How to Build A Shopify Website for an Equine Business

08:38:02 Hey, hey, Abriana here and welcome back to my channel. This is going to be something a little new and I wanted to share it with you guys, I am going to be building a website in public.
08:38:16 What does this mean. So this means I’m going to be taking you behind the scenes of building out an e commerce website, and I’m going to explain a little bit of the logic behind the choices that I made for the website, you’ll be able to see it built, kind
08:38:33 of in real time.
08:38:35 And so I wanted to do this first video just to share what the website is going to be, because it is for me, why I chose to build out an e commerce website.
08:38:49 And what I plan to gain from this experience.
08:38:57 As you know, I’m a brand and web designer with my company black unicorn creative, and we craft web and brand experiences for experts in the equine industry.
08:39:08 A lot of times people get afraid of that word expert, but expert means anyone who has expertise in a particular area. And if you’re an entrepreneur and starting a business, you likely have expertise in a particular area so it’s nothing to get weird about
08:39:28 is nothing to say, oh that’s ego talking is just straight back. That’s what it is. And so, I have learned that I operate best with people who have expertise in a particular area, and they have a vision for their business.
08:39:48 Now, breaking it down even farther there’s three levels of experts that I have kind of witness through the experiences that I’ve had with clients with employers with doing market research that I felt like I needed to pare down when it came to my messaging,
08:40:08 my target audience and my ideal client.
08:40:11 The first expert is the, the hidden expert.
08:40:29 This hidden expert you know they know they have a passion for something they’ve been learning about this thing they want to start a business, surrounding this thing, they just aren’t sure where to start.
08:40:28 That is the beginning of entrepreneurship, that is where a lot of us started, and they’re just looking for that next step, how do I get started, what do I need to do what I need to have before I put myself out there.
08:40:42 The second level of expert is the under utilized expert.
08:40:51 And that is the person who has expertise and they have started their business, they are taken in clients taken in money, they may or may not be as profitable as they want to be but they know that they need, they need to make their, their lives a little
08:41:09 bit easier. So they can make a little bit more money.
08:41:13 And so with this expert the other utilize expert they are having to figure out systems and automation and emails, and how to retain clients and how to get new clients and pretty much how to have a incredible client experience on multiple levels on multiple
08:41:36 levels when it comes to marketing delivering onboarding all of that thing, all of those things.
08:41:43 And so the third level of expert is the underdeveloped expert. And so this expert is, you know, taking in clients making money they, they know who they want to work with, they know who they can provide and, you know, incredible transformation for, but
08:42:00 they are ready to take it to the next level because they cannot really replace themselves in their business they are ready to do something, or produce something that will allow them to replace themselves they they realize they have a cap on time.
08:42:20 And they’re like, I need to increase my income, I want to create a legacy for my business and my brand or my name. I want to have a bigger community and I want to be able to have big conversations around these, these thoughts that we are very passionate
08:42:40 about.
08:42:41 There’s more of the legacy building and long term, longevity game for that level of expert the underdeveloped expert. So, with that expert they’re looking at growing their business online through courses through licensing through certifying people through,
08:43:00 you know just more tech heavy projects that will replace them and their business so that they can do the other things that they are so passionate about, because we all know as we get into horses, we can get in it hard for lots of years and then realize
08:43:19 that we have other passions that we want to enjoy as well and so that those three levels that I have kind of distill down they have nothing to do with age.
08:43:30 They have nothing to do with how long you’ve been in the game, they don’t have anything to do with any of that. They are just stages in entrepreneurship, and in business growth that x equals experts will go through, they will go through.
08:43:54 I’m sure as I was describing all of that you thought of either yourself or someone else in those three stages.
08:44:02 Now, why does any of this matter.
08:44:06 So with black unicorn creative. I have realized that the people that I work with the best as far as big web projects are the ones who are already in their business they already know who their customers are they already know who they want to target.
08:44:24 They already feel confident confident in their expertise and know how they want to deliver it.
08:44:31 And up, you know, so they’re kind of that level two, and that level three.
08:44:36 But there are a lot of people that come to me for help with the beginning stages, because I do explain a lot and I do share how, how you get to this level two.
08:44:53 And so, I needed a way to differentiate how I can help both.
08:45:00 So, this is when I’m explaining market research target audience and ideal client to my clients or in my content. I share that your target audience can be a sea of people.
08:45:16 For me, my target audience or equal business owners business owners in the horse industry.
08:45:34 But my ideal client is someone who is a little bit further along in their business they already have it established, and they just want to have a brand and a web presence that is timeless that is attractive.
08:45:39 And that will bring them some longevity.
08:45:41 So, separating the two websites or let me rewind, I created the Eco printer planner.
08:45:53 And this can help. This can truly assist businesses at all levels, truly because it is a business, and as a business planner, so it talks about identifying your, your target audience, and your offers and your
08:46:14 quarterly planning and branding and all that stuff. It discusses all of that.
08:46:20 But it is very helpful in the beginning stages for those hidden experts hidden econ experts. So, when it comes to messaging and the delivery and the, the understanding and the psychology of reading through a website and understanding what you want to
08:46:43 have done.
08:46:46 There are two different messages here.
08:46:48 They’re the messages that are like here this is going to help you get started This is going to help you understand these things. But if I am.
08:46:57 If I know that I work best with people who already have a grasp on the topics in the planner, then it’s going to be a different message is going to be.
08:47:10 Here’s how you connect with your community, here’s how you bridge the gap between your expertise and your clients, understanding. Here’s how you can make a brand presence that resonates with your ideal audience, if you don’t know who your ideal audience
08:47:25 is, that’s going to be over your head a little bit. Right. It’s just going to be over your head, and I needed to be able to separate the two because the planner is good.
