Adding business settings for your store
Before you start setting up your Shopify store, you need to create a Shopify account and add business information for your store. You don't need to include every detail right away, but be sure to add the following items:
- Store name
- Legal business name and address
- Store time zone
- Default store currency
- Default weight unit
- Password to protect your online store
On this page
- Create your Shopify account
- Set or change your online store name and contact information
- Set or change your legal name and business address
- Set or change your store time zone
- Select a store currency
- Display multiple currencies
- Set or change your store's default weight unit
- Set or update your home page metadata
- Format your order IDs
- Choose a new myshopify.com domain name
- Next steps
Create your Shopify account
Create a Shopify account to start setting up your store. You'll need to enter a valid email address and a password.
During account creation, you're assigned an automatically-generated myshopify.com domain name, such as 1a2b3c4-5.myshopify.com. Your myshopify.com domain is unique to your store, and is used to log in to your Shopify admin and to identify your account. For example, third-party apps or services might ask for your myshopify.com as a Shopify account ID or account number to connect your account.
You can choose a new myshopify.com domain name one time only.
This domain name is also considered to be your store's primary domain by default, although you can buy a custom domain to replace your myshopify.com domain as the web address that customers use to visit your store.
Set or change your online store name and contact information
Your online store name is the name that's displayed on every page of your website. By default, your store name will be "My Store". You must add an active phone number for your business. Customers use this information to contact you with questions about your products and store.
Steps:
If your store uses Shopify Payments, then you also need to contact Shopify Support to change the business name on your Shopify Payments account. Otherwise, there's no limits to changing your store name and contact information. You can change them as often as you want, at any time.
Set or change your legal name and business address
Your legal name and business address displays on your bill. With the correct name and address listed on your Shopify bill, you might be able to claim Shopify as a business expense.
Steps:
If your store uses Shopify Payments, then you need to deactivate Shopify Payments before you can change your store's country in your Shopify admin.
Set or change your store time zone
Select a store currency
In the Store details settings page of your Shopify admin, you can choose which currency your store uses (for example, USD, EUR, CAD, AUD, JPY).
If you are using Shopify Payments as your credit card payment gateway, then you must change your currency by editing the bank account and currency settings used by Shopify Payments.
Steps:
Display multiple currencies
If you use Shopify Payments, then you can set up your store to sell in multiple currencies. Customers can browse your online store and checkout in their preferred local currency.
If you don't use Shopify Payments, then you can customize themes to include multiple currencies on your online store for display purposes only. Your customers can check out only in the currency that you set on your Store details settings page under the Store currency section.
Learn more about how to support multiple currencies in your theme.
Set or change your store's default weight unit
You can choose from the following default units of weight:
- Pounds (lb) - Imperial system
- Ounces (oz) - Imperial system
- Kilograms (kg) - Metric system
- Grams (g) - Metric system
Choose the weight unit that is most appropriate for your business. This is just the default value, and can be edited on a product-by-product basis later on.
Before choosing your default weight unit, you should choose your Unit system from the same screen.
Steps:
Set or update your home page metadata
Metadata, such as a page's title and meta description, is displayed in search engine results. It doesn't affect your chances of being listed by a search engine, but a good meta description can increase the likelihood that visitors will click through to your store. It's a great way to attract more traffic.
The title and meta description must be unique for each page, and must describe the content of that page. For every product, page, or blog in your Shopify admin, there's a search engine section where you can input the information as you want it to display on search engine results pages.
There is a 70 character limit for titles. Not all search engines will truncate after the character limit is reached, but most will truncate on a word, rather than in the middle of a word, to improve readability. Search engines list only about 140 characters of your meta description below your title tag, so keep it short.
You can view a preview of how your page displays as a search result on a Google result page.
Steps:
From your Shopify admin, go to Online Store > Preferences.
In the Title and meta description section, enter your home page metadata under Homepage title and Homepage meta description.
Click Save.
Learn more about adding keywords for SEO to your Shopify store.
Format your order IDs
By default, your first order ID is given the format #1001. Orders after that are incremented by 1 for each new order. You can't change the number that your orders begin at (1001), but you can customize the format of your order IDs by adding or editing an order ID prefix or suffix.
Add or edit an order ID prefix
You can delete the # in the Prefix field or replace it with any characters A-Z, 0-9, or symbols. You can replace it with multiple characters if desired.
Steps:
Add or edit an order ID suffix
You can delete the # in the Suffix field or replace it with any characters A-Z, 0-9, or symbols. You can replace it with multiple characters if desired.
Steps:
Choose a new myshopify.com domain name
When you sign up for Shopify, your default myshopify.com domain name is generated for you. This domain will always display in your web browser's address bar when you're in your Shopify admin, and is the default storefront address that displays to your customers.
If you want to emphasize your brand to customers browsing your store, then you have a few other options:
- You can buy and add a custom domain. When you use a custom domain as your primary domain, your
myshopify.comdomain name isn't displayed to customers, and is used only by you and your staff when logging into your Shopify admin. - You can choose a new
myshopify.comdomain name for free to display to customers, but you can do this only one time.
Steps:
- From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Domains.
- On the Domains page, click Change to a new myshopify.com domain next to your default domain name.
- Enter a new name, and then click Add domain.
The new myshopify.com domain will automatically be set as the new primary domain, and the previous myshopify.com domain automatically redirects to the new one. No additional URL redirects need to be created.
Next steps
After your business information is set up, it's time to start building your store.