify package, which professionally analyzes your store's visit and sales graphs and simplifies your management, also allows you to detect fraud attempts, taking your store security to the next level. The number of profiles that can be opened in the mid-level package is 5. In stores with the Shopify package, transactions can be carried out from 5 different profiles, and the permissions of these profiles can be expanded or reduced as desired.
The highest-level package offered by Shopify is Advanced Shopify. With a monthly fee of $299, this package, as can be easily understood, offers specialized services for high-budget commercial ventures. The commission on sales in the Advanced Shopify package is 0.5%. This package allows you to open 15 different administrator profiles and provides great convenience for companies with large operations teams. Providing maximum security and AI support for maximum efficiency, the Advanced Shopify package also enables you to deliver high-volume sales to customers as quickly as possible thanks to its advantages in the shipping process.
Additionally, if you have a budget of around $2,000 per month, you can also get a Shopify Plus package tailored specifically for you. Shopify's checkout page can only be customized via Liquid in Plus packages, and many large brands work with Plus.
Shopify user packages can be changed at any time. So, if you are new to the world of e-commerce and are starting out with a low budget and a small team, you can choose the Basic Shopify package first and then switch to the Shopify and Advanced Shopify packages as your profits increase and your sales grow. This way, you can meet your growing needs through Shopify and carry out all your operations without exceeding your budget.
How to Set Up Shopify?
After selecting your package and making your payment, you can proceed with the Shopify site setup process. The first step in this process is to complete the general settings and payment settings. To access the general settings, simply click on the "Settings" tab at the bottom of the left sidebar and then click on the "General" button on the page that opens. The general settings page includes time zone, unit system, weight unit, and currency settings. You need to select the time zone according to the time zone used in the country where you want to sell. This detail is important for your customers to see when their products will be shipped and to be able to track their shipments. It is also beneficial to determine the unit, weight, and currency details according to the country where you will be selling. This information also helps users understand the products and prices correctly. Setting up an e-commerce site is not just about publishing products and updating prices, but also about calculating shipping and tax costs correctly, which makes this step very important.
In the next step, you will be asked to click on the Payment Providers page and configure your payment provider settings. When you click on the Payment Providers button, a list of institutions that have agreements with Shopify will appear. From here, you can select the institution you work with and determine how you will receive your payments.
After selecting your payment providers, it's time to specify the details of the page where your customers make their payments. On this page, which you can access by clicking the Checkout button, you can specify details such as whether customers can pay without registering with the system and whether they will enter their email or phone number when making a payment.
The next step is shipping and delivery settings. In these settings, which you can access with the Shipping button, you are expected to enter the country and shipping information correctly. In the Tax settings section, you need to select the country where your company is based and the legal tax rate.
Finally, to reach more customers, you can choose your sales channel and make your products available for sale on platforms such as Facebook, Messenger, and blogs.
If you have completed all these steps, you can move on to selecting a theme and installing apps to make your site unique. The Shopify App Store is one of the resources you should explore to meet various needs.
How to Choose Shopify Themes?
One of the most enjoyable and exciting aspects of setting up an e-commerce site through Shopify is that the Shopify infrastructure allows you to create a unique site that fully reflects your style! To do this, simply click on the "Themes" option on the left side of the user panel and choose one of the hundreds of free themes available on the Shopify infrastructure! Shopify, which supports countless companies operating in many different fields such as fashion, technology, IT, food, and cosmetics, offers its users a large number of themes suitable for every sector. For this reason, finding an option among Shopify themes that suits your industry and corporate preferences is extremely simple. If you can't find the option you're looking for under this tab, or if you prefer a more unique theme, you can purchase a theme from sites such as themes.shopify.com or themeforest.com and integrate it into your Shopify-based site.
After selecting and installing your theme, you will be taken to the theme management panel. At the top of the panel, there are two buttons: "Home" and "Catalog." The Home tab helps you design the appearance of your site's home page. After clicking on the Home tab, you can use the buttons on the left side and make any settings you want for your home page appearance. With the "Header" tab at the top, you can select the "header" section of your site, i.e., the image that will appear at the top of the page, and with the "Image with Text Overlay" section, you can edit the image and text options in the slider section. By clicking on the Slideshow tab, you can upload images that will appear one after another on your site, and with the "Add Section" button, you can manage the extra sections you want to include on your homepage as you wish.
