In this video, I am going to both review Shopify and set up a store from scratch. I have never used Shopify before so this is going to be an honest review. A ton of my friends has told me that Shopify is better than other platforms and I believe them based on the research I have done. The current store I am using is Volusion which I do not highly recommend. Other people talk about Bigcommerce, but overall everybody recommends Shopify. So, I am actually going to set up a store for my mom today and I am going to use my own affiliate link. If you use my affiliate link, I will help you set up your own store. I will give you a free consultation. The address of my link is effectiveecommerce.com/Shopify. This will redirect you to the affiliate link.

Now that we are here, we are going to go ahead and start the free trial. The first thing we have to do is put in an email address. I am going to go ahead and use my mom’s email address, make up a password and a store name. The name is going to be Asana Yoga Pants because we are going to be selling yoga pants and yoga wear. So, you just create your store (Screen message: “Sit tight, we’re creating your store!”). It looks like it is taking a little bit of time here. All right. Success! From here it is just setting up everything. I am going to fast-forward through a lot of this for your sake. All right. It looks like we are actually in the thick of things here. All right. Our trial just started. It is not necessary to select a plan yet. There is a little more that – All right. What kind of products are we going to sell? We are going to sell fashion and apparel probably. So we need to add a product that looks nice and easy. The title of this product we are going to sell. Today, we are just going to list one product which is going to be high waisted yoga pants. Description – I am just going to do a quick description. Oh, it looks like we should add a heading. “1” probably is my guess. I do not know how this works so let’s say “High-waisted yoga pants. These are the best yoga pants in the world and they come in 22 colors. They are made from an awesome cotton, an awesome breathable cotton. All right. So, now I have to upload an image. Now, since my other site is bdancewear.com and we sell dance clothing, basically I am going to use the same images. (Music plays while Travis makes various moves on screen.) All right. So I am going to add the photo and I went ahead and put it on my desktop to make things easier. We are just going to have one photo for right now and let’s say the price is going to be $49 99 for the SKU. I am going to call this – I do not know what the best practice is – I am going to call them “high waist yoga pants.” I am going to choose “Do not track inventory” for now. I will enter all of this kind of stuff later.

I am curious maybe I will add one variant just to show you guys. Well, yes, I obviously I am assuming this goes like small – oh, yeah look at that. It is medium and large. I am going to go back later and change those and add another optional color. I think I am going to do royal and maybe blue or red. Maybe, oh, that is cool. So, I created all the different SKUs for me there. All right. Go ahead and click “Save Product” for now.

Reorder variance – so I am going to say this. I think if I click on these, maybe update images. Now, I am curious what happens if I add an image. Let’s say if I were to add another one that is in red. So, I am going to update images. So, I have got red ones right there. It looks like it is saved already. I probably should have renamed that to “yoga pants,” but that is okay for now.

We have “collections.” I am not sure what “collections” are. It probably means category pages, product type, maybe high-waisted yoga pants – collections. Okay, I am not sure what that does and not sure what the tags do either. So I am just going to save this. So, let’s see what happens. We got transfers inventory collections trial just started.

Now I am going to try to see what the home page looks like – products, orders, hmm, not sure how to see my store. Let’s look down here. That is the – oh, that is just to get me back here. So, maybe if I get rid of the admin part. All right. So, it still does not have a store yet, an online store. Now, I need to select a free theme. I am going to go with, I might just go, hmm this one looks kind of nice. I think I am going to try this theme. Simple. Let’s see if we can view it in this theme. That would be my product right there. Look at those other different sizes. Let’s see what happens if I change the color to red? Oh, that is cool, that is cool. I do not like that it has both these pictures here but I am sure there is a way to get rid of it.

So, it looks like I can add an “About Us” page later that picture a pretty big. I do not know if I need it that big. I am sure if there is a way to shrink it down a little bit. I mean it is so big that it is below the fold. I do not love that but it is okay. Let’s look here. So, I am just going to go out and publish this for now. Hope that is not the wrong one. No, okay. View this theme. Rename and edit. So, I can edit some of the HTML CSS which I like a tat language. Download theme,  file duplicate. Cool. All right. So, it looks like my store is lie more or less in just about under 10 minutes. I think the next step would be making it so that I can actually get paid. Right now I am assuming see if I click on this “Add to cart”- It is kind of neat. My cart checkout – so, there is the Paypal checkout so check out oops! Only one wrong checkout system is able – You must choose a plan and enter credit card details before checkout is enabled. I cannot actually sell things until I create a plan which, you know, I can do that. All right. I am going to go ahead and just add payment and make this store live because, like you saw in the last part, it does not work unless you actually set it up. So, it is going to probably need settings. I am going to go with payments complete. Shopify payments account – set up a nonprofit business. We are not a nonprofit. We are an individual sole proprietorship. Estimates of your average order. I would say it is probably one item that ranges probably closer to that. To be quite honest, yoga pants – I do not have one of those right now for this business so I am going to go ahead and skip this. I need to find out all this information actually because I do not know all of this. I am not going to show this part for confidentiality reasons but basically – I mean you know this is pretty straight forward. Enter this information in for the routing number and account number. So, the next page you see will be after I enter this information and complete the account setup. All right.

So, that was it. We can actually receive payments now. I think that we can test it right now but I think that I still need to pick a plan otherwise it is not going to work. Yeah, online store sales channels see – general oh maybe account down here. It says account status active. Add your credit card. So, maybe I do need to pick a shopping flat plan. All right. It looks like that is probably the last step.

Well, am going to go ahead and pick a plan now then I guess. Obviously, I am going to fast forward through this information but this looks pretty straight forward here. After you confirm, it looks like it brings you here. It says I might just need to select the plan so I will go ahead and just do that right now. I have recommended just doing the basic, I mean unless you are selling a lot of stuff right out the gate. Let’s go ahead and click “Choose this plan basic.” I am just going to do once a month for now so let’s check it out. Again, it gave me the URL somewhere. No, it is down here. Maybe not. I do not remember where the URL is actually on store overview – unlock your store. I am not going to password protect it on the home page title so this is actually really important but for now I am just going to go “Yoga pants” and Yoga Clothes by Asana” and then I would say something like a “yoga pants in a hundred plus colors.” “Other types of clothes also” and “Made in the USA” I should really try to fill us up 260 and really try to fill that one up to 70 but for now I am not going to do that. Google Analytics is super important. I will show in another video how to add the Google Analytics to password protect your store. Let’s go ahead and click “Save.” All right.

So, online stores, I do not really see home. I can add a custom domain. I will show in the next video how to do that but I think for the most part the site is ready to go. Let’s see. It was Asana Yoga Pants.MyShopify.com. I wonder what happens if I click “Checkout.” Now it looks like it is good. It looks like I could check out if I wanted to right from there and I am just going to put this over here.

So, yeah my store is live. I mean from scratch that literally was the first time I have ever used Shopify. It took me, you know, 15 minutes or so to do. It is a pretty cool platform. I have got to say I am convinced I do not know if I am going to move my other store over to Shopify just yet because that is a lot of work. It is going to cost a lot of money but that is it. I am going o show videos on how to do some of the finishing touches on pretty much everything for my store. I am moving forward.

That is it or this video, guys. Thanks. If you liked this video, make sure you click the “Like” button. Subscribe and like I said at the beginning of the video, if you go to effectiveecommerce.com/Shopify or click the link up there or the link down below in the “Show Notes.” Use my affiliate link and I will help you set up the store, give you a free consulting session. So, I highly recommend doing that. It does not cost you anything.

So guys, thank you for watching this video. I really appreciate it.