Shopify Store - Initial Setup
· Online store name
· Change your account email address
· Change your customer email address
· Customer email best practices
· Legal business name and address
· Store timezone
· Select store currency
· Displaying multiple currencies
· Default weight Unit
· Home page metadata
· Password-protect your storefront
· Remove your storefront password
· Format your order IDs
1 .Online store name
Your online store name is the name your customers will use to find your business. It's displayed on every page of your website and will look something like this:
To set or change your store name:
1. From your Shopify admin, clickSettings(or pressGS):
2. In theStore detailssection, enter the name of your store inStore nametext field.
3. ClickSave.
2. Change your account email address
Theaccount emailis the address that you used when you signed up for Shopify. It's where we'll send your invoices, and where you'll receive.csvfiles if you export your products, orders, or customer lists. To edit your Shopify account email:
1. From your Shopify admin, clickSettings(or pressGS):
2. In theStore detailssection, change your email address underAccount email. This will be the email that Shopify uses to contact you about your account:
3. ClickSave.
3. Change your customer email address
Thecustomer emailis your customer-facing address. It's where your customers can contact you directly, and it's the address that's associated with the automatic notification emails they receive about their orders.
Your customer email's host settings determine what address your customers see as the sender in the automatic notification emails they receive from Shopify. If you want your own email address to appear, then you might need toupdate your domain's settings to follow Shopify's best practices. Otherwise, your store's notification emails might appear with mail address or be flagged as spam.
Tip
Not sure if you need to change yourcustomer emailaddress's security settings? GettingMail Delivery Systemerrors from Shopify?Follow the customer email best practicesto make sure that notification emails from your store are sending properly.
For the best customer experience, make sure you followthecustomer emailbest practices.
To edit your customer-facing email address:
1. From your Shopify admin, clickSettings(or pressGS):
2. In theStore detailssection, change your email address underCustomer email:
3. ClickSave.
4.Customer email best practices
Shopify uses the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) to verify yourcustomer emailaddress for the automatic notification emails that your customers receive. This prevents notification emails from being flagged as spam, removes thevia Shopifynote from the sender information, and displays yourcustomer emailaddress instead n the sender field.
If you're using an email address that's associated with a custom domain, then check your domain settings or contact your domain provider to make sure that it isn't using DomainKey Identified Mail (DKIM) validation (which Shopify does not support). Otherwise you might receive Mail Delivery System errors like this one:
On Saturday, April 1, 2014 12:00 PM, Mail Delivery System <> wrote:
----- Forwarded Message -----
This is the mail system at host smtp.shopify.com.
I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.
<>: host mta6.am0.yahoodns.net[92.134.215.23] said:
554 5.7.9 Message not accepted for policy reasons. See http://postmaster.yahoo.com/errors/postmaster-28.html (in reply to end of
DATA command)
Tip
Your customers still receive notification emails from Shopify if you don't update yourcustomer addresshost settings. In most cases, mail delivery errors that readyour message could not be delivered to one or more recipientsmean that Shopify's sending notification emails with ddress instead of your customer address —notthat your customers aren't receiving notifications.
Do I need to change mycustomer emailsettings?
If yourcustomer emailis ddress, then you don't need to change your email settings. Yourcustomer emailalready appears in Shopify's notification emails.
If yourcustomer emailis ddress, then you need to switch to a different email provider before yourcustomer emailaddress is verified. se theDKIM specification, which isn't supported by Shopify.
If you're using an email address that's associated with a custom domain, then you need toadd Shopify's Sender Policy Framework (SPF) recordto your domain's DNS settings, and then check your domain settings or contact your domain provider to make sure that it isn't using DomainKey Identified Mail (DKIM) validation (which Shopify does not support).
Tip
If you want to test your email address, send a message from your account — you'll receive a summary of your email host's authentication methods. If you seeSPF check: passin theSummary of results, then your address meets Shopify's security settings.Learn more ›
Add Shopify's SPF record to your domain host (custom domains only)
To verify yourcustomer emailaddress, you need to add Shopify's SPF record —v=spf1 include:shops.shopify.com ~all— to theTXT recordin your custom domain settings:
1. Log in to your domain hosting account.
2. Find your domain'sTXT record. This usually appears beside theCNAME recordandMX record.
3. Add Shopify's SPF record —v=spf1 include:shops.shopify.com ~all— to your domain'sTXT record.
4. Save your changes.
Note
If you're using an email address that's associated with a custom domain, make sure that it isn't using DomainKey Identified Mail (DKIM) validation (which Shopify does not support). Contact your domain provider to learn more.
5.Legal business name and address
This is the business address that will appear on your invoice. With the correct address listed on your Shopify invoice, you might be able to claim Shopify as a business expense:
1. From your Shopify admin, clickSettings(or pressGS):
2. In theStore addresssection, update all of the relevant editable text fields:
3. ClickSave.
Note
You must first disable Shopify Payments in order to change the country in your Shopify admin.
6.Store timezone
1. From your Shopify admin, clickSettings(or pressGS):
2. In theStandards and formatssection, use the drop-down menu underTimezoneto select a new timezone:
3. ClickSave.
7.Select store currency
In theGeneralsettings pageof your Shopify admin, you can choose which currency your store uses (for example, USD, EUR, CAD, AUD, JPY).
Note
If you are usingShopify Paymentsas your payment gateway, you must change your currency byediting the bank account and currency settings used by Shopify Payments.
