If you are planning to start an online store, knowing how to design a Shopify website is one of the skills that you need to learn to succeed – especially if you’re starting with a limited budget.
With this skill alone, you’ll save hundreds to thousands of dollars by not hiring a designer and doing the Shopify store design yourself. And here’s the thing, using the Shopify ecommerce platform is not that difficult. It requires some getting used to, but you’ll get the hang of it if you commit.
Also, designing a Shopify store is a lot of fun because you get to learn new skills and feel more involved in launching your budding business. Seeing your store slowly see the light of the day as you build it will surely be a rewarding experience.
So if that sounds interesting to you, let’s begin!
Shopify Site Design: The Basics
There is a planning stage involved in your quest to design a Shopify website. And since it’s one of the most crucial parts of the process, we highly suggest spending as much time as necessary during this phase to minimize trials and errors in the future.
Here are the basic things that must be sorted out before you design a Shopify website.
Know The Purpose Of Your Website
A website should have a purpose. It could be a company profile, a landing page, as a website for personal branding, etc. For your particular need since you want a Shopify store, the main purpose of it is to sell your products online.
But in addition to that, your Shopify store design could have additional purposes as well. Such as if you want to design it for visual storytelling, or to elevate your brand by telling what goes behind every product you sell.
Web design is all about communicating your purpose to your audience. As such, take the time to sort out the purpose of your Shopify store other than just being a generic online store.
Look For Design Inspirations
Another important step in planning an online store is looking for inspiration from other existing ecommerce stores. They need not be in the same niche as yours as you can always tweak the web design to fit your brand.
The purpose of looking for inspirations for your online store is not to imitate other Shopify stores’ designs. Instead, it’s to see the possibilities in designing your own.
Source: Our Place
Each Shopify store is unique. Thus, you should strive to make your online store unique as well.
💡Check out this article if you want to see more Shopify store design inspirations.
Plan Your Shopify Website Structure
After looking for inspiration, the next step to designing a Shopify website is to plan the structure of your website. By planning the structure, you identify what types of pages will be included in your online store, what will be the content of these pages, and how these pages will be arranged.
Moreover, you need to plan the user interface of your website or how it will look when it’s live. This does not have to be a high-level simulation. Instead, it could be a simple draft on a sketch pad just to serve as a guideline for when you’re designing using the Shopify theme editor.
Read more: Shopify Custom Design: A Comprehensive Guide for Creating Your Unique Store
Source: UIzard
By having a visual reference on how your store will look, you’ll have an easier time in the web design process because you won’t be guessing where individual elements will go.
Create A Branding Guide
While looking for Shopify store inspirations, have you noticed that the pages on those sites look consistent with one another?
That’s because those ecommerce stores follow a branding guide that makes their designs more consistent and uniform.
A branding guide highlights the essential elements of a website, including:
- Font styles, sizes, and colors
- Heading styles
- Color palette for backgrounds, main content, and other elements
- Tone of voice
- Lines
- Shapes
- Imagery
With a clear direction in your Shopify store design, you’ll create an online store that’s consistent on every page. This contributes to a satisfying shopping experience that could make your audience want to return.
Design A Shopify Website: Getting Started
Now that you’re done with the planning stage, you’re ready to design a Shopify website for your business. The steps indicated here are the general steps needed for designing the store itself. After that, we’ll link you to our other articles which discuss these steps in depth.
Are you ready for your very first web design project? Let’s begin.
Sign Up For A Shopify Account
The very first thing that you need to do to get started with the Shopify platform is to sign up for an account.
Shopify has four (4) distinct subscription plans for your ecommerce business. You only have to choose which plan suits your Shopify store best considering the current stage of your business.
Source: Shopify
When you choose a plan, you can either opt for a monthly payment. But since we’re talking long-term, we highly suggest going for the annual plan which gives great discounts on your subscriptions.
Let’s discuss these plans briefly.
Basic Shopify
- Monthly pricing: $39 per month
- Annual pricing: $348 per year (equivalent to $29 per month)
The Basic Shopify plan is for new merchants who want to establish an online store for a few products that they currently have. This store is also best for those who are only selling in a specific country and some occasional cross-border customers.
Being a basic plan, this one is the easiest to set up because it has fewer features compared to higher plans. But that’s not to say that the Basic plan is incapable of handling an online store. It is more than capable. And being the cheapest one in Shopify’s subscription, it is also the most popular among merchants.
If you have zero knowledge of setting up an online store, this plan is best suited for you.
Shopify
- Monthly pricing: $105 per month
- Annual pricing: $948 per year (equivalent to $79 per month)
The Shopify plan (yes, this plan is named Shopify) is best for growing businesses that attract more monthly visitors, carry more products, and process more orders from various locations.
If you are creating an online store for your business that is already popular in some channels such as in social media, and you anticipate quite a huge volume of daily visitors, then this plan could be the best one for you.
Advanced Shopify
- Monthly pricing: $399 per month
- Annual pricing: $3588 per year (equivalent to $299 per month)
The Advanced Shopify plan is for medium to large enterprises such as those that are in B2B or wholesale business. Moreover, the Advanced plan is best suited for businesses that employ a team (rather than a one-man team, which is common among startups in the Basic plan).
It is also worth noting that the Advanced plan charges a smaller transaction fee compared to the Shopify plan for each sale that you make. Similarly, the Shopify plan charges lower transaction fees compared to the Basic plan.
Thus, if you estimate to generate high sales per month, using a high-tier Shopify subscription plan could help you save more of your profits by paying less transaction fees.
