Creating Your First Online Store with Shopify Malaysia

E-commerce websites work wonders for any business owner to bring their business online. Being presence on the are pro and cons of having online marketplaces and isn’t enough for your business to stay afloat. If you want to bring your business to the next level, it is wise to bring your business into an ecommerce website.

You might wonder, why the fuss of handling so many online account business, but it is worth it. Some advantages are that your website might appear on search engine optimization (SEO) and it is convenient for the customers to check your business details. 

If you are not familiar or do not have any knowledge and experience in building a website, you can try the best website builder online. You do not have to hire a web developer or build it from scratch which could waste your time and resources. Website builder online makes your life easier, you can just create your own website with just one click away.

Read also: Social Commerce: Facebook Marketplace Malaysia 2021

Shopify: Simplify Your Life

Shopify is a subscription programme that enables anybody to create and sell their goods online. Shopify shop owners may also use Shopify POS, their  point-of-sale software and supporting hardware in physical locations. When you are an online and physical Shopify merchant, your inventory and stock may be synchronised so that your Shopify stores can be managed from one account, on any device. 

In other words, Shopify website offers you all the tools you need to manage your business website in one place. It includes all the features you need to build a store, showcase online goods, manage inventory, accepted payments, calculate shipping and tax rates and much more. You can also easily access and integrate any other business tools you want or need to make Shopify website work for your online business. 

So, what is Shopify business model? 

Shopify simplifies the way you manage your online business account with just one place. If you are ready, let’s move on to the way to register your Shopify account.

How do I Register Shopify Account?

After you have sign up for their 14-day free trial, here are some of the checklist for you to create your online store

• Shopify login
• Password protect your store
• Your store name
• Fill in your legal business name and address
• Fill in your billing information
• Create the payment provider
• Create the default currency
• Create default weight unit
• Create for shipping settings
• Create pick up and local delivery
• Create taxes
• Create payment gateways
• Staff your store if necessary
• Create domain name 

Customize Theme

Shopify provides free and paid themes. They all come with an extensive list of changes you can make without touching a line of code. Premium themes typically provide more choices for customization and slicker design. Choose a theme that reflects your brand. 

How to Upload Products on Shopify Account?

Before your online store goes live, you need to have your own product pictures. Make sure the product photos are clean, minimal and visually pleasing. It can attract your customers’ attention on how aesthetic and clean your photos products are. 

On your Products, there are 5 subsections such as All Products, Inventory, Transfers, Collections, and Gift Card. To add new products, you can click on Products

Here are the steps for you to add product on your store:

1. Fill in Title and Description of your product
2. Add Media from URL or your gallery photo
3. Add Pricing details: 
4. Add Inventory details
5. Add Shipping details
6. Add variants (optional)
7. Edit Search Engine Listing Preview
8. Click Product status (Draft or Active)
9. Add Organization (Vendor, Product type, Collection)
10. Online store for your theme template
11. Click Save

How to Sell in Shopify?

To make your business an online store presence on the Internet, you will need a domain name. There are two choices available for you such as you can purchase a domain from Shopify or you can purchase from a third-party account such as GoDaddy. 

Here are the steps to step up your Shopify account using third-party domain name:

1. Search for Online Store, then Domains. Add your domain name using the ‘Connecting existing domain’ button
2. Find DNS settings and replace the @ or main A record with the following IP address: 23.227.38.65 or you can simply just add or replace the www CNAME with the.myshopify.com storename
3. Remove any storefront passwords, otherwise your customers would not be able to access your online shopping site even though you are already live.
4. You can set your main domain by going to the Online Store then Domain. Click Change primary domain. Don’t forget to check “Redirect all traffic to this domain”

And you are pretty much ready. You must wonder how much it costs for you to use the Shopify website. Let’s move on to another topic!

Shopify Pricing

Shopify offers 5 plans for you such as Basic Shopify, Shopify, Advanced Shopify, Shopify Plus, and Shopify Lite. What are the differences and the features that Shopify provides for each plan? Let’s discover together.

