How To Create a Website With Shopify in 9 Steps (2026)

Creating a website is one of the fastest ways to accelerate your small business. A sleek, modern site helps you find new customers, improves your user experience, and generates sales with an online store.

Plus, creating your own website with Shopify has never been easier. The website builder makes it simple to design pages that help build your brand. It also comes with business tools, like shipping services and online checkout, and marketing tools, such as search engine optimization (SEO), to sell online.

This post contains all the information you need to make a website for your business with Shopify, with a step-by-step guide to walk you through the building process.

How to create a website on Shopify in 9 steps

1. Decide on the purpose of your website
2. Choose a website builder
3. Choose a web host
4. Pick a domain name
5. Decide on a layout
6. Add relevant pages
7. Connect an ecommerce payment system
8. Add business tools
9. Preview, test, and publish your Shopify website

1. Decide on the purpose of your website

Before you begin creating your website, think about your ideal customer profile. Who is your site for? Some businesses have an individual consumer target audience while others focus on businesses (B2B). Even within business to consumer (B2C) or B2B, you may have multiple personas. Think about them as web visitors and what would make the best user experience (UX) for them. 

Secondly, set some goals. What do you want to achieve by making a website? Developing a vision for your site helps you choose what features to work on first.

Common business website functions include:

• Selling physical or digital products
• Selling services
• Posting information about your company
• Expressing your brand
• Sharing updates and announcements in a blog
• Highlighting customer reviews
• Turning website visitors into leads
• Growing your audience

Once you’ve set your goals, you can make a plan for how to achieve them. If your goal is to sell physical products, for example, consider how you’ll organize your inventory, promote products, and process payments.

Developing a website is an ongoing task with no endpoint. Specific goals, followed by detailed plans broken into tasks, will help you build with purpose.

2. Choose a website builder

The fastest way to create a business website is with a website builder. Website builders are tools for designing web pages and adding features. They use drag-and-drop interfaces making it easy to design without coding knowledge. The best website-building software includes:

• Templates and themes to speed up creation
• Custom options
• A content library of images and videos
• Drag-and-drop design tools
• Optimization of your website, marketing, and sales
• AI content creation tools

As time goes on, you’ll likely want to upgrade your basic site with custom features. This may require altering your website’s HTML and CSS files. The best website builders should allow you to edit your code and take control if necessary.

Shopify website builder

You can use Shopify’s website builder to create all kinds of websites, not just online stores.

When you create a website on Shopify, you’ll get access to customizable, mobile-responsive themes and 24/7 live support to help you design your website, your way.

Once you’re ready to start selling or promoting your content, Shopify has everything you need to connect with your audience (no third parties required). You can accept payments, capture leads and customer information, and automate email marketing campaigns entirely within the platform.

To get started:

1. Head to Shopify and start a free trial. To create a Shopify account you’ll need an email address and a basic idea of why you want to build your website. You can create a custom domain at a later stage.
2. Add basic site information. Once you’re in the store builder, you’ll see a menu on the left with links to various tools and features. Click Settings to customize your store name, time zone, and currency—or follow the setup guide to begin adding content to your site.
   
   

💡Tip: Ask Sidekick to create a completely personalized storefront. Follow up with Shopify Magic to fill in headlines, write product descriptions, adjust images, and more. 

What are some other website builders besides Shopify?

Besides Shopify, popular website and ecommerce platforms include Wix, Squarespace, and WordPress.

Each platform offers different benefits, so think about the goals of your website and what features will be most helpful. Compare ease of use, design options, customization capabilities, pricing, and customer support. If your site supports a business or organization you aim to grow, make sure the platform and site have the capacity to grow with you.

Other drag-and-drop website editors include:

• Weebly
• 3dcart
• Volusion
• GoDaddy

3. Choose a web host

Every website is hosted on a server. Web hosts make space on servers for your site and all its accompanying data.

Choosing the best web hosting service provider can be challenging because each hosting company offers different payment plans with data transfer limits, domain email accounts, and storage. Plus, when you select a host, you’re not sure how fast you’ll grow or what services you’ll need going forward.

If you’re creating an online store, look for ecommerce hosts that offer:

• Unlimited bandwidth, so you’re never charged for website traffic as you grow
• Payment card industry (PCI) compliance, to keep customer data safe and secure
• Fast servers, so customers can load your website quickly, no matter where they are
• Unlimited email forwarding, to save time and help your business look professional
• Your own domain, so you can create and register a domain name for your website quickly

🧠Good to know: Every Shopify plan comes with fast and reliable web hosting, including domain names, unlimited email forwarding, and unlimited bandwidth. Shopify’s servers are placed across the world, so users can load your website quickly, no matter where they are.

4. Pick a domain name

A domain name is your website’s digital address—it’s how people find you online. It gives your business credibility and, when picked with care, helps your site rank higher in search results for industry-related keywords.

