How to Start a Shopify Store: Step by Step for Beginners (South Africa Included)

By Eugene Madondo, SEO specialist · Rank to Earn · Updated November 2026

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If you want to sell products, Shopify is the fastest way to get a real store online. Hosting, security, checkout and the store builder are all included, so you don’t need to touch a server. This lesson takes you through starting a Shopify store in the order that saves you the most rework: the free trial, your plan, your domain, a theme, products, payments, shipping, taxes, legal pages and launch. It also covers the payment catch South Africans run into, because Shopify’s own payment system isn’t available here.

Is Shopify right for you?

Shopify is the right platform if your main goal is selling products, physical or digital, and you want checkout, stock, shipping and payments handled in one place. If your goal is a content or affiliate site that earns from articles, WordPress gives you more SEO control for less money each month.

What a Shopify store costs

A Shopify store costs a monthly plan fee, from $29 a month on Basic billed yearly, plus payment processing fees on every sale, plus a domain. Apps and paid themes are optional extras. You don’t pay for hosting, because Shopify includes it.

US prices from Shopify’s pricing page, checked 10 November 2026. Prices and offers can differ by country, so check what you see at signup.

• The trial offer. Shopify currently shows “3 days free, then $1/month for 3 months”. After the intro period your plan moves to its normal price.
• Yearly vs monthly. Billed yearly, Basic works out at $348 a year. Billed monthly it’s $468 a year. If you’re sure about the store, yearly saves you $120.
• The domain. A .com costs roughly what it costs anywhere else. The prices at Hostinger, Bluehost and Namecheap are compared in lesson 6: how to buy a domain name. A .co.za at 1-Grid is R109 a year including VAT.

Step 1: Start the Shopify free trial

Go to Shopify, click Start free trial and sign up with your email, Google or Apple account. Shopify asks a few questions about what you sell and where, then drops you into your store admin. It takes about five minutes.

1. Open Shopify and click “Start free trial”. Use an email address you’ll keep for the life of the business.
2. Answer the setup questions (what you plan to sell, whether you already sell elsewhere). They only change the suggestions you see, so don’t overthink them.
3. Choose your store’s country carefully. It sets your default currency, tax settings and which payment providers you can use. For a South African business, pick South Africa.
4. Note your temporary address, which looks like yourstore.myshopify.com. Customers won’t see it once you connect your own domain in Step 3.

Step 2: Fill in your store details and choose a plan

Before you design anything, go to Settings › General and add your store name, contact email, business address and currency, then choose a plan under Settings › Plan. Doing this first means your invoices, emails and checkout show the right details from day one.

1. Settings › General: store name, store contact email (customers see this), sender email, legal business name and address.
2. Store currency: rand (ZAR) for a South African store, US dollars for a US store. Change this before you take your first order.
3. Settings › Plan: Basic is enough for almost every first store. Upgrade only when the lower transaction fee on Grow saves you more than the extra monthly cost.

Step 3: Add your domain (buy in Shopify or connect your own)

You can buy a domain directly in Shopify under Settings › Domains, or buy it from a registrar and connect it. Buying in Shopify is the simplest. Buying elsewhere keeps your domain separate from your store, which helps if you ever move platforms. If you haven’t picked a name yet, start with lesson 5 on choosing a domain name.

If you buy outside Shopify, I’d use Hostinger for a .com, and 1-Grid for a .co.za, which is where I register my own South African domains. You only need the domain, not hosting.

How to connect a Hostinger domain to Shopify

1. In Hostinger, open Domains › Domains portfolio, click Manage next to your domain and go to DNS / Nameservers.
2. Edit the A record for the root domain: name @, points to 23.227.38.65.
3. Edit the CNAME named www so it points to shops.myshopify.com.
4. In Shopify, go to Settings › Domains, click Connect existing, enter your domain and click Next.
5. If Shopify asks for verification, add the TXT record it shows (name shopify_verification) in Hostinger, then click “I updated DNS records”.
6. Set it as your primary domain in Settings › Domains so every visitor lands on yourdomain.com.

Values from Shopify’s help centre guide for Hostinger domains, checked 10 November 2026. The same values work at any registrar.

Shopify issues a free SSL certificate once the domain connects, so your store loads on https:// without any extra setup.

Step 4: Choose and customise a theme

Start with one of Shopify’s free themes (Online Store › Themes), customise the colours, fonts, logo and homepage sections in the theme editor, and only buy a premium theme if a free one can’t do something you need. A clean free theme with good product photos beats an expensive theme with weak ones.

• Pick for your catalogue size. A few products: a theme with a big hero and a featured-product section. Many products: a theme with strong collection filters and menus.
• Set your brand basics in Theme settings: logo, two or three colours, one heading font and one body font.
• Build the homepage from sections: a clear headline about what you sell, featured products, a short “why buy from us” block, reviews and a newsletter signup.
• Check mobile. Use the phone preview in the editor. Most shoppers will see your store on a phone first.

The next lesson goes further: using Claude to write custom sections for your theme, without hiring a developer.

Step 5: Add your products

Add each product under Products › Add product with a clear title, a description that answers buyers’ questions, good photos, a price, stock and weight, then group products into collections. Your product pages are also your main SEO pages, so write them properly.

