- Product photography decides how legit your store looks SO much faster than the theme does. If your budget allows only one hire, hire the photographer (and I'm saying this as a web designer).
- Shopify sends you zero traffic (minus the Shop app). Pick your traffic-driving strategies before launch and carve out dedicated time for them in your week.
- Make sure you have a solid bare minimum in terms of branding: a horizontal logo, color palette with accessible combinations, and typography guidelines that go beyond "here are two fonts that I like"
- A free theme plus custom-coded sections is my favorite setup by far, HOWEVER a $300-$400 premium theme is what I'd highly recommend if you're launching without a designer's help at first.
- Launch with the pages and functionalities that help someone buy the thing in front of them today. If it helps them buy more, buy again, or buy from another country, you can probably save it for post-launch.
- Get clear on who's packing orders and what your weekly growth routine looks like now while you still have the headspace.
Before you start your Shopify store, it’s worth knowing where your product photos are coming from, how people will find you, and who’s packing the orders when they do (even if that person is you, surrounded by boxes in the kitchen).
Across the library of Shopify stores I've built and audited, I’ve seen how much these early decisions affect the build, budget, and the work that comes after launch.
I’ve helped founders work through these decisions at all sorts of stages, including while they’re still developing their products.
Having these conversations early gives us time to figure out what needs to happen before the build, what’s worth spending on, and what can wait (because there’s always something else you could add to the launch list).
So here are 7 things I’d want you to have sorted before you start, with the same advice I give founders when they first inquire about working together.
Pssst - If you've already launched and something feels off, start with the most common Shopify mistakes I see in store audits and come back here for the planning side.
1. Get. Amazing. Product. Photography. First.
Seriously, this is the simplest and biggest lever this is to how professional and trustworthy your brand presents itself.
You could have the simplest of online stores, but with bangin' product photography, do super well without all the bells and whistles.
On the other hand: you could have a REALLY awesomely designed storefront, but if your product photography is subpar, it drags down the entire thing hard.
I'm saying this even though I'm a web designer: if your launch budget only allows for one or the other, hire the photographer before the designer.
Your product photos fill most of the visible space on every page of the store. Humans are incredibly visual creatures and resonate more quickly with an awesome product shot than they do with whatever gorgeous font your designer chose (which pains me to say, but it's true).
Another thing: a dead giveaway of a brand-new store is mismatched photography, AKA one product on a white background, one on a wooden table, and one pulled from a supplier catalog. Consistency across your product photography aids brand recognition and trust.
There's nothing better as a web designer than your client getting back their new photography and it being awesome. It feels like such a treat to design around amazing eCom photography.
2. Have a plan for getting traffic to your store
And "I think I'll just post on Instagram here and there" ≠ a plan.
Shopify sends you zero traffic (one caveat: the Shop App).
Etsy and Amazon come with shoppers already wandering the metaphorical aisles, but a Shopify store is your own address on the internet.
That's great because you're not paying as much in fees per transaction, but the downside is that nobody shows up to the party until you invite them (this is the mega bummer nobody mentions when they tell you to move from Etsy to Shopify, and I say that as someone who tells people to move from Etsy to Shopify).
I see a lot of brand owners come to me wanting a Shopify store without having fully internalized the work that needs to go into driving enough traffic to make meaningful sales. They expect a gorgeous store to be built, and somehow that will do all the work.
I don't say this to intimidate you—driving serious traffic can be done, and there are a lot of things you can try to see what works—but just want you to be prepared and have a plan.
Get a first draft of your traffic-driving plan written before launch, weekly milestones and to-dos included.
Ads bring traffic quickly and stop the moment you stop paying, social builds over a few months and needs you showing up most days, and SEO takes the longest but keeps paying once it's working.
Pro tip for a combo that works: combine one channel that you can sustain and see relatively quick results from, plus one slow burner (usually SEO) in the background.
Quality matters as much as volume here. If your ads bring in total bargain hunters when you sell $120 candles, your conversion rate will tank because of an audience mismatch—no amount of on-page conversion rate optimization will fix it.
A lot of new brand owners pour everything into the store build and nothing into the daily grind of bringing people to it. Set aside time in your week for traffic-driving activities before you launch, the same way you'd block out time for packing orders.
3. Have a few key brand foundations in place
On the branding front, you want 3 things ready at a minimum before a Shopify build: a horizontal, web-ready logo, a color palette with accessible color contrast combos, and defined typography.
Here's my permission to you to launch without the fancy 30-page strategy doc. The above 3 things are the bare minimum that you want in order to brand your Shopify store, and it's what I require all clients to come to a Shopify project with. Skipping them is one of the branding mistakes that cost you money once the store is live.
The logo needs a horizontal version for the nav bar, because a tall-ish square (or even vertical) one either gets scaled down until it's illegible, OR it stretches the header to be super tall and eat into your valuable on-page real estate.
For your color palette, it being "accessible" means that your all of your text is readable on any background colors it appears on. This is something that I see brands, even super big/well established ones, get wrong all the time.
For typography, you should have at least two fonts (or at least two different WEIGHTS of one font). Don't just pick a heading and body—you should also define what your subheadings and buttons will look like.
