THE CURRICULUM / CH 2 — Shopify Essentials

2.2Key Functions for Store Setup

A six-part checklist that takes a store from looking finished to being able to take money and keep it.

6 min read

Your second-ever order gets disputed. Nothing went wrong: the parcel arrived and the customer is happy. She does not recognise the name on her card statement. Both names are yours, chosen in two different settings three weeks apart.

WHO INSPECTS THIS BEFORE ANY CUSTOMER DOES

What a stranger checks before entering a card, the signal that answers each doubt, and where on the page that signal lives. Is this a real shop: a contact route with a real address, in the footer of every page. Will it actually arrive: a delivery window in one sentence, on the page above the reviews. Will it look like the photo: customer photographs, with the reviews. Is it worth this: a rating summary with the moderate ones left in, beside the price. What if it is wrong: the return window and who pays postage, on the page rather than only the footer. Am I safe typing a card: the same name and branding as the page before, in the checkout header and on the card statement. Below, four fabrications that reverse all of it, struck out.
A processor and an ad reviewer check what a stranger does, faster.
  • A payment processor, deciding whether to hold your money.
  • An ad platform reviewer, deciding whether to show your page at all.
  • Both read the same evidence, and both say no faster than they explain.

NEITHER OF THEM WILL EVER SEE YOUR LOGO.

the unglamorous layer is the one that decides

1. DOMAIN AND THE NAME ON THE DOOR

  1. Connect one domain and set it primary. The default address announces that nothing was set up.
  2. Use one name across the browser tab, checkout header, email sender and card descriptor.
  3. Put a real contact address on that domain. Free-mail reads as temporary.
  4. Carry branding into checkout, where a buyer decides whether this is a shop or a funnel.
The path from add-to-cart to paid, with the specific reason a stranger leaves at each step. Add to cart: the button has scrolled out of reach. The cart: a total that does not include shipping yet. Checkout opens: it looks like a different company. Details: forced account creation and too many fields. Shipping: the cost and the delivery date both seen for the first time here. Payment: no method they recognise, or a currency to convert. Every exit is a reason, not a rate.
A checkout reading as a different company is one of these exits.

2. PAYMENTS

A processor is not plumbing. It underwrites you, and carries the loss if you take money and fail to deliver.

  • The site sells what it says, at real prices, with a working cart.
  • There is a route to a human, and messages sent to it arrive.
  • The goods are permitted. Restricted categories differ by processor.
The pages a store must have before it can take money, with two columns of marks showing which of the two inspections checks each one: the payment processor and the ad reviewer. Product and checkout, contact, shipping policy, returns and refunds, terms of service and privacy policy are marked for both. About and FAQ are marked for neither, and exist for the buyer. Each row also states what its absence signals. The marks are a checklist, not a score.
Two inspections, one set of pages.

3. SHIPPING

The same order fulfilled two ways, and what each way buys and charges. Shipping it direct holds nothing anywhere and the supplier sends each order: it buys no cash tied up in goods, the freedom to stop without a shelf full, and a cheap next product to try, and it costs a parcel that starts further away, someone else's queue setting the delivery date, and buying one unit at a time. Holding the stock means the order leaves a shelf you already paid for: it buys a parcel that leaves sooner, control over what is in the box, and quantity pricing instead of one by one, and it costs cash going out before the sale, unsold units staying yours, and the inability to stop quickly. Stock buys speed and margin, and charges cash up front for both. No prices, lead times, margins or order quantities are shown.
The window you publish depends on which of these you are doing.
  1. Decide which countries you serve. Everywhere is a support burden.
  2. Set rates you can live with at volume. Free shipping is a pricing decision.
  3. Publish the window as a range, slowest figure at the top, and say whether it counts from order or dispatch.
  4. Give heavy items their own profile. An averaged rate loses on the large ones.
  5. Decide what happens when an order is late before one is.
One selling price drawn as a vertical stack of the cost lines that consume it: product cost, shipping, duties and fees, payment fees, the cost of the sale, and what is left. The segments are drawn equal because no proportions are being claimed.
Free shipping does not remove this line. It moves it inside the price.

4. TAX

Beginners skip tax because it is dull and nothing visibly breaks when ignored. It breaks later, quietly. What you owe depends on thresholds that move, which is why no written course gives a correct universal answer, including this one.

NOTHING VISIBLY BREAKS WHEN YOU IGNORE TAX.

it breaks later, quietly

  • Find out whether you must register in your own country, and when.
  • Set the store to collect where you are obliged to, not the default.
  • Display prices inclusive or exclusive of tax consistently. Inconsistency reads as a price change at checkout.
  • Keep records from the first order. A bad guess compounds silently.
Statement poster: "Your store is not slow. Your offer is."