1. Title: what it is, in the words people search, e.g. “Organic Rooibos Loose Leaf Tea, 250g” (example), not a clever brand name on its own.
2. Description: who it’s for, what it does, sizes or materials, and what’s in the box. Short paragraphs and a bullet list work best.
3. Media: at least three photos on a plain background plus one in use. Add descriptive alt text to each.
4. Pricing and inventory: price, compare-at price if it’s on sale, SKU, stock quantity and “Charge tax” ticked if you’re VAT-registered.
5. Shipping: tick “Physical product” and add the weight, which Shopify uses for shipping rates.
6. Variants: add sizes or colours as variants rather than separate products.
7. Collections: group products (e.g. “Gift sets”, “Best sellers”) under Products › Collections and add them to your menu.

Step 6: Set up payments

Go to Settings › Payments and activate a payment provider so customers can pay by card. In supported countries such as the US and UK that’s Shopify Payments. In South Africa it isn’t available, so you choose a third-party provider from the list Shopify shows for your country.

• Shopify Payments countries: Shopify’s help centre lists the supported countries. South Africa isn’t on that list (checked 10 November 2026).
• Third-party providers: click “Choose a provider”, pick one, and connect it with the merchant account details from that provider. You’ll usually need to sign up with the provider first and pass their business checks.
• Manual methods: you can also add EFT or cash on delivery under Manual payment methods, but card payments convert far better.
• Test it: place a test order before launch and check the money and order emails arrive as expected.

Step 7: Set up shipping and taxes

Under Settings › Shipping and delivery, create shipping zones (local, national, international) with a flat rate or weight-based rates, and decide whether to offer free shipping over a set order value. Then check Settings › Taxes and duties so prices show tax the way your country requires.

• Keep shipping simple at first: one flat national rate and a free-shipping threshold is easier to manage than live courier quotes.
• Local pickup or delivery: turn these on if you have a shop or deliver locally.
• Taxes: in South Africa, prices shown to consumers normally include VAT if you’re VAT-registered. Whether you have to register depends on your turnover, so check SARS’s current rules or ask an accountant. I’m not a tax adviser, so treat this as a pointer, not advice.

Step 8: Add your legal and trust pages

Every store needs a refund policy, privacy policy, terms of service, shipping policy and contact information. Shopify can create templates for these under Settings › Policies, which you then edit to match how your business really works.

• Policies: generate the templates, then edit returns windows, delivery times and contact details. Shopify links them in your checkout automatically.
• South African stores: your privacy policy should reflect POPIA, and online sellers have disclosure duties under the ECT Act (business name, address and contact details on the site). Get legal advice if you’re unsure.
• Trust pages: an About page with a real photo and story, a Contact page with an email and phone number, and an FAQ page answer most pre-sale questions.

Step 9: Remove the password and launch

When your plan is chosen, payments work and your test order went through, go to Online Store › Preferences, turn off password protection and save. Your store is now live on your domain.

Shopify in South Africa: payments and the extra fee

You can run a Shopify store from South Africa and sell in rand, but Shopify Payments isn’t available, so you connect a local payment gateway and pay Shopify’s third-party transaction fee on top of the gateway’s own fees. “Shopify south africa” gets about 2,800 searches a month in South Africa (Ahrefs, November 2026), and this is the question behind most of them.

Payment gateways that work with Shopify in South Africa

Gateways commonly used with Shopify in South Africa include Payfast, Peach Payments, Ozow (instant EFT), Yoco and Netcash, according to Netcash’s 2026 guide to Shopify payment set-ups. Availability changes, so always choose from the list Shopify shows in Settings › Payments for a South African store.

• Plan fees are charged by card. Check your bank’s foreign transaction fee if your card is charged in US dollars.
• Domain: a .co.za tells local shoppers you’re a South African business. Register it at 1-Grid (R109 a year including VAT, checked 10 November 2026) and connect it with the A and CNAME records in Step 3.
• Couriers: set flat national rates to start, based on the courier quotes you get for your typical parcel size.

Shopify SEO basics

Shopify handles the technical SEO basics for you: it creates your sitemap at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml, a robots.txt file and SSL. Your job is to write a unique title and description for every product and collection, use descriptive image alt text, add the store to Google Search Console, and publish helpful blog posts that link to your products.

Shopify fixes some URL patterns (/products/ and /collections/), which you can’t change, but that doesn’t stop a store ranking. Content and links matter far more, and the content lessons in Module 4 show how to pick keywords a new store can rank for. If you want an SEO tool to research them, start with Ahrefs vs Semrush vs Moz.

One more thing: Shopify includes hosting, so you don’t need a separate host for the store. If you later add a WordPress content site alongside it, Hostinger is my pick for a first site, and Cloudways is what I use for bigger sites.

Summary: how to start a Shopify store

To start a Shopify store, sign up for the free trial, set your store country, currency and contact details, and choose a plan (Basic is enough to start). Buy a domain in Shopify or connect your own with an A record to 23.227.38.65 and a www CNAME to shops.myshopify.com. Customise a free theme, add products with clear titles, descriptions and photos, then set up payments, shipping, taxes and your policies. Place a test order and remove the store password to launch. In South Africa, use a local gateway such as Payfast, Peach Payments, Ozow or Yoco, and budget for Shopify’s third-party transaction fee.

Frequently asked questions

About Eugene Madondo

Eugene is a Cape Town-based SEO specialist and digital entrepreneur who has been earning online since 2012. He has worked in SEO at a tech startup, an agency and in-house tech roles, ran a consulting business, and has generated over $1.4 million from his own affiliate websites since 2020. He teaches website operators through Rank to Earn.

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