If you're having trouble deciding on fonts for your storefront, start with my favorite font pairings for Shopify, and if your brand font isn't in Shopify's font library, my free custom font tool adds it without paying for an app.
I feel so strongly about these 3 things that I created a free tool called the Palette Lab that:
1. Lets you check if your logo is too tall for the nav.
2. Dynamically lets you preview your color palette while making sure it's accessible.
3. Lets you upload and preview your brand fonts in combination with your on-site color palette preview.
It's something that I personally use myself all the time, and saves a ton of time/pixel pushing when creating the foundations of a brand for a Shopify store.
4. Free theme or paid theme
So. As a designer, I'm firmly in the "free theme plus custom-coded layouts and functionality" camp...WHEN a designer is creating the store.
A free theme like Dawn or one of the 10 Horizon themes gives you a fast, well-documented foundation, and custom sections on top are where the store starts looking super custom and memorable.
BUT, I also know that not every new Shopify store can (or should) spring for a professional designer before it's live.
If you're a solo founder just starting out, the $300-$400 you'd spend on a premium theme goes a really. long. way. in making your store feel legit.
Uncustomized Dawn screams dropshipping by now (even non-website people can subconsciously spot it from a mile away). A paid theme, particularly a well-vetted one from the Shopify theme store, comes with layouts and features that free themes would make you build yourself.
Here's how I'd decide: launch on a free theme if you plan to hire a designer within your first half a year, buy a paid theme if you're DIY-ing for the foreseeable future, and go custom with a designer once your brand and photography are set and you've gathered some data around your product and target audience.
| Theme Decision | Rough Cost | Best for when |
|---|---|---|
| Free theme (Dawn, Horizon family) | $0 | You'll hire a designer soon, or you're still testing the business |
| Paid theme | $100-$430, most $220-$360 | You're launching solo and want it to feel polished now, don't plan on hiring a designer within the next 6 months. |
| Custom design on a free theme | Anywhere from $3,000-$50,000+, depending on designer vs. agency and experience | Brand and photography are set and you have a strong understanding of your brand + product |
5. Launch must-haves vs. things to add after launch
In general, you want to launch with a store that's fully fleshed out, strategic, and not leaving any major gaps.
That said, there is such a thing as overdoing it for launch. You know when you keep spinning your wheels to try to get the thing to be perfect when you really should just be taking imperfect action? (Me too).
So, you don't want to feel like you have to complete your whole laundry list of a wholesale setup, subscriptions, a loyalty program, a product customizer and localization all before your first customer even hits checkout.
These types of things are best done when layered on top of an existing storefront that works. That way, you're not: 1. overwhelming yourself and drowning in the to-do list, and 2. able to see what moves the needle piece by piece.
Perhaps your brand has a whole team building the site ahead of launch, and a whole team managing it afterwards—in that case, shoot for the moon with all the bells and whistles.
But for the majority of solo founders and small brands, an initial Shopify build followed by an ongoing retainer to chip away at the list is the best plan of attack.
A simple rule of thumb: if a feature helps someone buy the thing in front of them today, launch it. If it helps them buy more, buy again, or buy from another country, it's probably fine as a post-launch project.
6. Decide how you'll fulfill your orders
The first order is a thrill, and the four hundredth is a slog at your kitchen table with a tape gun, so get clear now who's packing (and who's going to be packing once you hit X amount of weekly orders).
These are the main 4 options, and companies typically move between them as they grow:
Doing it yourself is the cheapest (and most time-consuming) option. You pack and send out every order, try to minimize papercuts incurred, and you're on the hook for anything lost or damaged in transit. A lot of small businesses start here and move to a fulfillment center or in-house warehouse once order volume justifies the extra cost.
Dropshipping costs more per unit, but takes far less of your time. The dropshipping company owns the inventory, packs and sends every order, and handles lost or damaged items, which also means you give up control over packaging and delivery speed.
Fulfillment companies (third-party logistics, or 3PLs) store, pack and handle returns for inventory you own. They charge a monthly storage fee plus a per-order fee, so the math only maths once you have enough orders to cover the fixed cost.
In-house warehouse is when you know you've made it—you have enough volume and stability to make the overhead worth it, and you reap the benefits of overall less storage and handling fees per order.
7. Know how you'll stay motivated to keep growing the store
Running your own online store takes discipline, and it's even more open-ended than running a 1:1 service business where clients set your deadlines.
You'll find that nobody is waiting on your product page rewrite, and nobody emails you when a collection goes stale. You don't have a boss breathing down your neck if you skip posting that Reel or running that new campaign this week. The store just kind of sits there, kicking back and hanging out, until you decide to work on it.
So, that said: set up and stick to some sort of schedule with daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly tasks. Things like fulfilling orders and messages daily, posting content weekly, doing biz admin monthly, reviewing what's working each quarter, and doing the bigger stuff (a redesign, a new product line) once a year.
If you want a reality check on what that this type of weekly work adds up to, the math behind a $100k Shopify store is a good one.
Seriously consider a coach or a program that goes beyond what you can hodge-podge together from YouTube, ideally one that gives you advice for your specific situation.
And, be aware of your weak spots. If photography, copy, or design aren't your thing, hiring the right expert takes it off your plate AND gets it done far better than you would while juggling everything else (when you get to the design part, my Shopify services spells it all out).
