0:03
Creating the navigation section on your store helps your customers find what they’re looking for faster. In this lesson, you’ll learn how to set up the navigation for your online store. In the navigation section, you’ll be able to create and edit all of the menus for your online store. This helps customers easily and efficiently get to the products or information that they’re looking for.
0:25
Let’s go into the online store section of the Shopify admin and start editing the navigation. Shopify makes it easy to change the navigation without the help of a developer. It’s recommended that you have three to four main header options to make it easy for customers to decide what they want to click.
0:45
We recommend adding “Home,” “Shop,” “About us” and “Contact us.” The header links offer visitors an easy way to get around to the most important parts of your website. If you add more than this, you’ll risk cluttering your online store and making navigation frustrating.
1:00
I don’t expect you to have all of your pages created and all of your products and collections finished at this point. We’re just getting started, but for the sake of demonstrating how this works, I have a few pages all setup and ready to go so I can show you how the navigation works. There are two types of default menus built into your Shopify store; the main menu and the footer.
1:21
Let’s create a main menu. First click on “Main menu.” The main menu should target the primary pages like your products and your about page. The main menu appears on every page of your online store. Each menu item can be turned into a drop-down menu to add subcategories. Subcategories can be useful if you have a large inventory of products.
1:45
By default, every main menu includes two menu items already built in. The first is titled “Home” which is your store’s home page. The second is titled “Catalog” for all of your products. This is the starting point and I’m going to show you how to change this. To create a new menu item, click “Add menu item.” Write in the name “About us” then choose a link.
2:10
When you click the link field, you’ll see options for what you can link to. You can link to an external website, an internal page you’ve already created, or an email address. In this case, I’m going to link to the “About Us” page. If you don’t want to link to anything, add the pound or hashtag sign.
2:30
Click “Add.” To edit a menu click “Edit” beside the title you want to adjust. For this example, we’re going to change “Catalog” to “Shop” and link to all products. Click “Apply changes.” To change the display order, click and hold the icon beside the menu item and drag it to a new position. Drop-down menus are used to organize your products collections or pages in the main menu of your online store.
2:59
For example, if you’re selling tea and accessories, you can get specific and have a menu for the different ways to buy teas, like loose leaf or in bags. Let’s create this together. Under “Shop” I’m going to create a drop-down menu. Click “Add menu item” Name it and link it to the product you want to sell.
3:21
Click “Add.” Now drag the item underneath the menu title you’d like it to be under. Click save. You’re done! Now go back to the navigation and complete the process with your footer. I’ll show you how to set this up in an upcoming lesson.
3:38
Setting up the navigation is a fundamental element of your online store. You’ll notice that we’ve set up your domain, pages, and navigation all before we’ve decided what your store actually looks like. These are the building blocks for your online store. And these pages and navigation systems are must haves. Like everything we’ve done today, your navigation can be changed. Your business will grow, and you’ll need to adapt.
4:02
Don’t feel like you’re committing to a big decision today. This is all about learning and getting comfortable with building your online store. In the next lesson, I’ll show you how to choose your theme, which helps you define the look and feel of your store.