5. POLICY PAGES

One refund traced through every line it lands on. The product is not back on the shelf: it is with the buyer, in the post back, or not coming back at all. The shipping out is already spent, because the carrier moved it once and that work is done and paid for. The shipping back is paid by someone, and if you take the order back the return leg is a second freight cost on one order. The ad spend is already spent: it bought this order, the order went away, and the spend did not go with it. The processor fee depends on your own agreement, which sets what comes back and what is kept. Your time is the line nobody bills you for: the message, the decision, the paperwork, and the next one arriving behind it. The sale reverses; the costs it already made do not. No amounts, fee percentages or refund rates are shown.
The policy decides who pays the return leg.

THE PAGES THAT MUST EXIST

PageWhat it is forWhat its absence signals
ContactAn address on your domain, and a form that reaches itNobody to complain to
Shipping policyWhere you ship, what it costs, when it landsDelivery times avoided
Returns and refundsThe window, and who pays postageRefunds not planned for
Terms of serviceThe contract someone is buying underA business not run as one
Privacy policyWhat you collect, and how it is handledGrounds for rejection
AboutWho is behind the store, without invented historyAn anonymous store
FAQThe objections you would answer fifty times by emailCarts you never hear about

A policy that cannot be found counts as missing. Reviewers do not search.

6. AFTER THE SALE

The chain from an order placed with a supplier to a parcel delivered, with the break points marked between the links. After the order is placed it can turn out the item was never actually in stock, which leaves you having promised a date nobody else agreed to. After it is picked and packed the wrong variant can be in the box, which costs a return you pay for and a review you cannot edit. In transit the tracking can stop updating, so the customer asks you and you know nothing either. At the border it can be held, taxed or turned back, so the customer is asked for money nobody mentioned. The parcel is then delivered, or marked delivered and never received. Every link is somebody else's job and every break is still yours. No failure rate or transit time is shown.
Tracking that stops updating is one of these, and the customer asks you.
  1. Send order confirmation with the delivery window in the product page wording.
  2. Send shipping confirmation with a link that resolves, and warn that tracking lags.
  3. Write the delay email now. Under pressure it comes out defensive.
  4. Set up cart recovery in the tool you chose for the capture job.
  5. Read every one of those emails yourself.
What makes a store page slow, drawn as five weights stacked on the page beneath them. Images and video are the heaviest, and the heaviest thing loads before anything can be read. Apps and their scripts come next, because every page pays for a feature that one page uses. Then tracking and pixels, because measurement is not free and loads too. Then chat, popups and widgets, which arrive before they are wanted. Then fonts and theme extras, because a second typeface is a second download. Underneath all of it is the page itself: a photo, a price and a button, carrying the lot. The thickness of each weight is a rank, not a measurement, and no timing figure appears.
What loads before your price does.

THE PRE-LAUNCH GATE

The store's pre-launch gate as a seven-box tick list, drawn as a form with a hairline box beside every line. Place a real order with a real card on a phone, arriving the way an ad sends people. Check the descriptor on the statement, refund it, confirm the refund lands and read the email. Open every footer link on a phone with no template wording left in a policy. Load the store on mobile data with the cache cleared, then a variant product, then one that is out of stock. Compare shipping zones against ad targeting country by country. Confirm the page price is the checkout price and tax matches registration and destination. Hand it to a stranger, have them buy it while narrating, and do not help. The verdict rule at the foot is absolute: if any box is unticked, do not buy traffic yet. Below it are the conditions that stop a launch outright, whatever else is ticked.
What has to be true before a dollar of traffic is bought.

HAND IT TO A STRANGER AND DO NOT HELP.

TAKEAWAYS

  • A processor underwrites you, and checks that everything on the store describes one business.
  • Statement descriptor and store name must match, or confusion arrives as chargebacks.
  • Publish the delivery range with the slowest realistic figure, order to doorstep.
  • Every policy page must be reachable. Template wording left in one is a rejection.

CHECK YOURSELF

A new ad account is rejected before it spends anything. Why?

You offer free shipping on all orders. What have you actually decided?

DO THIS BEFORE THE NEXT MODULE

  1. 01Write every required policy page in your own words, with no template wording left in it.
  2. 02Write your delivery window as one sentence and use that sentence everywhere it appears.
  3. 03Find out whether you are required to register for tax in your own country.
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