Opening a new Shopify store comes down to eight setup tasks: pick a theme, add products, turn on payments, set shipping, set taxes, connect a domain, publish your policies, and run a pre-launch check. This guide walks through each one in the order most new store owners hit them, with the exact Shopify Admin paths and the small details that trip people up. The Basic Shopify plan ($39/month at the time of writing) is the most common starting point and includes everything below.

The order matters less than the completeness. Skip taxes and you risk under-charging customers in states where you have nexus. Skip policies and Shopify Payments may flag your account for review. Skip the pre-launch QA and your first sale may go to a test gateway. Use this as a checklist you can tick through on your first weekend with the platform.

You do not need to finish every step before you start adding products. Most owners set up a theme, add five or six products, and then circle back to taxes and policies once they can see the storefront come together.

Key Takeaways
1
Pick a Shopify theme that matches your product count and customize it directly in Shopify’s theme editor before adding more than a few products.
2
Add at least one product with a title, description, price, image, and inventory count before testing checkout.
3
Turn on Shopify Payments where eligible, then add a backup gateway like PayPal so customers have at least two options.
4
Set tax overrides per region, publish your refund and shipping policies, and connect a custom domain before you remove the password page.

1. Pick and Customize a Theme

Go to Online Store > Themes. Shopify ships with 13 free themes (Dawn is the default, Sense, Craft, Refresh, and so on). The Theme Store adds about 220 paid themes between roughly $180 and $400, one-time. Free themes work fine for most new stores under 100 products; paid themes save time on layout and section variety.

What to check before you commit

Open the theme demo with your phone first. Confirm three things: the product page layout matches how you want to show variants and images, the homepage sections include what you need (featured collection, hero video, testimonials), and the speed score on PageSpeed Insights is at least 50 on mobile. Then click Customize from the theme tile, swap the colors and fonts to your brand, and upload your logo.

Avoid paying for a theme until you have at least five products live. You need real product cards to judge whether a theme looks the way you want it to.

2. Add Products

Go to Products > Add product. Each product needs a title, a description, at least one image (Shopify recommends 2048×2048 PNG or JPG), a price, an SKU, and an inventory count if you are tracking stock.

Variants, options, and collections

If you sell shirts in three sizes and four colors, set Size and Color as options and Shopify generates 12 variants automatically. Set per-variant prices, images, and stock from the variants table.

Group related products into Collections (Products > Collections). Manual collections are fine for under 20 SKUs. For larger catalogs use Automated collections with rules like “tag equals winter” so new products get sorted on upload.

Product SEO basics

Scroll to “Search engine listing” on the product page. Write a 50 to 60 character title and a 140 to 155 character meta description. Use the product name plus the use case (e.g., “Brass Hose Bib Vacuum Breaker for Outdoor Faucets”). Generic titles like “Bib Vacuum Breaker” hurt long-tail discoverability.

3. Turn On Payments

Go to Settings > Payments. Shopify supports more than 100 payment gateways. Start with two:

  • Shopify Payments if your business is registered in one of the 23 supported countries (US, UK, Canada, Australia, most of the EU, plus Japan and a few others). It uses Stripe under the hood, settles in 1 to 3 business days, and avoids the extra transaction fee Shopify charges on third-party gateways (2% on Basic).
  • PayPal Express as a backup. Roughly a third of US shoppers use PayPal at checkout, and you do not want them bouncing because the only option was card entry.

If Shopify Payments is not available in your country, Stripe Connect, Adyen, Authorize.net, and 2Checkout are common alternatives. Place a $0.50 test order with each gateway after activation and confirm the order shows up in Orders.

4. Set Up Shipping

Go to Settings > Shipping and delivery. Pick one of three pricing models:

  • Free shipping: simplest, but you bake the cost into product prices.
  • Flat rate: e.g., $5 standard, $15 express. Easy to manage, but you lose money on heavy items.
  • Calculated rates: pull live rates from USPS, UPS, DHL, or Canada Post. Most accurate, slightly slower at checkout.

Set up shipping zones (Domestic, International) and add a separate profile for any product that ships differently, like oversized items. Set your package weights on each product or Shopify cannot calculate accurate rates. If you are dropshipping, set the processing time to your supplier’s lead time, not your own.

5. Set Up Taxes

Go to Settings > Taxes and duties. Shopify calculates tax automatically based on the regions where you have tax nexus. For US stores, add your home state plus any state where you have $100k+ in sales or 200+ transactions a year (the post-Wayfair economic-nexus thresholds for most states). For UK and EU stores, register for VAT in your home country and enable Shopify’s automatic VAT collection.

If you sell digital products or services, set a per-product tax override. If you sell clothing in Pennsylvania or food in California, set product-category overrides so you do not collect tax on exempt items.

6. Connect a Custom Domain

Go to Settings > Domains. You have three options: buy a domain through Shopify (typically $14 to $20/year, no DNS setup needed), transfer an existing domain to Shopify, or point an external domain via DNS A record (23.227.38.65) and CNAME (shops.myshopify.com). Set the custom domain as primary so checkout, password reset, and order confirmation emails all use it.

7. Publish Your Policies

Go to Settings > Policies. Shopify auto-generates templates for the four required policies: Refund, Privacy, Terms of service, and Shipping. Edit each one to match your actual practice (return window, restocking fee, who pays return shipping). Add a Contact information policy too if you do not already have a contact page.

Without these published, Shopify Payments may pause payouts on your first few orders, and some buy-now-pay-later apps (Shop Pay Installments, Affirm) will refuse to activate.

8. Add the Apps You Actually Need

Skip 90% of the App Store on day one. Most new stores only need:

  • An email tool (Shopify Email is free for the first 10,000 emails/month; Klaviyo is the paid alternative most growing brands move to).
  • A reviews app (Judge.me free plan, Loox, or Shopify’s own Product Reviews).
  • A simple SEO app for image alt text and structured data if your theme does not handle it.

Each app loads JavaScript on the storefront. Keep your active app count under 10 in year one or your page speed will suffer.

Pre-Launch Checklist

Before you remove the password page (Online Store > Preferences > Disable password), run through this list:

  • Place a real $1 test order through the full checkout, then refund it. Confirms gateway, tax, and shipping calculations all fire.
  • Check all four policy pages render in the footer.
  • Confirm Settings > Notifications shows your store name and logo, not “My Store”.
  • Remove the Shopify “Powered by Shopify” footer text (Online Store > Themes > Edit default theme content).
  • Submit your sitemap (yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml) to Google Search Console.
  • Set up Google Analytics 4 and Meta Pixel via Shopify’s customer events tab.

Once these are green, switch your domain primary, disable the password, and announce.