Update: Oct 6, 2020. Shopify has been running 90 days Shopify free trial since March until Jun 1. The offer is now expired. However If you're a New York businesse and the owner of brick and mortar store, Shopify has the Shopify 90 Days free trial + other perks for you.
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Our lives have changed dramatically in the past few weeks (and months in some countries). The reason being the new enemy with the name “Covid-19” which has forced many countries to close their borders and people to stay home in quarantine. In this post, we’ll take a look at another angle of this disease. We’ll use this uncertain time as an opportunity to focus on learning new business/marketing skills and building a new Shopify store. When the disease goes away, you’ll be ready to launch your business.
Outlines
- From theory to practice mindset: learn by doing.
- Register for the Shopify 90-day free trial (while it’s still active)
- You have a store. Let’s start the learning process with Shopify
- Let’s learn Ecommerce website design from scratch
- Think on the long term investment: SEO
- Build your store with Shopify stores inspiration sources
- Engage with a community
- Finished the store? Ask for free feedback from experts and the community
- Wrapping up. It’s time to Act
Disclaimer: in this blog post you'll see some affiliate links. We'll get some commission if you signup with Shopify. By signup with our affiliate link, you support the PageFly editorial team to produce valuable and relevant content. We do appreciate it and thank you for your support.
From theory to practice mindset: learn by doing.
In our daily lives, we can easily access the Internet and the information we need - whether it’s paid or free. Just Google what you want to find and you’ll find plenty of resources about building the online store. If you prefer video content, the first thing that comes to mind is YouTube. A lot of “gurus” are popping up and with them comes a trap. That “trap” is falling in the hole of continuous learning and lack of actually doing.
So here is the thing to keep in mind: Divide your time between learning and practicing. To make the process effective you have to set goals - and actually reach them. When you have a clear goal, you’ll arrange your time more effectively and be able to list tasks in order of priority.
For example, your goal might be to build an online store using Shopify. The output of this goal will be a live store like this one.
The goal setting process is quite simple, but the question is how and what we need to do to achieve this goal? Fortunately, Shopify Academy has a dedicated online course about Goal Setting with Daymond John.
Side note: if you want to understand what Shopify Academy is, read the Shopify Academy review by our team.
Through the course you’ll learn the mindset and process of effective goal setting - taught by Daymond John. This course is very practical because it contains instructional guidance in a step by step manner. Prepare a pen and paper, so you can execute it.
As a result, you’ll have clear set goals. Now it’s prime time to take the first step of building your Shopify store.
Register for the Shopify 90-day free trial (while it’s still active)
Update: Today is June 2, 2020 and 90 Days Shopify Free Trial is over :(.
However, you can still build your own Shopify landing pages, for free with PageFly
Custom Landing Page Made Easy With PageFly
Fully Customizable. Full Access to All Templates and Features!
Completely Free/ No Trial.
Before Covid-19, Shopify offered a 14-day free trial for anyone to explore the platform and overcome the learning curve. To support new merchants with launching a new business, Shopify now offers a 90-day free trial. There is a challenge for you: within 90 days you need to learn about Shopify, marketing, and business from reputable sources (just keep reading, the list of sources is below) and build your brand and store.
There is no information as to when this Shopify Covid-19 initiative ends, so the recommendation here is to just register your Shopify store today. You just need an email and no credit card details are required.
You can pick the Shopify plan through this link https://www.shopify.com/pricing
It’s recommended that you register the store now, because as we mentioned earlier, it’s important to learn and practice right away. As a result, you’ll see a successfully registered store with information about the 3-month trial. I have just registered my store on April 1st and can show you that it’s still effective now.
You might be interested: Shopify Calculator - What's the Cost of a Shopify Store?
You have a store. Let’s start the learning process with Shopify
When I first started with Shopify in 2016, there was no Shopify Academy. The only resources available to learn about Shopify was the official Help Center and Shopify YouTube channel. However, nowadays Shopify has one more knowledge source: Shopify Academy. It has the online course Getting Started with Shopify. It’s free and you can access it easily with a free Shopify Partner account.
Learn more: How to make money with Shopify Partner Program through PageFly
The thing we like most is that the course has been created by experts who use practical tips and have traction in their own business careers.
Just a friendly reminder, when you do this course, execute the advice right away. You’ll forget a lot of the information if you don’t, so it’s best to implement the tips and practices on your own store as you go along.
List of ecommerce learning resources
If you know Shopify already, you can learn other skills in business and marketing. From our research we have found valuable ecommerce sources - many of which are free and some of which are paid.
We’ve seen many free courses available as well due to Covid-19, if you don’t see them in our list please reach us at happytohelp@pagefly.io We’ll update the list, so other business owners will know.
Shopify Academy
https://www.shopify.com/academy
Price: Free
PageFly Academy
Price: Free
Spocket Academy
Price: Free for the time being.