Shopify Basic

Shopify Basic is suitable for new ecommerce businesses with occasional in-person sales

• Monthly price: $29 (around RM120.70)
• Online stores includes ecommerce website and blog
• Unlimited products
• 2 staff members with access to Shopify admin Shopify POS
• 24/7 support
• Sell online marketplaces and social media (Channel availability varies by country)
• Up to 4 assign inventory to retail stores, warehouses, pop-ups, or wherever you store products
• Manual order creation
• Discount codes
• Free SSL certificate
• Abandoned cart recovery
• Gift cards
• Standard reports

For Shopify Payment

• Fraud analysis
• 2.9% + 30¢ USD (around RM124.86) for online credit card rates
• 2.7% + 0¢ USD for in-person credit card rates
• 2.0% transaction fee if not using Shopify Payment

Shopify

Shopify is suitable for growing businesses selling online or in-store

• Monthly price: $79 USD (around RM328.80)
• Online stores includes ecommerce website and blog
• Unlimited products
• 5 staff members with access to Shopify admin Shopify POS
• 24/7 support
• Sell online marketplaces and social media (Channel availability varies by country)
• Up to 5 assign inventory to retail stores, warehouses, pop-ups, or wherever you store products
• Manual order creation
• Discount codes
• Free SSL certificate
• Abandoned cart recovery
• Gift cards

For Shopify Payment

• Fraud analysis
• 2.6% + 30¢ USD for online credit card rates
• 2.5% + 0¢ USD for in-person credit card rates
• 1.0% transaction fee is not using Shopify Payments

Advanced Shopify

Suitable for scaling business that require advanced reporting

• Monthly price: $299 USD (around RM1244.44)
• Online stores includes ecommerce website and blog
• Unlimited products
• 15 staff members with access to Shopify admin Shopify POS
• 24/7 support
• Sell online marketplaces and social media (Channel availability varies by country)
• Up to 8 assign inventory to retail stores, warehouses, pop-ups, or wherever you store products
• Manual order creation
• Discount codes
• Free SSL certificate
• Abandoned cart recovery
• Gift cards
• Advanced reports
• Third-party calculated shipping rates

For Shopify Payment

• Fraud analysis
• 2.4% + 30¢ USD for online credit card rates
• 2.4% + 0¢ USD for in-person credit card rates
• 0.5% transaction fee is not using Shopify Payments

Shopify Plus

Shopify Plus offers the same core dashboard and features as Shopify, but has access to new functions, integrations, the underlying code of your store, specific support options and many more. Shopify Plus starts from $2000 USD per month (around RM8,324.00).

Shopify Lite

Shopify Lite is a plan for dealers who want to sell or add a buy button to their existing website (via POS lite). With Shopify Lite, you can view reports, issue gift cards, split bills, etc. You can’t build a Shopify Lite online store. The price of Shopify Lite is $9.00 USD per month (around RM37.46).

Shopify Lite features:

• Overview dashboard
• Finances reports
• Customer profiles
• Order management
• Product management
• Mobile POS and hardware accessories
• Email carts
• QR code product details
• In-store inventory
• Gift cards
• Split bill
• Custom discounts and discount codes

What is Shopify Dropshipping?

Dropshipping is for a seller who doesn’t want to keep the stocks. Instead, the seller will buy the products from the company and the company will send the products to the sellers’ customers. 

Shopify’s Oberlo marketplace helps small businesses find products to sell. With Oberlo, you can browse AliExpress and import products directly to Oberlo, which is connected to your Shopify store.

Easy peasy!

What is Shopify Developer?

Shopify developers are specialists in creating online e-commerce shops. They are front-end developers with a strong eye for design and UX. They are well-versed in all Shopify integrations for inventory, payments, and marketing. You can also join their Shopify Partner Program. 

What is Shopify app?

You can install Shopify for Mobile on your App Store, or Google Play Store. The Shopify application enables you to handle orders, goods, personnel and customers from your workplace, sofa or anywhere and whenever.

What is Shopify Payments?

Shop Payments is the easiest method to take online payments. It removes the difficulty of establishing a third-party payment provider or a trader account and entering the credentials in Shopify. You are immediately set up with Shopify Payments to accept all major payment methods as you establish your Shopify shop.

How Do You Shop on Shopify?

Unlike Shopee or Lazada, you can search products on Search. For Shopify you can simply search for myshopify.com and the products keywords. For an example: myshopify.com book on your Google search

Plan, Choose, and Publish

After you have done everything, you can publish your online store for your customers to buy your products from your Shopify account.

See also: How to Increase Website Traffic Fast and Cheap

Ginee: Your Best Portable Omnichannel Business Companion

Have you ever felt lost when you are sorting your orders? Especially, if you have many variants of your products, you might get confused and you might send the wrong order to your customers.

Now, you don’t want it to happen right? It will cost double to fix the problems. But with Ginee Malaysia, you do not have to worry about that anymore. With Order Management, Ginee helps sellers to process their orders and check their pending orders details. 

The features include order number, product name, quantity of purchase, purchased price, buyer details, courier details, print status, store name, time and last sync. More features for you to enjoy, register for free to be part of Ginee-us.