In this lesson, you’ll discover the assets you need to have to launch your store. Let’s start with the must-have essentials. Firstly, you’ll need at least one product photo. In order for a customer to want to purchase your product, they’ll need to see what they’re buying.
Secondly, you’ll need a business name so you can buy your domain name. Of course, you can change this later as your business evolves. For now, since I’m a new mom, I’m going to name my business after my son and call it Tylann’s Tea Shop. Now that you know the essentials, let’s talk about a few items that would be nice to have as you build your online store.
First, more photos. Your product photography is an important part of your business’s success online. Seeing high resolution product images that help brand your website and convey how your product works is a critical part of buying online. To help you out with this, checkout Burst - Shopify’s stock photography website that offers you thousands of high quality product and lifestyle photos to help you improve your site.
I’ve linked to Burst below as well as our very own course on product photography so you can learn to do it yourself. The next asset I recommend is a business logo. If you’re an established business you’ve already got one, great. If you’re a new business, no one really knows your brand, so you have a lot of flexibility in these early days.
Get something basic using Shopify logo creator which I’ve linked below. But again, this isn’t absolutely necessary for launching your store. If you’re an established business, a nice to have would be your package sizes and weights for each of your products. This will help you calculate more precise shipping costs.
But again, not absolutely necessary when you’re just getting started creating your online store. Also requires a fair amount of writing. This is sometimes referred to as copywriting which you may have heard of before. Copywriting is all the words that you write on your website, from your home page to your product description and your contact page. Throughout the course, you’ll need to pause to do some copywriting.
I’ll also share some effective copywriting strategies I’ve learned along the way. The first thing we’re going to do in our new store is add a product. Your product page is the most important page for your online store. It’s where the sale happens and it turns that casual browser into a lifelong customer.
In the next lesson, let’s start your free trial.