Oberlo 101
Price: 30 days free access by using the code at the checkout page LEARNFROMHOME
Now, we’ll go through some ecommerce blogs with valuable sources
CM Commerce
https://cm-commerce.com/category/academy/
Tidio
Shopify Guides
https://www.shopify.com/blog/topics/guides
SMSBump eBook Central
Get Started: Shopify 90-day free trial 2020: One of many great opportunities coming from Shopify COVID-19 response.
Let’s learn Ecommerce website design from scratch
The How to Design Your Online Store (with Zero Design Experience) course by Stephan Peralta shows you, step by step, the fundamentals of designing your eCommerce site. I have personally gone through this course from the beginning to end and highly recommend you check it out.
The author of this course is the founder of Sovi Creative agency - which provides Shopify Plus services. They are known as the organizers of the largest eCommerce community meetup in Toronto, Canada.
This course is essential. It teaches you the mindset of how to make the right eCommerce store. You’ll learn how to build your online brand, gain trust from your customers, grow sales and track your store performance.
Think on the long term investment: SEO
Since you’re building your Shopify store, it’s important to think about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) at the beginning. Why? It takes time for Google to index your store and have it indexed frequently. The earlier you start, the better your position in comparison to your competitors. I’m not talking about weeks, but rather months to get your first visitors from Google.
We have been experimenting with our own PageFly blog and below is one of our blog posts with some traction. The screenshot was taken from the Google Search console web app.
Back to the initial challenge, you already have a Shopify store and let’s say half of your Shopify 90-day free trial has passed. It’s time to learn SEO and execute it on your online store. We’ve found two reputable sources who reacted to the Covid-19 disease in favor of merchants.
Ahrefs Business Course is free
You can access to the course directly here https://ahrefs.com/academy/blogging-for-business
This is the Premium course which usually costs $799 for full access. Now it’s free.
Source: https://twitter.com/timsoulo/status/1240151594328621056
Moz Academy
Again, the premium content is free now :)
To access to the course visit directly this link https://academy.moz.com/
Use the code wegotthis to get a 100% discount. We have tested and it works like the image below.
In case you’re already a fan of Shopify Academy, you can find an SEO course for beginners on there as well. The simple course comes with keywords research, onsite and offsite SEO strategies, and more and is a quick and essential guide for optimizing your eCommerce store.
Access the course here https://www.shopify.com/academy/courses/seo
Get Started: Shopify 90 Day Free Trial 2020 Myth or reality?
Build your store with Shopify stores inspiration sources
Have you got some ideas in mind about how your store might look or do you need some more inspiration? To make something unique, you need to understand how brands look online. We’re assuming you’re just starting out and want to know what other entrepreneurs are doing, so we’ll take a look at some valuable resources for inspiration.
The first one is Shopify Independent Business - have a look here: https://www.shopify.com/independents
Side Note: Check our Shopify store examples list of 100+ stores for inspiration.
My Shopify Business Story playlist on Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlMkWQ65HlcFkZN5hnh9o__0QxcR4_xLq
Listen to the Shopify Masters Podcast
https://www.shopify.com/podcasts
Engage with a community
Start with the Shopify Forum
When it comes to building an online store, it’s challenging when you’re new and just getting started. So it’s a good approach to find like minded people like you and exchange ideas, ask questions and find answers. You can do that on the Shopify Community Forum.
You’ll be surprised how active the community is - and Shopify Support as well. Stuck with the Shopify app for email marketing for your store? No problem, just ask and the community will come to support you. The current traction includes more than 600,000 registered users and 650,000+ posts with over 1,200 users online 24 hours per day.
Join virtual Shopify meetups
You’re eager to learn new things from the local and global community, so here the virtual meetup comes in handy. Access it here https://meetups.shopify.com/
Join the Shopify Entrepreneurs group on Facebook
This group has over 100,000 members and is the largest Shopify community group on Facebook. The community is friendly and has been curated by Shopify Expert team Heycarson for years. The discussion here is very healthy and gives you plenty of insights that you can apply to your own Shopify store.
Finished the store? Ask for free feedback from experts and the community
It’s the prime time before launching your store. Even simple feedback is valuable and might prevent your customers from having a bad experience. For example, perhaps your contact us page doesn’t work, or the spelling grammar on your About Us page is wrong. A little feedback goes a long way and you can get it from the dedicated Shopify Community section called “Feedback On My Store”.
Wrapping up. It’s time to Act
We hope you’ve found this blog valuable and that it's put you in the right direction of building your own business during this tough time. The Covid-19 disease will definitely go away and quarantines will be removed. What will you do when life is back to normal? If you decide to build your business today, then by the time the restrictions are lifted, you’ll have loads more knowledge and an online store ready to launch.
Being an entrepreneur is challenging. If you are ready to overcome this challenge, then open your store today and invest in education while it’s free!
Bonus content:Holiday Season is here - make sure you're well-prepared to get a headstart to boost sales for your online store.
