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Online Marketing

How I Design my Shopify Website for FREE| EP 4 Starting a business with $500

So let’s go ahead and get right into this article, so if you guys are new to my blog or new to the series, I want to challenge myself and start a alias business, so that basically means I did not use my face.

I did not use my followers. I did not use my likeness to create a business and I created the business on a five hundred dollar budget. So with that being said, I had to basically create this website for, under thirty to forty dollars, using free apps from Shopify, using the templates on Shopify, using the photos that I got from the vendor. So let’s go ahead and get into choosing a theme. So when you log into your Shopify you’re, going to go click on online store when you click on online store, you’re going to then choose your theme.

Shopify already has a default theme that you can choose from. But if you go to the theme store, there’s there’s a whole bunch of themes that you can choose from. Some of them are paid and some of them are free. There are themes with a lot more features, but because this is on a $ 500 budget, lien got the brush for that. So I’m going to go ahead and search through the free themes. There are about eight free themes that you can choose from and when you’re first starting out the free themes are more than enough and they actually have a lot of cool features.

Even for me, in the past, when I had profitable drop shipping companies or EECOM companies, I still stuck to free themes because they gave me exactly what I needed and the good thing about. Choosing from any one of these eight themes is, they do have color presets. So you can go on one theme like Brooklyn or minimal, and you can see that they have multiple color presets for each theme. So if you’re, the type of person who isn’t really tech savvy or you don’t have the time or energy to go ahead and change the font in the color format, you can go ahead and choose a color theme.

That’s going to be great for you or you can browse through all the other themes that you like. Choose the template that you like and then go in in the backend and change the colors, which I will show you later in the article and what I’ve learned through my analytics in Shopify is that 80 percent, or more of my customers actually view my site from A mobile view, because I do a lot of social media marketing.

So it’s really important that when I’m looking through the demos, I’m looking at them in mobile view, so that I can see exactly what my customer is seeing. It’s also good to keep in mind that whatever photos or whatever content, you’re thinking about putting on your website, you look at it through mobile view to make sure that it size correctly. So the theme that I’m going to go with is a Brooklyn.

I really like this theme, because I really like the way that the photos are laid out so after I’ve chosen a theme. I really like to go in depth in looking at the demo, so I’m going to go to the product pages to see exactly how the products look. I really like the way the photos are laid out. I like the way the different sizes and variants are laid out. I even let the bottom. This brand is going to be more of a colorful girly brand, something that I I’m going to do basically the opposite of what I would do from my personal brand.

Just to explore my creativity and just to do something different, so I do really like the bright colors that this theme already has integrated into the site. The font is something that I could change, but I could actually change that in the backend. This is probably the most complete template where I really have to make minimal changes. After I put in my content – and as I mentioned when you are finalizing a template, you always want to look at it in mobile view as well, because 80 % or more of your customers, depending on your demographic, are probably going to be looking for a mobile View so now that I’ve chosen a theme next, I’m going to start and start adding content to the page.

If you guys are following along in the series, you know that in article 2, when I actually shop in the store, I spoke to the manufacturer and I asked them if they could send me content to use for my website and they approved it. So all of these pictures that I’m getting of the models are actually coming from the manufacturer at zero cost, and you happen to have pictures of models. We do have pictures on the models and are we allowed to use that for the store? Yes, you are.

Okay. Is it possible if we can see the boat sure, so I did not spend money on models. I did not spend money on any type of photographer a makeup artist. I here a hair, stylist or anything like that, so that is a complete free cost. So the first thing that I’m going to do is add a cover photo. This cover photo is something that I made in a quick and easy free way. I’r actually going to show you guys in depth all of the marketing Flyers, some of the stuff that I use to curate a fee.

Some of the stuff that I use to make the website, I’m going to show you all of those in article Stix. So stay tuned for that and subscribe so that you get notified when I upload that article I like to make anywhere from four to six slides so that I can alternate them on my website and the cool thing about this is each slide can have its own Text and its own link, so what you do is when you choose the photo and you add the photo in you can go down and you can actually put a text over it.

So if you want to put a clue or you want to put sex or t-shirts or things like that, you can put that and then this link tab allows whatever link that you put whether it’s a product, page, a collection, page, an information page. Whatever page you choose or a specific product that you choose it, when a customer clicks the link on this slide, it will take them directly to that page and if you are part of that percentage, that does not like the color of the theme.

But you like the format of it, you can always change the colors of the buttons Shopify’s template makes it quick and easy to just add things in the place and in the sections. So on the side here are the different sections that are in this template. So you can move the sections up say you want the slideshow to be lower or you want the content to be higher or you want a collection to be featured, or things like that.

You can also delete the sections. If you don’t have enough content to fill it or if you want more of a minimal page, the theme comes with preset sections, but you can delete them if you don’t want them when I started any type of new business or any new venture. For me, the biggest thing is staying in the mindset of obtaining that goal and being successful. So I always find it really helpful when I listen to different people who were or are on the same path or journey that I am in that endeavor.

The audio book that I’ve been listening to recently is a ready fire aim, which is all about outsourcing and getting a team so that you can actually grow and expand your brand telling you to fire yourself and make yourself free of the things that are making you A slave to the small things, basically taking your time and energy away from marketing your company or growing your brand to get more revenue in the end, and this article is in partnership with audible.

You can start listening with a 30-day audible trial, choose one audiobook and two audible originals for free by going to http://www.Redcross.Org, or you can showcase all of your pink items as one or your purple items as one or your shorts or your shirts, or whatever collection or Bundle that you want to create, but in order to create a collection, you need to go ahead and go out of the online store and you need to go into the products tab after you go to the product tabs you’re going to collect collection.

After you, click collection, you’re, going to have to name the collection and then choose a cover photo for the collection. The cover photo basically serves as when you have a lot of different collections. You can put a tab on the menu that says collections and it’ll show all the collections. So some people like to short search through websites that have 200 or 500 items and they like to search through all of the shirts or maybe they want to search through all of the winter collection or all of the new items or maybe all of the pink Things or purple things or or even some sites have collections where you can search through vacation, wear or formal, wear, or things like that, so the cover photo basically is just kind of a preview of what that collection has and a way to keep everything organized.

Yes, this is a small business. We don’t have. A lot of products is a $ 500 budget, but I like to organize my new website, just as I would organize my brand that I’ve had for two years. That is much more lucrative, the more organized that I was in the only translated to better communication with me and my staff, as well as a more organized back in on Shopify. For my customers to search through and to add products to your collections, you can either do it manually or when you’re, adding the product into the store, and you have the collection already made.

You can integrate the product when you’re putting all the product information into a specific collection. This is a way that you can display your items on your homepage in an organized way to show specific collections. The next thing that I really like to get into is the font Shopify recently or I don’t know over the years. Shopify has added so many different fonts that you can choose from, and I personally think font is a big deal because I feel like it’s a big part of branding.

You can also choose how big the font is, what color the font is, and you can change the header font from the body font to the link font and things like that, and when I edit my site, I really like to go through every single tab. Every single page and see how I can improve every page and make sure that it’s branded and because this brand is really cute and really girly and really colorful. I can just go on google and search for some images to insert on certain pages so for the checkout page or the cart page.

I thought this pink cloud look would be cute. You can also add your logo to the checkout page and I’m going to go ahead and show you guys exactly how I did the logo for free in article 6 as well, when I was first starting out and I didn’t have the resources or the money to Outsource for me, a big part of my branding was using my free resources as tools to develop my brand. The attention to detail on a start-up brand is so big, so I really like to take advantage of every little aspect of me being able to integrate my brand into a free template.

So at this point I literally go through the different changes. I might change the font again. I might change the color again. I like to make a whole bunch of changes and then kind of see how it works and go through the different pages and see how everything is related and connected. Make sure that it flows make sure that the colors are great. I feel like using certain pinks and certain purples can look really cheap, so I always kind of opt out for just using black white or gray, depending on the background.

I just go ahead and take my time and look through the website and make the necessary changes. Another thing that is super important is the menu tab. The menu tab can be a place where you add different collections, or you can add some of your legal things like shipping or exchanges, which is something that I’m going to do so in order to change the menu tab and make it more expansive. You just go ahead and click this link here and it’s going to take you to the menu, and this is where I’m going to add the shop, Nell tab and then choose the all collections link.

Then the shipping tag which shows the link to the shipping policy and then the exchange tab, which is going to have a link directly to the exchange policy. After I put all the names on the menu I go ahead and press save and then it will update on my home page. So at this point everything seems like it’s good to go. I played around with the fonts I played around with the colors. The biggest thing here, which was a homerun for me, is getting the high quality content, a photo shoots models, hair, stylists, makeup, artists or even buying a camera.

Yourself is a lot of money. So when you go to your manufacturer and you are buying things wholesale ask to use their stock photos that they have for their models nine times out of ten, they will say yes, so this made this website very cheap and very easy to use the next part Of this article I’m going to go ahead and get into the apps that I use to leverage the Baron get more brand credibility, social proof and things like that.

So now, let’s get into these a free, Shopify, apps, so app number one is product review. This is self-explanatory. Product reviews are great because it allows customers to communicate and give you feedback as well. It also lets you know if the items are running too big, too small, if the colors are true, and things like that, I personally as consumer always like to read product reviews, especially as a woman.

Sometimes things don’t fit the way that they’re supposed to sometimes the colors are often things like that and as a business owner, it allows you to see what your customers are wanting there and eating. If the products are good, you know to keep buying with a specific vendor that the sizing is off. You know to make some changes. The second app that I like to use is the shipping bar by hexam. This is really cool because it’s kind of like a piggy bank method where it says that you’re 20 dollars away from free shipping or ten dollars away for free shipping.

So in this demo you can see that I’ve added a shirt to the cart and then at the top it says your dollars away from free shipping and when you’ve exceeded or hit the 100 dollar mark, it will tell the customer that they have qualify for free Shipping and in this app, you can go ahead and change the rule of the shipping. So I’m going to I’m going to go ahead and change mine to $ 50 and I’m also going to change the overall message as well and customize the colors.

The text and the background and things like that, the next app that I like to use, which is free, is the insta feed app. This shows your Instagram feed on your website, which is really good, because this allows website viewers to see your customers, and it can also lead to getting more followers on your Instagram feeds. If I see different customers different people using the product or service, it just adds a more social proof to me, so I personally always like adding in sofy, because it allows my potential customers to see how my existing customers are using the products.

What it looks like in different lighting without being in the studio, how they’re using the product, how they’re using the service – and it also gives their feedback the next and the very last app that I like to use, is privy, which is an email marketing app. And I’m sure you’ve seen some of these features that this that this app actually has on some of the websites that you’ve shops. So if you ever tried to exit out of a site and then you get a pop-up like hey, don’t leave here’s tip percent off on your next order or if you are going to leave and you see a wheel pop up and you spin the wheel for A percentage off or things like that by putting your email in this app is probably pretty so things like this basically allow you to capture the email which then allows you to do email marketing.

Sometimes these things ask for the customers phone number and it allows you to text the customer offers as well and if their cookies are torrent, turned on and they’re logged into their email or their Facebook or their Instagram. It allows you to then at some point in time have direct facebook ads re target, the audience that have already gone on your site, and that is for a different article with all that being said.

That concludes today’s article. I hope you guys enjoyed it. I did all of this under $ 30 in one month, because my Shopify subscription is $ 29 and all of these apps are free, with the features that I am currently using and don’t forget, if you guys, are interested, if you guys get a 30-day audible child And choose one audiobook and two audible virginals for free when you go ahead and go to http://www.Hsn guru: 500 500, if you guys have any questions, go ahead and put them down in the comments below this is a 11 article series so go ahead and subscribe.

If you are liking the series so that you can be notified when the next article is posted, thank you guys so much for reading and I will see you in the next upload Bisou