Okay.
Welcome back.
Welcome back to essential number three understanding your Shopify store.
Now the purpose of this lecture is to give you a high level understanding of Shopify.
I want you to start becoming more and more comfortable with this software, particularly if you've never
done anything like this before.
As I said in the previous lecture, this is in fact very easy to use.
It's all point and click and you don't need any technical skills.
And so what I hope is that by the end of this lecture, you'll be saying to yourself, ah, yes, I'm
starting to get this now.
I really think I can build out a fantastic business using Shopify.
Now, just before we actually get started, I just want to draw your attention to this, where you see
this message, your trial just started and up the top here talking about selecting a plan.
I want to make it clear right now, at this point in time, you do not need to select a plan.
I want you to get the full benefit of this free trial, as I have so much knowledge I want to share
with you.
And so on that note, let's get going.
And so the first thing I want to show you is something pretty cool.
I'd like you to come over to here where it says online store.
And when you hover over it, you're going to see this little I, I'd like you to click on that little
I and then, believe it or not, what you're now looking at is your very own Shopify store.
At least the beginnings of it.
Of course, we've got a long way to go, and I'm going to be showing you everything you need to know,
but Shopify has already given us a massive head start, completely for free and with no technical knowledge
required.
And I have to say, having been in e-commerce for over 20 years, this really is some of the best software
I've seen.
So let's take a closer look.
So first of all, you have a logo where it says my store.
Then we have a menu, we have home, we have catalog where you're going to be showing all of your fantastic
products, and then a contact page so that people can get in contact with us.
And then over here on the right hand side, we have the ability to search our store, and then finally
a cart and also a checkout.
In other words, absolutely everything you need to build a dropshipping business.
Then scrolling down a bit, we have this image and also this title.
Browse our latest products with a button to shop all so to go directly to our products.
Of course, we could replace this with a fantastic image that really entices somebody to come into our
store.
Going down a little bit further, we have a featured products section, so showing off some of the best
products in our store.
And then at the bottom we even have a subscribe to our emails.
If we had a newsletter that we wanted to send to our future clients.
Now all of this is just the beginning.
We can change everything here, and we can also add in a whole lot of extra and very exciting functionality.
All of which of course, are going to be showing you on the course.
But for the moment, let's scroll back up to the top and then go back to the page where we started.
And it's at this stage that I want to make something really clear.
The page you're looking at here is what I refer to as the admin system, or perhaps the back end.
So throughout the course, if I'm talking about the admin system or the back end, I'm referring to
this page and it's here where we're actually going to build our store.
And then the store itself, the part that your customers are going to see is of course, where we were
just now.
And it's here, much like any site where you might buy something on the internet, where your customers
are going to come browse your products and buy them.
And to make sure that happens, we'll be making your store look absolutely fantastic.
So this is your store.
And then back over here.
This is the back end or the admin system.
This is where we're actually going to be building the site.
It's here where we're going to be adding products, adding extra pages, making our site look incredible
with fantastic images, taking and processing orders, and making sure that you have a continuous stream
of highly targeted traffic to your store to buy your products.
And of course, much, much more.
And all of that is going to be coming up on the course.
But if you're still a little bit unclear, please don't worry.
It will become clearer and clearer as we go through the lectures.
Now, at this point, I want to make an important point, and that is that you do not need to understand
absolutely everything about Shopify in order to build a fantastic business.
In fact, like most software, which is incredibly powerful, you only need a small part in order to
achieve what you're looking for.
And I think an interesting analogy is a spreadsheet.
Spreadsheets these days are incredibly powerful, but for the most part, we really only use them to
add up a couple of numbers.
And to a certain extent, Shopify is a bit like that.
We only need certain parts of this software to build our business, and that's one of the huge advantages
you have on this course.
Because you've got me, I'm going to be showing you at the appropriate time the parts of Shopify that
you need in order to create your store.
So as we go through the lectures, sometimes you might think to yourself, well, why hasn't Tim shown
us that?
And if that is the case, then it will be for one of two reasons.
The first reason will be that you don't actually need it.
