Shopify Tutorial for Beginners 2026 - Learn Shopify in 9 Minutes

If you want to learn how to build a Shopify store, but you don't want to spend hours watching tutorials, then this video is for you. In the next few minutes, I'm going to show you exactly how to set up a Shopify store from scratch in the simplest, most beginnerfriendly way. So, by the end, you'll have an online store that's ready to publish and start taking orders. So, how do we get started? First, you'll need to create your Shopify account. For this video, I've partnered with Shopify to set up a special link that gives you a 3-day free trial, plus three months of Shopify for just a dollar per month. You'll see that link on screen, and it's also the first link in the description. Go to that link, then enter your email, follow the prompts, and once you land in your Shopify dashboard, you're ready for the next step. And now that we're here, we'll begin with lesson one. Let's start by adding your products. On the left sidebar, click products. Then click add product. First, at the top, let's give your product a title. And below that, you'll write a product description. Just keep it clear and simple. Write about what it is, who it's for, and what makes it worth buying. Next, scroll down to media. And from here, you can simply drag and drop in your product photos from your desktop. And if you can, use your best photos here. Product photos make a huge difference. Now, scroll down to pricing and set your price. Under inventory, you can choose whether you want Shopify to track quantity. Next, scroll down to shipping. Here, you'll find some basic shipping options that allow you to change things like product weight. For now, we'll continue scrolling down to variants. To add product variants, click add options like size or color. And then you can scroll through the list and find the product variant you want to add. After that, scroll down to category metap fields. Here you can set tags that help you organize different products on your store. When you start adding in a bunch of different products and creating collections, this can be really helpful. Now, scroll back up and make sure the product status is set to active so it can actually show on your store. After that, click save at the top of the page. Perfect. You've just added your first product into your Shopify store. Right now, we only have one product in our store, but once you add multiple products, you'll need a way to organize them. And that's where collections come in. On the left, click on collections. And to create one, just click add collection in the top right. And then from here, you can give your collection a title and description. Add in your products and organize them in a way that makes sense for your store. After that, you can link collections in your menus and feature them on your homepage. With our products added, let's move into lesson two. It's time to build your store. On the left, click online store. And right here, you'll see your current theme. And depending on your account, it will be set to either Dawn or Horizon. And either one is totally fine. And if you ever want to change your theme, just scroll down this page here, and you can access the theme library. Here you'll find a bunch of different free and paid themes to choose from. For now, I'm going to scroll back up to the top of the page. And to start customizing our store, I'm going to click on edit theme. In the theme editor, your store preview is on the right and your settings are on the left. If you ever get lost, just click the part of the page you want to change and Shopify will jump you to that section settings. Okay, let's start by adding in your logo. Find your header here at the top and hover over my store. This is where your logo is going to go. Click on my store. Then click theme settings under default logo. Click select. And then you can drag and drop in your logo here. Once your logo is uploaded, go to the bottom right and click done. And as you can see, our custom logo is now appearing in our header. And if it turns out that your logo is a little bit too big or small, you can adjust the size here for desktop and mobile devices. Next, let's update the main hero section. Click the big top section on your homepage. and we'll start by editing the heading text. Click on the text and change it to something simple that describes what your store is all about. Now, hover over your hero section again. Click on the blue popup and let's change out this default banner image. Under image on the left, click select and then drag and drop in your banner image. Go to the bottom right and click done. and our banner image will be updated here. Lastly, let's adjust this button here. Go ahead and click on it. Let's update the button text to something like shop now. And for the button link, I'm going to make sure it's set to all products. However, if you'd like this button to link to a specific collection or a specific product, you can change it here. If you want to adjust your overall design settings, click theme settings. This is where you'll change things like colors and fonts. And lastly, if there are sections that you don't want, hover over them on the left and click the trash can icon to delete them. You can also reorder sections by dragging them up or down. And if you want to add in a new section, just click on add section and find the section you're looking for. Once you're done, click save in the top right. Now, let's look at the navigation menu at the top of your homepage. This is how people move around your store. And as you build things out, you may want to add, reorder, or remove links. So, here's how to manage it. First, hover over the menu. Click the blue menu popup on the left. Find main menu. Click on edit. And this is where you can edit the menu links that are in your header. By default, Shopify includes home, catalog, and contact. First, let's rename catalog to shop. And we'll make sure it's linked to the correct page. Click the catalog menu item. Change the name to shop. And I'm going to make sure it's linking to all products. So now when somebody clicks shop in my main menu, it's going to show them everything that I'm selling. I'm going to click on the check mark here to save my changes. And if you want to add a new link in your main menu, click on add menu item. To reorder links, just drag them up or down. And when you're done, click save in the bottom right. We've now built the foundation of your Shopify store. The next step is making sure customers can actually check out and pay for your products. So, let's move into lesson three, configure payment and checkout settings. The first thing we'll configure is shipping so Shopify can collect the customer's address at checkout and you can deliver the order. In the bottom left, click settings, then shipping and delivery. Here you'll see your default shipping profile. You can click into it to see your zones and shipping rates. By default, my shipping zone is set to the United States. And I have three default shipping rates. I can click on the three dots next to any of them to edit the rate or delete it. And if I want to add another shipping zone to another country, I can click on add shipping zone. To start, just keep it simple. Most stores use a flat rate or free shipping. And you can always fine-tune this later once you know what makes sense for your products. Next, let's take a quick look at taxes. Go to the left and click on taxes and duties. And this is where Shopify will show you your tax settings by region. If you need to collect tax in certain places, you'll manage it here. Next, let's set up payments so customers can actually check out. On the left, click into payments. And if you see Shopify payments available, this is usually the simplest option. Just click on activate Shopify payments and follow the prompts. Depending on your location, you may have other payment methods listed here. Overall, just make sure you have at least one payment method active so customers can place an order. Now that customers can check out, we want to make sure your store has basic legal policy pages in place. So, next up is lesson four, add your store policies. On the left, click into policies and for each section, click insert template to generate a starting point. Then you can edit anything that doesn't match your store, especially your contact info and business details. And as a heads up, Shopify usually won't generate a full shipping policy template since shipping varies so much. So if you want one, you'll have to write it manually based on your store shipping rates and delivery times. All right, we're almost there. Let's move into lesson five. Connect your domain and publish your store. Near the bottom, find domains. And in the top right, you can either connect an existing domain or you can buy a new domain through Shopify. Both of these options are pretty straightforward. Go with the one that matches your needs and follow the prompts. And once your domain is connected, go to the top right and click on the X. Go to the left-hand side and click on online store. And to publish your Shopify store and make it go online, all you have to do is click on remove password. And with that, your store is online and open to everyone. And to view your store and make sure everything is working properly, just click on view store. And don't forget to get a 3-day free trial and three months of Shopify for only $1 per month. Make sure you click the first link in this video's description. And if you want to go even deeper into designing and customizing your Shopify store, you'll see a video on screen right now that walks you through everything step by step in greater detail. Thanks for watching. I really hope this video helped you out. With that said, I'll see you in the next