if you're looking to build your first online store using Shopify but you don't know where or how to start then you clicked on the Right video this 10 minute guide will walk you through all the necessary steps to build your Shopify store from complete scratch the first step is signing up for Shopify in the description of this video you'll find a special sign up link that will enable you to extend your trial for an additional three months so make sure you use that link to save some money signing up is really easy just follow the prompts until you get to your Shopify dashboard once here the first thing we're going to do is choose the theme for your store so let's click on online store and go to themes by default the dawn theme is already installed on your store if you want to choose a different theme just scroll down and click on visit theme store here you can find many themes to choose from for this store I'm gonna stick with the dawn theme which is already installed now we're gonna start customizing your store so let's click on customize this will take us into the store editor let's first add a nice Banner image to our home page click on image Banner and then simply upload your image here now let's also change the tagline simply click on the text and change it here to add our custom logo we're going to go to the theme settings and under logo we're going to Simply upload our logo once that's done it will be displayed on the left side of the header you can also go through the color and typography settings if you want to use your own brand colors and fonts on your store now to add products to your Shopify store we're going to have to go back to our dashboard so let's save our changes and click on exit then let's go to products if you are Drop Shipping your products from places like AliExpress or printful you can simply import your products directly from those platforms you'll find a step-by-step tutorial on how to import products in the video description if you're selling your own products simply click on add your products here we can enter all of the relevant details like the product name and a short description if you need some help coming up with a good description I recommend using the new AI writing assistant which will automatically write your product description for you based on a few keywords and then we want to make sure to add some high quality images that show our product in the best light here we can set the price for the product then if you want to use Shopify to track your inventory make sure to set the quantities you currently have in stock if you have multiple colors or sizes for this product you can set them up down here under variants once everything is filled out click on save to add this product to the store now you can repeat the same process until all of your products are added creating collections is a great way to categorize your products and keep everything organized so let's head over to collections and set up our first collection because I'm building a clothing store I will create a collection for hoodies and I will set the collection type to manual so I can manually add my products to this collection we also want to add a Collection image and then click save and now under products we can add the relevant products to this new collection now that we have added a few products and collections it's time to spend some more time customizing our store pages so let's go to online store and click on customize and that will take us back to the Shopify editor when we scroll down we can see that there's already a featured collection set up on the home page let's delete this one by clicking on the trash icon and then let's click on ADD section on the left and choose the collection list here we can Now display some of the collections that we have created before so for my store I'm going to Simply add the hoodies collection the t-shirts collection and the shorts collection to add more contents to your home page simply click on ADD section and select the section you need you can also switch to other pages on your store and customize them the exact same way to customize the navigation menu at the top of the website will have to go back to the dashboard again then go to online store and click on navigation under menus we're going to go to the main menu and then here we can add new menu items like for example a specific collection and we can also create sub menus like for a clothing store for example it would make sense to have a men's and a women's collection and then add all of the different types of clothing as a sub menu to check out how our new menu looks like we can go back to the editor and we should be able to see the changes we've made another thing we definitely want to put on our store are the policies like the refund policy the shipping policy terms of service and so on and Shopify makes it really easy to set those up all you have to do is go to the settings on the bottom left then scroll down and go to policies here we can simply create our policies from the Shopify templates by clicking on create from template now before you save these make sure you read through your policies and customize them to your specific store details also don't forget to add your shipping policy and contact information as well and now we're going to add these policies to the footer menu of our store so let's close the settings and go back to online store navigation now click on footer menu and here we can add all of our store policies now let's go back to the store editor and scroll all the way to the bottom then click on the small drop down arrow next to the footer and let's add a new block and choose the menu block and now we have the footer menu at the bottom of our store before launching our new store we're gonna have to set up our payment processors so that customers can actually check out and complete the payment so in the dashboard let's go to settings on the bottom left then go to payments here click on activate Shopify payments and fill out all the details to complete this process this will enable customers on your store to choose between many different payment methods like credit card Apple pay shop pay and more by default customers will also be able to check out using PayPal you can deactivate PayPal checkout if you want to but usually that decreases the conversion rate on your store so I would just leave it turned on we also want to make sure to set up our shipping rates so let's go to shipping and delivery here we can set up different shipping rates based on the regions we're shipping our products to and we can also add a dynamic shipping rate based on the weight or the price of the product if you have imported your product from a third-party supplier then there might already be a shipping profile set up for those imported products before we launch our new store there's a few more settings we want to look at under restore details make sure everything is filled out like the store name store email billing information and also the store currency if you need to collect taxes for specific regions you can set those up under taxes and duties under a brand you can upload your logo and add your brand colors to make sure your store brand is congruent on all different platforms and the final thing we want to do is set up our custom domain which is going to be the URL address of our website so let's go to domains and if you already have your domain you can click on connect existing domain and follow the instructions but if you don't have a domain yet you want to click on buy new domain then type in the domain you want to buy this will most likely be your store name and if it's available you can buy it right here through Shopify and when that's done it will be automatically connected to your new store now before we go live and launch our new store we're gonna have to pick a Shopify plan so let's go to online store and click on pick a plan let's choose the basic plan then choose the billing cycle and fill in all the necessary information and confirm and now under online store we can remove the password so that our Shopify store is now open to our customers