So therefore I don't need to teach it to you.
Or the second reason will be that it is actually coming up in the course in a future lecture.
But rest assured, as I've said before, I'm going to be showing you everything that you need to know.
And on that note, what I'd like to do now is to give you a high level overview of the admin system
itself, so that you can start to become more familiar with it.
And to kick things off, by default, we are on the home page.
Now, the home page is effectively a summary or a snapshot of your business at any point in time.
And so it's going to automatically update as you sell more and more products.
But right now it's showing you the setup guide.
But just to say please don't worry about this because I'll be guiding you through all the necessary
steps.
Then going back to the menu, the next three items are the three essential parts of any business, literally
any business in the world.
And those are the orders, the products and the customers.
Every single business must have products that they're selling.
When they sell those products, it creates an order.
And having created an order, that person then becomes a customer.
And so under the product section, we're going to be adding fantastic products to your store.
When people buy them, we'll be able to go over to the orders section in order to manage and fulfill
those orders.
And then over time, you're going to be building up an increasing list of highly loyal customers, people
who want to come back to your store to buy your products time and time again.
Next up on the menu, we have content.
Now, content is where you're going to be storing all of the files for your site.
So let's say fantastic images for your homepage or perhaps images for your products.
All those kinds of files are going to be found under the content section.
Underneath that we have analytics.
So it's here that we're going to be able to see everything about our store, who's visiting our store,
where they're coming from.
What are they buying.
Are they repeat customers.
How much are they spending.
When are they spending.
What are our best selling products?
All those questions and many, many more will all be answered in the analytics section.
Moving on down a bit further, we have marketing now.
Marketing is the lifeblood of any business because of course marketing is all about driving customers
to your store.
And it's why I've dedicated a massive section of this course to teach you how to drive highly targeted
traffic to your store to come and buy your products.
But more importantly than that, I've actually structured the whole section.
As you will see, to start with completely free traffic techniques.
You won't need any money to start driving those initial customers to your store to get your first sales.
And then when you get those first sales, I'm going to show you how you can reinvest that money into
more powerful traffic techniques to further drive more customers and therefore more and more sales.
And then we have discounts, and it's in this section where we can create things like coupon codes or
special offers to help further drive your business.
And so to the next section which you can see is entitled sales channels.
So what is a sales channel?
So a sales channel is simply a point of contact where you will sell your products.
So it could be a shop in the real world.
It could be on a social media account like Facebook or Instagram, or it could be as you're going to
be learning on this course, your very own store, your online store.
And while you might see other sales channels listed here, the online store is the only thing that you
need in order to build your business.
And it's therefore this sales channel that we're going to be focusing on throughout the course.
And then the next section is apps.
Now, I think everybody listening to this course is now familiar with the concept of an app, because
on your phone you would download apps in order to increase its functionality.
And Shopify is no different.
Shopify, in fact, has its very own app store, where we can download all kinds of apps to increase
the power and functionality of your store and of course, amongst the thousands of apps that are available,
I'm going to be showing you exactly the ones that you'll be needing.
And then finally, right down the bottom here, you see the settings.
We're going to be visiting this section quite a lot, but just know that at this stage, it's here where
we can control some of the finer points of your business.
And so that concludes the high level overview of Shopify.
And of course, as we go through the lectures, we're going to be getting into more and more detail.
But the overall purpose of this lecture, as I said in the beginning, is to start getting you more
and more comfortable with Shopify so that you really start to appreciate how powerful and simple this
is to use.
Because if you take a step back and think about it with no expense to yourself and no technical skills,
you already have the beginnings of a fantastic store, and you also have an incredibly powerful admin
system to build an amazing business.
And that in combination with everything else that I'm going to be teaching you, you have everything
that you need to succeed.
So really super congratulates.
For listening to these first few lectures.
I hope you're following along with me, because if you are, you will have already made those first
really important first steps.
So now it's time to start getting into the detail.
I really can't wait to teach you everything that I've learned in my 20 plus years of e-commerce, so
I'll see you in the next lecture.