When choosing a domain name:

• Keep it short and brand appropriate
• Select a top-level domain (TLD), if possible
• Consider country-specific domains (.ca, .co.uk, etc.)
• Include keywords related to your website

If your business’s name is already in use, get creative and choose a domain that expresses your brand. For example, Biko, an online fashion retailer, uses the domain ilovebiko.com. It’s relatable, clear, and puts customers in the right mindset once they arrive.

Other options when your first-choice domain is taken include adding a suffix (e.g., storenameonline.com, storenamecanada.com) or using a different extension (e.g., storename.shop, storename.ca). Just remember: changing domain names once your website is established can cause SEO headaches, so choose wisely.

🧠Good to know: If you’ve already got an existing domain from a third-party provider, you can connect it to your Shopify website by following these steps. 

How to register your domain name

Domain names are stored on the domain name system (DNS), a global storage system. You’ll need to check if your business name or chosen site name is available as a domain. You can check domain name availability with any hosting provider, such as Shopify’s domain name search tool.

If it’s available, you can register for the domain using a hosting service like Shopify, Google Domains, or GoDaddy. Because domain names are universal, every provider offers the same selection of names.

💡Tip: Some providers offer extremely low fees for the first year but increase them later. Make sure you understand the anticipated fees over the whole span of the contract or agreement, and for renewals.

When you build a website with Shopify, you don’t need to find a third-party registrar to manage a custom domain. Browse, buy, and manage custom domains from your Shopify admin dashboard, with free SSL certificates and WHOIS privacy protection available. 

💡 Need inspiration? Use Shopify’s free AI business name generator for suggestions.

5. Decide on a layout

With hosting and a domain name, you’re ready to begin building your website. The first stage of website design is finding the right layout and theme to match your content and brand.

Your website builder will likely offer free and paid themes you can install. Most themes are designed for specific use cases, such as blogging sites or themes for online stores.

Shopify provides a default theme for your store. If you want a different look, click Online Store in the left sidebar and explore other options from the Shopify Theme Store. It contains more than 100 themes, each with distinctive styles and features. 

Explore free themes or choose from professionally designed paid themes created by world-renowned designers, including Happy Cog, Clearleft, and Pixel Union. Each one is customizable, user-friendly, and allows you to preview your storefront as you customize themes. 

How to choose a website theme

The fit between your theme and website content doesn’t need to be perfect; you can edit colors and elements later. But try to find a broad match to factors such as your brand, industry, and product catalog size.

Pick a theme with multiple variations

Many themes include various layout options, supporting even deeper levels of customization. Check your shortlisted design offers different homepage layouts, button styles, and page structures to adapt as your website (and perhaps your business) grows.

Look for built-in features

Consider the features you need based on your website’s goals. For example, if you have lots of products, look for a theme with an auto-fill search bar. If you want to highlight awards and accolades, consider a theme with a media section.

Don’t choose themes based on colors or fonts

While a color scheme that matches your brand is helpful, you can always update colors, fonts, and other visual details later. 

Test different themes before committing

You’re never stuck with a theme. If you discover something about a theme that doesn’t work for you (like how its design translates to phones), you can install a new one without recreating all your web pages. Just be sure to backup your Shopify site before making any changes.

💡Tip: Once you’ve selected a theme, consider some basic, site-wide changes to your color scheme or font selection. To do this, click Customize theme after selecting a theme and use the menu tools to edit page Sections or Theme Settings. Here, you can also set your site logo, layout, and other features.

6. Add relevant pages

A relevant page on your website means different things depending on your business type.

Product and collection pages are necessary if you’re running an ecommerce business. You’ll want landing pages for your menu and reservations if you’re a restaurant owner. Real estate professionals will likely add a page to showcase their listings, a form to collect contact information, or possibly a scheduler to set showing appointments.

📌Get started: Add pages to your Shopify website from the Pages tab in your Shopify admin. Enter a title and content for the page (use Shopify Magic to assist if helpful), then tick Visible to publish it. 

Make an SEO content plan to rank your pages

Whatever pages and posts you add to your site, keep content relevant to your industry and niche. This begins the process of building authority within your area of expertise. As you upload content and visitors interact with your website, Google will place your website pages within its directory.

Tailoring your content based on your competition and becoming more valuable to visitors is a process called search engine optimization (SEO). The process includes:

1. Finding relevant keywords with a keyword research tool.
2. Optimizing your content by matching it to searched phrases popular with your primary audience. 

Standard pages to create for your website include

Page requirements will differ depending on your website’s primary goal. Here are six that most entrepreneurs need when building a website on Shopify:

Homepage

A homepage is the entrance to your website. It communicates who you are and the services you provide. Use yours to guide visitors toward your key products and offerings—perhaps highlighting your bestselling products or most enticing promotions. 

