0:03
In this lesson, you’ll learn the fundamentals of how to edit your online store. If you haven’t designed a website before, that’s no problem. Shopify makes it easy to create your website without technical knowledge. Now before we get started, I want to caution you on something. The truth is you can spend hours and hours customizing your store and trying to make it look absolutely perfect.
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What you want to focus on is getting the fundamentals right, so you can launch. There’s a saying that you may have heard before “done is better than perfect” and as a new mom I’m learning this more and more every day. You don’t need your online store to be perfect. You just need it to be good enough to launch.
0:42
You’ll have time to make improvements later. Now let’s get started! Right now, we’ll customize the Maker theme. Click “Customize” to launch the online store editor. When editing your store I recommend starting at the top and working your way down so you don’t miss anything.
1:01
Remember to click save at the top right corner after you’ve made edits. If you navigate to another page without clicking save you may lose your changes. The order and availability of each section may vary by theme. First let’s click on the announcement section.
1:18
An announcement bar is a marketing opportunity to display information like free shipping, a sale or promotion. Let’s add in some information about a grand opening sale. Under the header section, you can change your logo and your navigation.
1:37
Let’s upload a logo now and customize the logo size. If you don’t have a logo yet, you can use the Shopify’s free logo maker which I’ve linked below. In the menu section, the theme will default to showing you the menus you’ve previously created.
1:54
Here you’ll see the main menu with the dropdown we created before. The online store editor pulls in the names of the menus but in order to edit them or add a new menu you’ll be brought back to the navigation section of your admin. We’re going to edit the section “Image with text.” This section has the main image of our website.
2:15
The image you choose to show here is the first interaction your customer will have with your business. So either create or find an image that can sell your product and strengthen your brand. Remember that you can find free images on Burst, Shopify’s free stock photography website.
2:33
Simply click “Change” then “Free images” and find the right image for your business. Ideally if you have people in your photography you want the image to reflect the likeness of your ideal customer. For me I’m thinking about tea lovers so I’ll search Burst to see what’s there.
2:50
The text should either be something that evokes a feeling of your brand or promotes a specific collection or a sale that you’re having. Don’t be afraid to get creative here. Also you will want to add image Alt text to the photograph
3:06
This helps the photo be discovered in search engines and it makes it accessible for the visually impaired. After adding the text you’ll want to have a call to action to encourage visitors to click. Examples of call to action include: learn more, buy now, or shop the collection. Click save.
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I don’t want a slide show on my store right now so I can click the eye button to hide it. The featured collection makes it easy for me to show one collection of products that I really want people to see. Click “Select collection” and pick the collection you want to show on your home page.
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If you don’t have a collection created yet you can select “Create collection” and you’ll be redirected to the collection section. Continue going down each section of the online editor, filling out information and adding images or videos.
4:01
You can also rearrange sections by clicking on the six dots and dragging sections of the site where you want them to go. There’s also an option to add new sections to your store. I want to showcase my best-selling product. So I’m going to add a featured product.
4:18
I can also drag it up to showcase it at the top. It’s easy to make this theme feel customized to my business. Another area where you can make even more customizations is themed settings. Theme settings is where you can make changes to colors, typography, as well as other items like social media links, pop-ups and checkout.
4:40
There’s a lesson dedicated to checkout coming up soon in this course. Once you’ve made the edits to your online store, click save. Your store will continue to evolve as your business grows. If you’re using a Shopify-made theme you can reach out to Shopify support any time, any day.
4:57
If you’re using a paid theme developed by a Shopify partner, you’ll have to reach out to them directly. Their contact information is on the theme’s page in the theme store. They’ll have documentation and contact information in case you need more help making customizations. The last part of setting up your online store is an important one.
5:16
Let’s jump into Preferences in the next lesson.