In this Manufacturers’ Guide To Shopify we’ll be putting the finishing touches on your store.

In this guide for manufacturers, we’ve been learning how to set up a Shopify store in three 20 minute lessons. Part one went over the basics of setting up your account, choosing a theme, setting up payments and customizing your checkout. In part two, we learned how to customize shipping, add a product, variants, and how to view your store online while you work on it. In part three, we’ll learn how to edit existing pages, add a blog, update inventory, and view orders.

Step 10: Add a new page

If you plan to have your store stand alone as it’s own website, we recommend you add a couple of basic pages at the very least: About and Contact.

To create a new page click “Pages” under “Online Store” in the left-hand navigation. Then click the blue-purple button on the business side of the page to “Add page.” 

Page details

For the About page “Title” we’ll just keep it simple and call our page “About.” 

In the “Content” area you should add information about your company and possibly your manufacturing process. You’ve probably done this before so that’s where we’ll leave it.

For the Contact page “Title” let’s continue keeping it simple and call it “Contact.”

The text in the “Content” are for the Contact page will show up above a contact form once we select the right template. For our fictional company, we just wrote “Contact ManufacturingXYZ at our DC office.”

Visibility

On the right in the “Visibility” box, select “Hidden” if you want the page to not show while you’re still working on it. Or, when you’re ready to go live click “Visible” and it will show to the public.

Template

In the “Template” box you will choose the option that fits the page you’ve created. For the About page you could use the simple template “page.” For the Contact page, you would select “page.contact” and this will create a form on the page where your customers can write to you. 

The “no-heading” pages are great for landing page purposes. We’ll talk about this more in our SEO post. “Full-width” aligns the content all the way to the left. Choosing full width versus regular layout would be based on your preference for how the page looks. 

When finished, click the “Save” blue-purple button in the lower right. You can view your page once it’s saved by clicking the eye logo at the top of the page.

Step 11: Edit existing pages

Once you have created pages, you’ll likely need to return to edit them later on. To edit pages, click “Pages” under “Online Store” in the left-hand navigation. All of your pages will show up in a list. Click on the blue title of the page you want to edit. 

Step 12: Add a blog

Many people new to the world of maintaining a website seem to want to run away at the thought of having to maintain a blog or just quickly dismiss the idea. Well, we wouldn’t recommend it to you if it weren’t important. The most compelling reason to host a regularly update blog on your store is for SEO, which we’ll go into in detail in our SEO blog. A blog also keeps your customers up to date on what’s going on with the company and keeps the website fresh. 

To add a blog to your store, click on “Blog posts” under “Online Store” in the left hand navigation. Click the “Create blog post” blue-purple button on the business side of the page.

A great post to make when you just get started with a new blog is to talk about why you started your new website. We’ve used this concept and wrote our “Title” as: Why we decided to open an online store.

For the “Content,” you can start out be just being honest. Here’s what we wrote:

One morning in June, we were browsing the web and came across a blog post about Shopify for manufacturers. Upon reading it why wondered why we weren’t already online cashing in on additional revenue. So we set out to make a store…

For help on how to write a great blog post and drive traffic to your site, read our post on Blogging.

Be sure to set the”Visibility” to visible to make the post live.

For the “Featured Image” choose an image that fits with your blog. You can find free stock images on pexels.com if you don’t have enough images on hand. We picked an image of the sun shining for our post since we refer to the month of June. 

Don’t forget to click “Save.” Please note that your blog won’t appear in your store’s navigation yet. We will add it a little later in this lesson via the Navigation module.

Step 10: Update your inventory

You only have one item in your store so far, but when you add everything you offer, it’s helpful to be able to manage inventory in bulk.

To manage your inventory, click “Products” in the left-hand navigation and then “Inventory” from the list below. Click the “View products” button on the business side of the page.

This is where you can change your number of inventory in bulk. 

You can also choose products to be featured on the homepage from this list. To do so, check the boxes next to any products in the list, click “Bulk actions,” and select “Add to collection” from the resulting dropdown menu. Select “Homepage” and these products will be featured on the homepage.

You can then view the homepage collection you created by clicking “Collections” under “Products” on the left-hand navigation. You may also choose to add more collections so that when you get a lot of products you view them in groups.

Step 11: View your orders

Once you get your first order, you’ll be able to view it via the Orders module. To view your orders, click on “Orders” on the left-hand navigation. 

All orders

Your orders will appear here when they come in.

Abandoned Checkouts

If a customer puts a product in their shopping card but abandons it, it will show up here. If you have the Shopify Pro Plan you can send these customers an email with their saved cart and try to get them back to complete their purchase.

Step 12: Add discount codes

From the left hand navigation select “Discounts” then click the “Create a discount” button on the business side of the page.

Using the discount code module, you can generate a code to use in advertising. You could say “Enter this code and get 10% off.” You can also create your own code like “SUMMER2017.” Follow the prompts to determine a percentage or dollar amount off. 

Step 13: Change your domain

Choose “Online store” from the left-hand navigation then click “Domains” under it.

If you don’t want to have “.myshopify” closing out your store’s url, you will need to purchase a domain. Shopify has made it so you can do so without leaving their software. Simple type the domain you want, ours might be ShopManufacturingXYZ.com. Check the availability and follow the prompts to enter your billing information when you find the domain you love. Shopify usually charges a modest $13/year for a domain. 

If you already own a domain, perhaps purchased from GoDaddy.com or another site, you can also connect it here.

Step 14: Change your navigation

Choose “Online store” from the left-hand navigation then click “Navigation” under it.

In the “Main Menu” section you’ll see the names of the pages you have. When you start, there will only be Home and Catalog. We want to add Contact and About. To do so, click “Main Menu.” Scroll down to where “Menu items” are listed. Click the “Add menu item” button. Under the “Link” column choose “Page” then choose either “About” or “Contact” from the dropdown menu that results. The “Name” you type will be what shows in the main navigation bar at the top of the website. Unless there’s a good reason otherwise, this should be the same as the title of your page. The About page would be named “About.”

We can also add the blog here too. Click “Add menu item” and this time when you click on the button in the List column you’ll see Blog as a primary option. Click “Blog” and name it, you guessed it, “Blog.”

Whoa! Are we done already?

Congratulations! You did it. You made your store. We can’t wait to come visit. Send us the URL through our Contact form.