Papua New Guinea Guide to Creating an Online Shop using Shopify

Shopify is a complete ecommerce solution that allows you to set up an online store to sell your goods. It lets you organize your products, customize your storefront, accept credit card payments, track and respond to orders — all with a few clicks of the mouse. There are many other ecommerce solutions to choose among, but I would recommend Shopify simply because it is easier to manage, they have 24/7 help online, cheaper to run and have the best themes for you to use and design your store the way you dreamed of.

Based on my own experience with shopify and how I started to understand and build my own ecommerce site, I will take you through the process to create an online store within few minutes.

1. Click on Shopify here

Click on the link or type; http://www.shopify.com which will take you to the shopify site. Something similar to the screenshot below.

2.   Enter your email address

Enter a Valid email address and click on the Get started button, as shown above. This will take you to a page similar to the screenshot attached below.

You will have to enter a secret password plus a name for the Store you have in mind. I have chosen Bilum Market as my store because I wanted to sell bilums on my online store. The store you create must be inline with the product you intend to sell.

After all those things are ready and entered, you can now click on the Create your store, button as shown above.

3.   Your Story

This is basically your own story, the products you intend to sell, the target markets and other things they need to know before helping you set up your online store. They will ask whether you are selling the products offline, or you are just starting up. They will want to know how much is your revenue if you’re already selling.

Those information are not that critical, so you will be able to choose from the drop-down answers they already have it ready for you. All you have to do is click on those answers.

Click on next, and you will come to the next page as shown below

Enter all the information as requested above, including your address, your full name, and your business name if you have already registered your business with the IPA. If you haven’t registered your business yet, you can still create your online store and later proceed to have your business registered with IPA.

After entering all the information as requested above, click on Enter my store button as show above on the screen shot.

Finally, your will be redirected to your store home page as shown below.

This is where all magic happens. Using this admin page, you will be able to set up your payment gateways, upload your products, design your home page and many more. You will be on a trial account for 14 days until you select a plan which will cost you as low as $29 per month.

This is basically the first phrase of creating an online store using Shopify. I will be writing few more blogs on how to set up a payment gateway, taxes, shipping and other information to customise and have your online shop up and running.

You can also hire shopify experts or other people who are familiar with creating an online shop if you cannot, but I would recommend for your to play around and have a try for yourself. Like myself, I never had a single idea on how to create a shopify store, but after several days and weeks of trying it out, I can confidently create a simple online shop within few hours.

Creating an online shop may not be complicated after all, if you a determined and willing to learn and teach yourself.

I hope this simple guide will help you to start creating a trial shopify account for yourself.

Thank you and all the best in creating your online shops using Shopify.

See link below is a sample I created using the extract process I mentioned above.

Link to Sample Online Shop