Setting up your store

Depending on how many products you plan to offer, adding and organizing your product listings can be the most time-consuming step of setting up a Shopify store. Organizing your store is worth the work, though: a well organized store is easier for your customers to use, helping them to find the products they want quickly.

Add more products to your store

The process for adding more products to your store is the same as adding your first one.

Steps:

  1. From your Shopify admin, click Products to go to the Products page.
  2. From the Products page, click Add product.
  3. Enter a title for your product, along with additional details. Product details change the way your products display to customers. They also make it easier for you to organize your products, and they help customers to find what you are selling. In addition to product titles, some product details you might want to enter include product descriptions, images, prices, shipping details, weight, and more.
  4. Click Save.

Organize your products

You can create product collections to organize your products, making them easier for your customers to find. For example, you can create the following kinds of collections:

  • clothes for men, women, or children
  • items of a certain type, such as lamps, cushions, or rugs
  • items on sale
  • items in a certain size or color
  • seasonal products, such as holiday cards and decorations.

Steps:

  1. From the Collections page, click Create collection.
  2. Enter a Title and Description for the collection.
  3. Choose the sales channels for your collection by completing the following steps:
    1. In the Publishing section, click Manage.
    2. In the dialog box, select or deselect your sales channels. Examples of sales channels include your Shopify online store, Shopify POS, Messenger, Linkpop, Buy Button, and others.
    3. Click Done.
  4. Choose whether products will be added to the collection manually or automatically. You won't be able to change the collection type later.
  5. If you choose Automated, then add the selection criteria under Conditions. Read more about conditions for collections.
  6. Click Save.
  7. If you are creating a manual collection, then you will be able to add products. Make sure you click Save after adding products. You can add the same product to any number of different collections.
  8. If you are creating an automatic collection, then products matching your conditions will automatically be added. Choose a sort order from the drop-down menu, then click Save.

Add "About us" and "Contact us" information pages to your store

If you have information that you want your customers to know about that won't change often, for example, details about your organization or the contact information for your store, then you can create pages for your store to give that content a permanent location.

Steps:

  1. From your Shopify admin, go to Online Store > Pages.
  2. Click Add page. You will be taken to a new webpage editor.
  3. In the webpage editor, enter a Title and Content in the text boxes provided.
    • Be descriptive and clear when choosing your webpage title. The webpage title is displayed in the tab or title bar of browsers. It is also used as the title in search engine results. Learn more about website SEO.
  4. In the Visibility field, you can choose whether you want your webpage to be published or not. By default, your new webpage will be visible when you click Save. Select the Hidden option if you want your new webpage to be hidden from your online store, or click Set visibility date to control when your webpage is published.
  5. Click Save.

You need a menu and links to help your customers to explore your store. By default, the main menu contains links to the Home page and the Catalog page, and the footer menu contains a link to the Search page.

Steps:

  1. From your Shopify admin, go to Online Store > Navigation.
  2. On the Navigation page, click the name of the menu that you want to edit.
  3. Click Add menu item.
  4. A new menu item displays with two new fields. In the Name field, enter the name of the link you want to add. This name displays in the menu.
  5. In the Link field, select a link type:
    • Home page links to your online store's home page.
    • Collections links to all collections or a specific collection.
    • Products links to all products or a specific product.
    • Pages links to a specific webpage on your online store.
    • Blogs links to a blog on your online store.
    • Blog posts links to a specific blog post on your online store.
    • Search links to a search page for your online store.
    • Policies links to a policy page on your online store.
    • If you select Collections, Products, Pages, Blogs, Blog posts, or Policies, then a drop-down menu displays. You can use this drop-down menu to select the specific destination that you want to add to the navigation.
  6. Click Save menu.

Next steps

After you finish setting up your store, it's time to choose your store management settings.

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