To manage the subpages of the site, i.e., the content other than the home page, you need to click the "Catalog" button located at the top right of the panel. By clicking this button, you can create as many subpages as you want. With this tab, you can open different pages for each product range and each product, design "About Us," "Our Vision," "Our Mission," "Our Philosophy," and "Contact" pages for your brand's promotional texts, and create a blog that will benefit your site's SEO efforts. By managing these options according to both your style and corporate needs, you can give your site a highly professional look. This way, you can create your own site without any software or coding knowledge and publish it instantly.
How to Connect a Domain to a Shopify-Powered Site?
Above, we mentioned that instead of setting up an e-commerce site through Shopify and going live with the myshopify.com domain name, it would be more prestigious to connect to a domain you purchase with your own brand name. Once your site is ready and live, you can easily complete this step. To do this, you just need to purchase the domain you want from a reliable hosting company and define your Shopify-powered website on the same company's servers. In other words, after completing the purchase of your domain, you can enter the address provided by Shopify (e.g., yourstore.myshopify.com) in the relevant section of the hosting company's website and link your address to your site. This will ensure that all visitors who click on the domain you purchased are directed to your website.
After completing all of the above steps, your e-commerce site is ready for sales! Good luck!
What Sets Shopify Apart from Other Platforms?
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, setting up an e-commerce site is an increasingly popular goal. For this reason, there are many new platforms serving those who want to enter the world of e-commerce. In other words, Shopify is not the only platform you can use to set up your own e-commerce site. Shopify has many competitors operating both in Turkey and globally. Therefore, you may wonder why you should choose Shopify when launching an e-commerce site. We have compiled the answers to this question for you.
Shopify is one of the oldest and most established e-commerce solution partners in the internet world. It has over 10 years of experience in the industry. With effective solutions for every problem and need you may encounter, Shopify is ideal for those who want to progress smoothly in the world of e-commerce.
Shopify, chosen by globally renowned internet phenomenon and fashion designer Kylie Jenner and American YouTuber Logan Paul, is a step ahead of its competitors thanks to its global scale and ability to easily reach anywhere in the world. Another advantage Shopify has over its competitors is that it has specialized solely in e-commerce solutions from its inception to the present day. Most companies that provide infrastructure and support for building websites generally operate in all types of websites, which means they cannot provide sufficient support for the specific needs of e-commerce. Shopify, which works exclusively in e-commerce, directly meets your needs by offering solutions for sales, marketing, shipping, payments, and payment collection on both a global and local scale.
With a robust support network, Shopify is always there for you with any questions or issues. Its fast support feature ensures your site never goes down, helping you achieve stability in your sales. Its powerful system also makes Shopify stand out among the most preferred infrastructure providers.
Shopify maximizes security for both store owners and customers. Strictly adhering to international trade and legal regulations, Shopify verifies all sellers' information, preventing malicious individuals from gaining unfair profits through customers. This makes stores with Shopify-powered websites more prestigious in the eyes of customers, thereby increasing your sales. Shopify also stores customer data with maximum security and stands out with its high-level measures against internet fraud and scams. The brand, which has become one of the symbols of secure shopping worldwide, owes its billions of dollars in revenue to these successful moves. Therefore, brands using the Shopify infrastructure can benefit from the brand's prestige and easily gain customer trust, even if they are not well-known.
One of the company's most important advantages is its low commission rates. Many sellers who offer their products on global marketplaces have to pay high commissions ranging from 5% to 30%. Shopify commissions, on the other hand, range from 0.5% to 2%. These figures are a significant advantage, especially for brands with high sales figures. When choosing a marketplace, the amount of commission paid increases as the number of sales increases, and it is inevitable that sellers will experience significant financial losses. Shopify, on the other hand, allows you to always increase your profits with its lower costs compared to all marketplaces, even when you include the monthly package fees.
Shopify is also an extremely useful platform for sellers who want to do dropshipping. Yes, you can do e-commerce using Shopify without holding any products or inventory! You can make agreements with suppliers through platforms such as Oberlo or Spocket and sell the products of your agreed supplier on your Shopify-based site. As orders come in, you can have your supplier ship them, allowing you to easily sell affordable products from anywhere in the world to another part of the globe with high profit margins!
Shopify also offers greater advantages than its global competitors with its shipping and POS integration benefits. A significant portion of companies operating worldwide may face issues when making payments to Turkey. Shopify, which has various solution partners in Turkey, allows you to seamlessly ship products worldwide and quickly receive payments from financial institutions operating in Turkey.
If you would like to join the Shopify family in Turkey, take advantage of our Shopify consulting services, and make profitable sales worldwide, please contact us immediately.