Product pages

Product pages describe and prompt your goods, as well as provide information such as stock levels, reviews, and product variations for shoppers. 

Create a new page for each product or service you provide to make them individually searchable. To do this in Shopify, hit the Products button in the menu and begin filling in your product information. Follow the process to add titles, descriptions, prices, hero images, and videos. 

Keep products organized by creating collections and categories. These can be automated—if you’re selling stationery, for example, product pages with the word “journal” or “planner” in the title can be automatically added to your Journal collection. 

🧠Good to know: You can add your own products, digital products, and services, as well as third-party products to a Shopify website.

Contact page

A Contact page lets people get in touch if they have questions. You can include different channels for customer support, such as a contact form, or direct people to an FAQ.

FAQ page

On an FAQ page, you can answer common questions people have about your business. It’s great to encourage self-service because it decreases the load on customer support teams. By providing answers to simple or common questions, you free your customer service team to focus on complex problem-solving and better customer experiences.

💡Tip: Help customers find your FAQ page by linking to it from your live chat function. Shopify Inbox can even pull content from store policies to suggest answers to popular customer questions. 

About page

Build a page that tells your story and explains your site’s reason for existing. An About page helps visitors connect with your brand and builds trust. You can also add relevant information and links to your profiles across social networks.

If you aspire to connect with media or podcasters for interviews or appearances, include a section with relevant biography and media contact information. If it’s different from what’s on your Contact page, add a line on the Contact page such as, “For media inquiries or to request interviews, contact [name] at media@[your domain].” That way, an interested reporter or podcast scheduler can find you on either page.

Policy pages

No matter your business model, there are legal policies you’ll need to follow. For example, ecommerce stores need a return policy and a shipping policy. 

Shopify has free tools to assist:

• Shipping policy template
• Refund policy generator
• Terms and conditions generator
• Privacy policy generator

💡Tip: Beyond these page types, aim to create pages that build customer trust, such as blog posts, buyer’s guides, customer testimonials, and independent reviews. 

7. Connect an ecommerce payment system

Many online businesses build websites to make sales. To achieve that goal, it should be as easy as possible for visitors to buy through your website. Whether you’re dropshipping or selling your own products, a seamless payment system is non-negotiable.

Before customers can use your checkout, add a payment provider to your website. Luckily, today’s website builders typically come with native payment processing systems or ecommerce plug-ins that you can use to accept customer payments.

All Shopify plans include Shopify Payments, which lets website owners accept credit cards—no third-party apps necessary. You can also offer express pay options like Shop Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal, or let customers pay over time with Klarna and Shop Pay Installments. 

📌Get started: Head to Payments and activate Shopify Payments, PayPal, or another payment provider. If you choose Shopify Payments, you’re automatically set up to accept all major payment methods.

8. Add business tools

The Shopify App Store has more than 8,000 add-ons built to expand the capabilities of Shopify websites. These third-party applications can connect your website with social media and external sales channels, upgrade the quality of your content and page design, and streamline your shipping and fulfillment process.

Many other website builder platforms have similar libraries of extensions and integrations. You can find free Shopify apps to:

• Integrate with online selling sites
• Create loyalty programs
• Build an email marketing list
• Find trending products to sell online
• Run Facebook ads
• Create lead-generation pop-ups
• Offer live chat support
• Add more payment gateways to your shopping cart
• Understand Google Analytics data 

These business tools can unlock new opportunities for your website that improve your customers’ experiences and boost sales. It all comes down to finding the right apps and pricing for your business needs.

💡Tip: Can’t find an app that fits your needs? Ask Sidekick, the AI co-founder available inside your Shopify admin, to build it for you.

9. Preview, test, and publish your website

Creating a Shopify website is the first step in establishing an online presence. Before you go live, test your site thoroughly:

• Make sure content loads correctly and all hyperlinks function
• Run a quick user experience check and ensure your products and services are presented the way you want 
• Send your website to coworkers, friends, and family to ensure it loads quickly and correctly across different devices and internet connections 

Now that you’ve created a website for your business, what’s next?

If you want to create a website to sell products or promote your brand, you can start immediately with Shopify’s website builder. Set up your site using Shopify’s three-day free trial. After that, keep building with the first month of Shopify for just $1. 

But remember, your new website isn’t a static asset; it needs regular maintenance and evolution. Project updates, new features, and expanded content help your site stay relevant and competitive. 

Revisions and publishing new content also signals web crawlers that your site is active, not stale. This prompts them to come back and follow the pathways to catalog new information, which is good for your domain authority and ranking opportunities.

Once you’ve established the basic elements of your site, you can customize features or target specific visitors. Shopify specializes in commerce, so beyond its website builder, there are other features to help you grow your online or brick-and-mortar store. 

💡 If you’ve built a Shopify website and are ready to monetize, read about how to get your first sale in 30 days.