To choose a currency for your store to use:
1. From your Shopify admin, clickSettings(or pressGS):
2. In theStandards and formatssection, use the drop-down menu underCurrencyto select a new monetary unit:
Tip
You canchange the way monetary amounts are shownby clickingChange formatting.
3. ClickSave.
8.Displaying multiple currencies
With Shopify, you have the ability to show multiple currencies on your storefront fordisplay purposes only. Your customers can check out only in the currency you set on yourGeneralsettings pageunder theStandards and formatssection:
Learn more about showing multiple currencies on your storefront ›.
If you want your customers to be able to checkout in different currencies, you'll need to open a second shop. Contact oursupport teamfor more information.
9.Default weight Unit
There are 4 default weight units that you can choose from:
· Pounds (lb) - Imperial system
· Ounces (oz) - Imperial system
· Kilograms (kg) - Metric system
· Grams (g) - Metric system.
Choose the weight unit that is most appropriate for your business. This is just thedefault value, and can be edited on a product by product basis later on.
Note
Before choosing your Default Weight Unit, your shouldchoose your unit-system.
To change your Default Weight Value:
1. From your Shopify admin, clickSettings(or pressGS):
2. In theStandards and formatssection, use theDefault Weight Unitdrop-down menu to select the weight unit of your choice.
3. ClickSave
10.Home page metadata
Metadata, such as a page's title and Meta description, is displayed in search engine results. It doesn't affect your chances of being listed by a search engine, but a good Meta description can increase the likelihood that visitors will click through to your store. It's a great way to attract more traffic.
A title and Meta description must be unique for each page, and must describe the content of that page. For every product, page, or blog in your Shopify admin, you will find a search engine section where you can input the information as you would like it to appear on search engine results pages:
Here's an example of a Shopify search result as it appears on a Google result page:
The title reads "Canada's Ecommerce Software Solution | Shopping Cart Software ..." Notice how Google shortened the title tag to61 characters.
The full title tag used on that web page was:
Canada's Ecommerce Software Solution | Shopping Cart Software - Shopify Canada
Not all search engines will truncate after the same amount of characters, but most will truncate on a word, rather than in the middle of a word, to improve readability.
To set or update your home page metadata:
1. From your Shopify admin, clickOnline Store, and then clickPreferences(or pressGSW).
2. In theTitle and meta descriptionsection, enter your home page metadata underHomepage titleandHomepage meta description.
Note
Search engines will list only about 140 characters of your meta description below your title tag, so keep it short.
3. ClickSave.
Common questions
· What happens when I leave the title tag blank?
Your theme will use your shop name followed by the title of the content, or will use the title of the content followed by your shop name. If this is what you wanted to use anyway, then there's no need to edit the title tag at all.
· Where's the title tag in my Shopify theme? Can I not edit my HTML pages directly for this?
The title tag only shows up in one file of your Shopify theme, and that is the filetheme.liquid. Thattheme.liquidfile is used on every single page of your website. The Liquid tag that outputs the title tag in yourtheme.liquidfile is{{ page_title }}.
Your website is not made of static HTML pages that you can edit piece by piece. Content is output dynamically by a relevant template.
· My employee wants to edit my web pages directly instead of mytheme.liquidfile. How do I get FTP access to my website to edit the HTML of each page?
There's no FTP access to your web pages. The code for your title tag is inside your onetheme.liquidfile. The code will show up like so inside the head element intheme.liquid. If your SEO guy is not familiar with Liquid, point him to ourguide to SEO for theme designersand as to this page.
· I edited my title tags. Why can't I see my change when I visit Google?
You will need to wait a couple of weeks for your edits to show up in search engine results. It may take a few weeks for search engines to crawl and re-index your content.
11.Password-protect your storefront
It is possible to set a password for your storefront so that only people with the password can access your store. This is useful if you don't want visitors to access your store while you are setting up, doing maintenance, or are selling only to select clients. The default setting for the storefront password on new stores isturned on.
Caution
Each of your passwords should be unique. Don't use the same password for more than one account, even if the accounts are related.
Note
Enabling a storefront password will also block search engines (for example, Google, Yahoo, or Bing) from crawling your website and including your content in the organic search engine results pages. If you want search engines to "see" your store, the password must be disabled.
To enable a storefront password:
1. From your Shopify admin, clickOnline Store, and then clickPreferences(or pressGSW).
2. In theStorefront passwordsection, check thePassword protect your storefrontoption:
3. Enter the password you want your customers to use in thePasswordtext field and the message you want your customers to see in theMessage for your visitorstext field:
4. ClickSave.
When customers go to your store's URL, they will have to enter the password you enabled to see your store.
12.Remove your storefront password
When you're ready to reveal your store to the world, you can remove your storefront password.
Note
When you are on a free trial of Shopify, your storefront is automatically protected with a password. You cancreate a custom password and add a messagethat your customers will see when they go to your store. If you are ready to launch your store while on the free trial, then you will have to pick a plan before you can remove your storefront password completely.
To remove your storefront password:
1. From your Shopify admin, clickOnline Store, and then clickPreferences(or pressGSW).
2. In theStorefront passwordsection, uncheck thePassword protect your storefrontoption:
3. ClickSave.
Your store will no longer have a password on it, which means that anyone will be able to see your storefront now.
13.Format your order IDs
By default, your first order ID is given the format #1001. Orders after that are incremented by 1 for each new order.
You cannot change the number that your orders begin at (1001), but to customize the format of your order IDs you can:
· edit the prefix (#)
· add a suffix.
Edit the order ID format Prefix
1. From your Shopify admin, clickSettings(or pressGS):
2. In theStandards and formatssection, edit thePrefixtext field: