How to Build an Online Store - Step by Step (2026)

So, you have an awesome idea for a business and you have an amazing product that you're ready to start selling online. But then you ask yourself one big question. How do I even build an online store? Well, I asked myself that exact same question back in 2020. Back then, my wife and I built this window cat hammock for our kitten, which he totally loved. But then we asked each other, "Hey, why don't we try building more of these things and then try selling them online?" And that's where my research started. I researched every single step it takes to build an online store and eventually I figured it out. In the end, I built an online store from complete scratch where we sold hundreds of these cat hammocks. And today, I'll teach you every single thing I wish I knew back when I first started my research. I'll break down building an online store into nine simple steps. So, just follow along and by the end of this video, you'll have your very own online store built live and ready to start taking orders. So, what is the first step? We have to figure out which store builder we'll be using. We want a simple solution, one that doesn't require complex coding or hiring a team of developers to build the store for us. Here, I found the top four store builders that are out there, and I've researched each of them to find out which would be the best option for a total beginner. So, first, let's talk about Squarespace. Squarespace is great if you want complete control over how your store looks. With Squarespace's drag and drop grid editor, even a total beginner can make their store look exactly how they want. I've used it before and it's super impressive compared to other store builders that are out there. However, I think Squarespace is better suited for building something like a portfolio website or a super clean landing page. With Squarespace, your store is going to look absolutely beautiful, but it can easily fall behind in crucial areas that are important for the back end of your online store. Lots of basic necessities for online stores are locked behind paid plugins with Squarespace. Like for example here, this custom cart slideout plugin that appears after your customer simply just adds an item to their cart will cost you $40 to install to your store. And while Squarespace stores do have a good amount of built-in features, you'll eventually have to install thirdparty extensions to help out with things like product inventory and automated shipping and fulfillment. Taking a look at Squarespace's thirdparty plugins page, there's really not a lot of options here, especially compared to other online store builders. However, the second store builder I researched is the complete opposite in terms of thirdparty plug-in support. Building your store on WordPress and installing a free plugin called Woo Commerce allows you to build an online store completely for free. We just took a look at Squarespace's thirdparty plug-in support, which includes just about a 100 third party plugins. But with WordPress, you'll have access to over 60,000 plugins. This allows you to add pretty much any feature to your store that you could imagine. And you can make your store look however you want by using free templates. And after you're done building the store, you'll have complete ownership because you're not relying on a store builder like Squarespace. But this option is easily the least beginner-friendly one that I found out there. You'll have to set up your own hosting, connect your own domain, install all of the plugins yourself, and learn how to use a page builder like Elementor. So, with all these things combined, it can feel extremely overwhelming to most beginners. But the third store builder that I researched is way more beginner friendly. Building an online store with Wix is one of the most beginnerfriendly and affordable options that I found. You can choose a plan starting at $17 a month, which is an amazing price point that is really hard to beat. It's also very easy to set up your store with Wix. You can choose from over 900 free templates that look super professional. And there's even an AI store builder that can get you set up in just a few minutes. But one weird thing with Wix is that once you've chosen your template and built your store, you're completely locked into that template. That means if you ever want to redesign your store with a new look, you have to start over from complete scratch. And while that $17 a month price tag sounds great at first, your features are extremely limited and you'll inevitably have to upgrade to the pricier plans down the road. But we have one final option left to look at, and I believe it's the best online store builder for beginners. From my research, Shopify proved itself to be the best online store builder out there. It's beginnerfriendly, affordable, and has amazing thirdparty plug-in support. Shopify takes the best parts of all the other store builders we just looked at and combines them into one incredibly powerful platform. You can choose from over 800 different themes, easily customize all of your pages using Shopify's theme editor. You'll have access to over 8,000 thirdparty plugins. And Shopify makes the back-end technical stuff easy for you, like automating shipping, taxes, legal policy pages, and more. It's also important to note that Shopify was originally built for creating online stores. So, every single feature within Shopify's interface is designed with building an online store in mind. All of the other options we just looked at are simply website builders that tacked on e-commerce features later on that enable you to sell products on your website. And while that is fine, when you build an online store with Shopify, you can really feel the difference in quality compared to these other platforms. So, with all of that said, Shopify definitely isn't perfect at the end of the day, but I believe it provides the most balance between every important feature that you'll need in order to have a successful online store. So, that's why for this video, I'll be using Shopify to build this online store. My wife loves making these handmade crochet toys for my daughter, so I built her this online store so that way she can start selling her spare projects. The store is called Knot and Thread, and I built it from complete scratch. And the best part about this store is that is applicable to any niche. That means no matter what type of product you sell, if you simply follow along with the rest of the steps in this video, by the end, you'll have a fully functional online store that's ready to sell your product. So, coming up next, I'll break down exactly how I built this online store for her, and I'll teach you everything that you need to know along the way. So, with all of that said, let's get started. First, check the top of this video's description. There you'll find a link that'll make sure you're getting the best available deal when you sign up for Shopify. You'll get a 3-day free trial and 3 months of Shopify for only a dollar per month, which is a crazy good deal. That's going to give you plenty of time to play around with the platform and make sure that it's right for you. So, once you clicked on that link, you'll be brought to this page here. Go ahead and enter your email address here to claim your free trial and then click on start free trial to move on here. You'll need to create a password and then click on create Shopify account. And once you get to this screen here, you'll need to fill out your payment information. As you can see here on the lefth hand side, you get a little road map. Today you're getting your free 3-day trial and then you'll pay $1 per month for the next 3 months once you subscribe to Shopify. So, I'll go ahead and fill out my payment information here to lock in the deal. And with that done, I'll click on subscribe for $1. And then you'll be able to choose between the three different plans. I recommend just going with the basic plan. It usually has enough features for anyone that's just getting started. So, I'll click on try basic. And here, if you'd like to, you can go ahead and fill in your business address, but I'll do this a little bit later on in the video. So, for now, I'll go to the bottom right and click on add later. Now click on skip customize setup and there you go. You're now subscribed and ready to start building your store with Shopify. Automatically you'll be brought to this page which is the main dashboard. To get to your online store, go to the lefth hand side here and click on online store. Awesome. We have successfully completed step one. We have chosen our store builder. Now it's time to move on to step two. Let's go ahead and choose our store's theme. You'll see by default that the Horizon theme is automatically installed for you. But if you want to explore other options, just scroll all the way down here and click on visit theme store. This will get you access to tons of other free and paid themes. I'll be sticking with the Horizon theme, so I'll scroll back up and click on customize. Perfect. And with that done, we can now move on to step three. Let's begin customizing our store's homepage. The homepage is the first thing that anyone is going to see when they end up on your store. So, you want to make sure that everything looks nice and clean and professional. The first thing we'll edit here is the hero section here at the top. To edit this, I'll simply click on it. And then I want to upload my own custom image. I'll do this by clicking on select and then I'll drag in my own image. I'll upload this image here. And once it's done uploading, I'll go to the bottom right and click on done. Nice. And with that uploaded, we now have a nice clean image at the top of our store's homepage that clearly communicates what we sell. The next thing I want to do is scroll down here on the settings on the lefth hand side, and I'll change the height from medium to small. After that, I'll want to change up the text here. Similar to before, to change this, I'll simply click on it, and I can edit the text here on the top left hand side. I'll copy and paste in my new text. And now, I think I'm happy with how that looks. Next, let's add some more sections into our homepage. To go back, I'll go to the top left here and click on the back button. And here on the lefth hand side, you can see that I have a featured collection section. This is simply a way to highlight a specific set of products within your store. And we'll configure this a little bit later on in the video. For now, I'll click on add section. And as you can see, when I do that, a window opens here. And we have all sorts of different sections that we can add into our store. In my case, I'm going to scroll all the way down to the bottom and I'll add in an icons with text section. To add it in, I'll simply click on it, and then you'll see it appear here on the right hand side. And with this section here, we're able to add in three objection busters to your homepage. You could think of these as quick points that show what makes your business different, what you're most proud of, or why someone should feel confident when they buy from your store. And if you're not sure what objections to address, you can just focus on three things that make your brand unique. And just like before, you're able to edit all of the text, and you can even change out the icons simply by clicking on them. So, I'm going to go ahead and edit this section here and add in my objection busters for my store. And here are the three objection busters that I wrote up for my store. I wrote that my store has an eye for quality, that my crochet toys are made to be loved, and that they're made by real people. Obviously, this will vary depending on the products that you're selling in your store, but this is a good way to set your store apart and build trust with your customers. Now, the next thing I want to add into my homepage is a customer review section that's right underneath my three objection busters. This is another really great way to build up credibility and trust with your customers. To add in that section, I'll go to the top left here to go back. Then, I'll scroll down and click on add section. Then I'll scroll down the list here and find the custom section. I'll click on it to add it. Then I'll click on the arrow next to it and click on add block. And here at the top I'm able to click on generate. This is a new super exciting tool within Shopify that allows you to generate just about any type of section that you want for your store. So I'll go ahead and click on generate. And from here I can go ahead and paste in my prompt. It says, "Create a three column customer reviews layout with a quote, name, and a star rating." And like I said, you can write just about anything here, and it's going to code everything for you. I'll go ahead and submit this prompt. Now, it's going to go ahead and create that section for us. This can take a minute or two, so I'll just fast forward to when it's completed. Perfect. Now, that's done, and I can see it here on the right hand side. And now I'm actually able to configure and customize these customer reviews since these are just placeholders. To do that, I'll click into the section and on the lefth hand side, I'll scroll down and here I can change out all of the customer reviews. So I'll go ahead and do that really quick before moving on to the next step. Awesome. Now I've configured my reviews here on the right hand side. And the next thing I'll do is add in a contact form section. I'll go back once again. I'll click on add section. And then under forms, I'll click on contact form. This will give customers a super easy way to reach out to you, whether it's just to ask a question, request a custom product, get a free quote, or book an appointment. Having a section like this on your website is super handy. So, I'll quickly change out the text here to say, "Place a custom order." And with that done, I think I'm happy and I'm finished customizing my homepage. So, let's now move on to step four, which is adding in our products. Obviously, we have an online store. We can't function if we don't add our products into the store. And doing that with Shopify is super easy. But before we move on, let's go to the top right here and click on save to save our progress so far. And to exit the theme editor, let's go to the top left and click on exit. Then you'll click on products. Then click on add product. We'll start by giving our product a name. I'll name this product crochet teddy bear. And then for the description, I used chat GPT to help me write it. I like to use emojis and nice formatting like this to make everything look nice and professional. And then under media, we'll want to upload our product photos. And your product photos are super important. They need to be high quality and look professional to make sure that your customer feels confident in buying your product. So, I'll go ahead and drag in my product photos. And those will go ahead and upload right here. And I'm going to reorder these to where my transparent background product photo is the first one. In my opinion, with online stores, having a transparent background for your product photos makes them blend in more and it looks a lot more professional. Next, I'll scroll down and set the price for my product. I'll set this at $19.99. You have some other options here like calculating profit, inventory, shipping, and adding in things like size or color variance. I'm happy with leaving everything as default. So, I'll scroll down and go to the bottom right and click on save. And with that done, I've created my first product. Now, I'm going to go back up to the top left here and click on products. And you'll see that I successfully created the crochet teddy bear product here. And now, off camera, I'm going to go ahead and add a few more example products. And once that's done, we'll move on to our next step. Awesome. And now I have the rest of my example products. So, let's move on to step five, adding collections. Collections are basically groups of products that you want to display together in your store. You could use them to feature things like bestsellers. You can organize items by category. It's up to you. To create one, I'll go to the left hand side here and click on collections. Then go to the top right and click on add collection. For this one, I'll name it best sellers. And for the collection type, I'll leave this as manual. Next, I'll scroll down to products and I'll click on browse. And here I'll select all of my example products. I'll go to the bottom right and click on add. Then I'll scroll all the way down. Go to the bottom right and click on save. And there you go. You've just created a collection. Now, if you remember earlier on in the video, we have that featured collection that's sitting on our homepage. Now, let's go back and link that featured collection to this new bestsellers collection that we just created. To get back to your homepage, go to the lefth hand side here and click on online store. Then click on customize. Now I'll scroll down and this is my featured collection here. So I'll click into it to edit it. And under collection on the left hand side, it's currently set to display all of my products. To change this, I'll click into it, click on replace, and then I'll click on my best sellers collection, and you'll see that change reflect here. So, now that we've linked our best sellers collection to our homepage, let's take a look at our actual product page. To do that, we can navigate there by going to the top and clicking on this little navigator here. I'll click on it and then I'll click on products and I'll click on default product. And this will bring us to our product page. And as you can see, all the info that we added earlier is right here. We have our product title, our description, and all of our product photos. And this is what your customers are going to see when they click on one of your products. Now, one thing I'm not a huge fan of is this photo grid here. I would prefer to have this as a scrollable photo carousel. To change that, I'll click into it and I'll change the type from grid to carousel. Nice. I think that looks a lot better. With that done, I'll go to the top right here to save my progress. Let's go ahead and move on to step six, customizing our header and footer. I'm currently on the product page. So, using the navigator, I'm going to go back to the homepage. Now, our store's header is here all the way up on the top. The first thing I'll do is upload my store's logo. I'll click into logo. Then, I'll click on theme settings. And under default logo, I'll click on select. Now, I'll go ahead and drag in my logo. I'll upload my logo here. And if you don't have a logo for your store, you can create a free one using Canva. That's exactly how I made this logo here. Now I'll go to the bottom right and click on done to upload it. And you'll see my logo appear here. But right now it is a little bit small. To increase the size, I'll click on it. And I'll change both the desktop height and the mobile height to 70 pixels. And there you go. That looks a lot better there. Now I'm going to update the main menu here at the top of the store. Currently, it has a home button, a catalog button, and a contact button. You can change your menu to have anything that you want within it. Some people have an FAQ page. Some people list all sorts of different cataloges of products. In my case, I'm going to simply remove the catalog button and replace it with my best sellers collection. To edit this menu, I'll click on it and in the top left, I'll click on main menu. I'll click on edit and this is going to open up a new tab. And here I'm able to reorder the content within the menu. And I can also remove different tabs by clicking on the trash button. So I'll remove the catalog. Click on remove. Then I'll click on add menu item. And I'll name this our best sellers. And for the link I'll click into it. Click on collections and click on best sellers. I'll click on the check mark here to confirm everything. And I'll move this in between home and contact. To save everything, I'll go to the bottom right and click on save. And then I'll go ahead and close this tab. And as you can see, our main menu has now been updated. Next, let's scroll all the way down to the bottom of our store and find our footer. On the right hand side, we have our social media icons, so you can link those to your social media pages. And then we have our privacy policy. This is the most important part of your footer menu. You need to configure all of your different policy pages to make sure that your store is legally compliant. To configure those pages, simply click on privacy policy and then at the top, click on manage policies. And again, that's going to open up a new tab. And here you see all of your different policy pages that you need to configure. Let's click on our return and refund policy. And then click on insert template. Some of these templates do have information that you need to fill out. So, make sure you look them over. For now, I'll click on publish. And I'll do this for the rest of my policy pages. You'll notice for the shipping policy that there isn't actually a template button. That's because you'll need to configure your own shipping policy. That's going to vary depending on where you're shipping from and who you're shipping your products to. So, I'll just put insert shipping policy here. Then, I'll click on publish. And don't forget to fill in your contact information. I'll click on publish to finalize everything. And then, like before, I'll go ahead and close out of this tab. And as you can see, our store's footer has been updated with all of our different policy pages. Let's now move on to step seven. Let's customize our theme settings. Go to the top left here and click on this gear icon to access your theme settings. First, let's click into logo and And here we can upload our favicon. Click on select. Upload my favicon here. And if you don't know what a favicon is, it's a little icon that shows up in your browser tab. I'll show you how it looks in a second. To finish uploading, go to the bottom right, click on done, and I'll exit full screen view. And you can't see it here because our website isn't live, but the favicon will look kind of like this. Here you can see Shopify's favicon. It's just a little icon that shows up in someone's browser tab. Next, let's check out the colors tab. This is where you can set up your brand's color scheme. I'm happy with the default colors for now, so I'll leave this as is. And then we have the typography tab. Here you can choose from a bunch of different fonts. Again, I'm happy with the default fonts, so I'll leave it alone for now. One thing that I do want to change, however, is the page animations. So, I'll click on animations, and I'll turn on page transition and product card to product page transition. And I'll also change the card hover effect from none to lift. And then the last thing I want to change, let's scroll down and find the product cards. I'll click into this and I want to turn off show second image on hover. Now let's preview what these changes actually did to our store. to interact with your store like a regular website visitor instead of the regular editing mode. Go to the top right here and click on deactivate inspector. Now, if I scroll up on the page and I hover over my products, you can see that they kind of come off the page a little bit. And if I click into one of my products, you'll see this really cool animation. And that animation also occurs when you interact with your main menu. So, if I go back to home, it's a nice little animation as we go back. And it's also important to note that some store visitors may not be using desktop. They may be visiting your store on mobile. So, if you want to check out what your store looks like on a mobile device, again, go to the top right here and click on this little smartphone icon. This is going to change your store to mobile view. And all Shopify themes are optimized for both desktop and mobile. So, if I click into my product page here, everything on the page looks super good and optimized still. And with that done, let's move on to step eight. Let's begin customizing our store settings. Before we access our store settings, let's first go to the top right here and click on save to save our progress so far. Then, let's go to the top left to exit the theme editor. To access your settings, go to the bottom left and click on settings. Let's start by configuring our store details. To change the name of your store, you'll edit this block here. Go to the right hand side and click the little pencil icon. And here is where you'll enter your store name. For my store name, I'll enter not and thread. Then I'll go to the bottom right here and click on save. And you want to make sure that you also enter your billing address here. Next, let's go into payments on the lefth hand side. From here, you'll click on activate Shopify payments. I recommend doing this. This is the best way to make sure that your customers have the most ways to pay for your products. And also, you have to do this in order to get paid. You can also choose to go with PayPal payments if you want to, but I do recommend going with Shopify payments. It looks the best on the back end and it actually increases your conversion rate. Next, on the lefth hand side, let's click on shipping and delivery. Here you can create different shipping zones for both domestic and international shipping. Let's click into this here. And if I scroll down, here are all of your different shipping zones. You can set this up however you want. Just make sure that it makes sense for your products. Now, let's scroll back up and on the lefth hand side, click on taxes and duties. Shopify will handle most of this automatically by default, but if you're unsure about tax rules in your area, it's always a good idea to check with a tax professional. Next, let's go down to domains. Here, you can either buy a new domain from Shopify or you can connect an existing domain. I would highly recommend buying a domain from Shopify. They will handle everything for you when it comes to connecting your domain on the back end and this will definitely save you some time. To buy a domain, simply click on buy new domain. Here, notthread.com is available. And I would definitely recommend finding a dot domain. Domains are significantly more trusted by customers. So, if I wanted to buy this domain, I would just click on buy here. And then Shopify will connect everything for me. And lastly, let's go back to the lefth hand side, scroll down, and find languages. And here you can actually translate your store into different languages. This is a great option if you're planning to reach different international customers. And with all of that done, it's now time to head into the final step. Step nine. It's time to publish our store and go live. To publish your store, start by going to the top right here and clicking on this X button. Then simply click on remove password. And your store is now online and open to everyone. Let's go ahead and check out how the store looks. Nice. I'm really happy with how this online store turned out. It looks super clean and professional, and it's live and ready to start taking orders. I really hope this video taught you everything you were hoping to know about building an online store. And make sure you don't forget to use the link at the top of this video's description whenever you sign up for Shopify. That link is going to make sure that you're getting the best available deal. Right now, you can get a 3-day free trial and three months of Shopify for only a dollar per month. If you have any further questions, make sure you leave a comment down below.