Shopify Plus
- Pricing: Starts at $2300 per month
Lastly, the Shopify Plus plan is the crème de la crème of all the Shopify plans primarily because it consists of everything that Shopify has to offer. With the Plus plan, you can manage several storefronts that are unique from each other depending on which country they are displayed in.
The Shopify Plus plan is great for enterprise-scale merchants that serve hundreds of local and international customers per day. Or those that have multiple physical stores, storage houses, and points of sale alongside their online store.
Usually, merchants who are using the Shopify, Advanced, and Plus plans no longer design their stores, and instead they hire expert Shopify developers to design for them to maximize the technical features of Shopify.
Needless to say, if you plan to design a Shopify website for your startup business idea, the Shopify Plus and the Advanced Shopify plans are not for you.
Connect Your Domain (Or Buy One)
Every ecommerce site (and every website for that matter) needs to have a domain name before they can be published. Thus, before launching your online store, you must have connected your domain with it.
If you’ve already chosen a Shopify plan, here’s how you can buy (or connect) a domain:
- In your Shopify admin, click Settings in the lower-left corner of your dashboard
- In the settings menu, select Domains
- Within the Domains menu, you can either select Connect existing domain or Buy new domain
- If you’ve already bought a domain outside of Shopify, select Connect existing domain
- If you want to buy a new domain from Shopify, select Buy new domain
- Type the domain name that you want and click Buy so you can use it in your online store.
Get Started With The Shopify Theme Editor
The actual first step to design a Shopify website starts as soon as you land the Shopify theme editor. This is where you can tweak the physical elements of your store.
But before you can effectively design your Shopify store, you need to know how the Shopify theme editor works. It can be a bit overwhelming, especially for beginners. But trust us, it is the most uncomplicated online store builder you’ll find out there.
You just need to take some time to learn it. Luckily, we’ve already written an article that discusses the Shopify theme editor in great detail.
Or if you want a visual guide to building a Shopify store, watch this video:
Shopify Store Design Tips
After exploring the Shopify theme editor and familiarizing how it works, you’re now ready to design a Shopify website.
For that, we have a few extra tips for you to achieve a professional online store that can attract visitors and convert them into lifetime customers.
Choose The Right Shopify Theme
Do you want to have an easier time designing your Shopify store? Then, we highly suggest starting with a well-built, well-designed theme right off the bat. Consider checking the Blum theme if you want an affordable theme that suits your Shopify store.
Otherwise, you can visit the Shopify theme store to find more than 200 Shopify themes for your ecommerce business.
But if you’re not yet ready to pay for a Shopify theme, you’ll be happy to know that you can use and explore free themes that are also well-built and well-designed so you still get a cool online store.
Watch this video to learn more about free Shopify themes.
Get These Stunning FREE Themes for Your Shopify Store | A Brutally Honest Review (2024)
Choose The Right Elements
Remember the branding guide we mentioned above? It’s important to have it handy when starting to design a Shopify website.
When creating a branding guide, make sure to choose the right elements such as fonts, colors, and shapes that could help establish a harmonious design that will make your brand stand out.
Don’t Overdo It
We know that you want to create a beautiful online store. However, you should know that there’s also such a thing as an over-designed store that is no longer visually pleasing.
Thus, when creating a store, aim for a balanced look that isn’t over-stimulating to the eyes. Otherwise, your potential customers could be distracted by it.
Take Search Engine Optimization Into Account
Search engine optimization or SEO is an important aspect of every website, more so with an ecommerce business owner who wants to attract as many potential customers as possible.
SEO is a good long-term strategy that will complement your marketing efforts to maximize your online store. If you’re not an expert in SEO, you could start by reading this Shopify SEO checklist to get the idea.
Choose Convenient Payments
Payments are more structural rather than visual elements. However, it’s worth noting that when creating a Shopify store, you should take into consideration which payment method is most convenient for your audience.
That’s because the available payment methods in your online store are one of the factors that could convince your potential customers to buy from you.
Luckily, if you’re in the United States, you can simply activate Shopify Payments and all major payments will be available in your store.
Seek Feedback About Your Design
After designing your ecommerce site, it is ready for publishing.
But before that, go the extra mile to seek feedback about your design. This could help you improve your Shopify store design even further.
Unfamiliar eyes can help you spot errors or design flaws in your store that you haven’t noticed yourself. You could ask your family and friends to check your website for you and hear their constructive feedback and opinions on how your online store can be improved.
Use Design Apps
The Shopify theme editor has its limitations in terms of design. And if you’re looking to implement a more advanced Shopify store design, you might find it lacking.
Fortunately, some Shopify apps could help you implement better designs for your online store. For that, we highly recommend PageFly – Shopify’s most popular landing page builder.
Use PageFly To Achieve Better Shopify Website Design
PageFly is the most popular landing page builder in the platform that could help you design a Shopify website that’s truly unique.
Having been able to garner a 4.9 out of 5 ranking from more than 10,000 reviews is no easy feat. And that’s why this is a testament to PageFly’s capabilities in helping online store owners create stunning and unique websites.
Check out these online stores to see how PageFly helped them with their designs:
#1: The Great Coffee Project
www.thegreatcoffeeproject.com
#2: H3R Performance
www.h3rperformance.com
#3: Cats With Their Tongues Out
www.catswiththeirtonguesout.com
Conclusion
There you have it, you now know all the important things in designing a Shopify website. If you apply all the things you’ve learned in this article throughout the process of creating your online store, you’ll surely be able to create a unique one for your brand.
Remember the tips we’ve provided to help you along the way and make sure to visit the other help articles we’ve linked to this article to ensure a smooth experience in creating your Shopify website.
After that, you can start selling and growing your brand. Best of luck to your business!