08:47:40 Okay, the planner is great.
08:47:43 And it comes with a course, and a community. OK, so the value here at the planner. I do not want to be diminished, simply because when in my service base capacity.
08:47:56 I work with businesses that that may be you know farther along than understanding their audience, they’re at the point they’re refining and they’re, they’re really nailing it down to attract those ideal clients that can identify themselves and their message.
08:48:15 So, I am creating an e commerce website to sell my planner
08:48:24 and additional tools, and in tech, that will support econ business owners as they are starting off their journey into entrepreneurship, as well as sustaining their businesses as they are pursuing entrepreneurship.
08:48:49 So,
08:48:49 that is why we are building new public, and as a brand new web designer and as someone who enjoys creating content. I wanted to be able to take you behind the scenes into this journey so that if you are not ready to work with me yet, you can produce some
08:49:06 results that are very similar, as well. I’m going to share with you my screen and we’ll do a little.
08:49:16 We’ll do a little screen share so you can see how this works. And a little behind the scenes so here we go, share my screen.
08:49:34 Alright, so this is the back end of Shopify, you are going to have a home
08:49:44 section here you can search anything here.
08:49:48 When you first.
08:49:50 Sign up for Shopify. All of this will be unchecked, you’ll have to go through and customize your theme added domain setup payments.
08:50:02 Review your shipping, all of that, but Shopify has incredible resources and a help desk, and all of these things. I mean, any resource between YouTube, and their help section.
08:50:25 I think yeah the Help Center.
08:50:27 You can find anything that you need assistance with, truly,
08:50:37 there is a section for orders so any orders that come in will show up here it will show up with the clients information their shipping information all that stuff, you’ll be able to see your abandoned checkouts which is very important when it comes to
08:50:53 e commerce businesses, because you want to see who did not buy.
08:51:00 Is there a particular place where they drop off and don’t buy or is it just that they simply forgot and they just need an email that says, hey, you love your cart.
08:51:12 But, did you want to check out or not, like, Alyssa will check out. Okay, come on, come on back.
08:51:19 So this helps with your, your conversions. And so one of the things that’s really different between e commerce and service based websites, is the metrics that you are going to track.
08:51:49 for, for this website is, is how much traffic that you’re getting. And how much of it is converting.
08:51:52 And so, this kind of goes for lots of websites but specifically ecommerce, if you’re getting lots of traffic.
08:52:02 And you are looking at all the pages, you know, they’re spending this much time on the page, this many people are coming here but they are not checking out, it is very likely that you have a messaging issue.
08:52:17 You have a issue that is just not convincing enough to get them to make the sale.
08:52:23 If you’re not getting any traffic, then that’s when we say, okay we might have a marketing issue. Right. So, we’ll talk about that a little bit more in analytics, but this is the order section you’ll be able to see where all that stuff comes up the products.
08:52:39 This is where you keep track of all of your products and the inventory that you have any collections, or gift cards. I’ll do another video on how I get these products in there obviously this is not published yet customers, you’ll be able to keep track
08:52:57 of your customers and see their purchase history.
08:53:03 And with that you’ll be able to see kind of the lifetime value of a particular customer do they continue to come back and purchase from me. Do you have products that allow them to come back and purchase from you, finances, you will be able to track all
08:53:22 of your sales, all of your, your taxes, any of the earnings that you get.
08:53:28 And then, do even more analysis of what kind of profit you’re making based on the cost of your product.
08:53:41 Then there’s the billing for the platform, and then the payouts that you get from your store analytics I’ll do a specific video on these analytics, but this is where you’re going to.
08:53:57 These are the success metrics are the key performance indicators the KPIs that you can keep track of in your, your business we talked about the conversion rate.
08:54:08 We talked about average on that we didn’t talk about average order value, but I’ll talk about all of this in a later video. There is reports that can be run on the customers and your business, as well as alive you have people in there right now, what
08:54:31 are they doing, where are they coming from and who are you attracting.
08:54:37 And we always talk about making feeling, making decisions based on facts, not feelings in this analytics section. This is where you get your facts and this will help you make better decisions in your business, marketing, You are going to be able to send
08:54:58 out specific emails, especially if they have abandoned their checkout process. And so that will increase your conversions. And so there are different marketing apps that can be added into your store, but we’ll talk about that in a second.
08:55:18 You can have different campaigns for for your, your business sales campaigns.
08:55:28 You know, abandoned cart campaigns, new product campaigns, you can send out campaigns based on the type of customer that you have like their returning customers, or if you want to only send out a coupon to the customers who have purchased from you, things
08:55:44 like that. And then there are also some automation that can be set up but we’ll talk about that in a later video.
08:55:53 You can set up discounts and they will be able to be applied to your store so you set up a discount send out an email say hey, this is the discount, people can come to your store and check out with that coupon code.
08:56:08 And then there are additional apps that you can add into your store to produce some functions so I know that for this store I want to get into affiliate marketing.
08:56:24 And so I’ve downloaded one affiliate marketing app I’m not sure how I feel about it yet I will do a review as the store is launched and see what I like best about it, but I can say this go f pro affiliate marketing, when I did download the app.
08:56:44 There were already people trying to become affiliates and I think that’s just maybe what they do for their lives.
08:56:52 But these affiliates I, I want to know them, you know I want to be
08:57:00 in charge of are in control of who the affiliates are, it will have payouts that they’re getting because I don’t want any weirdness, right. So, I’ll be using this strategically and I’ll make it.
08:57:12 I’ll make a video on how I’m making the decisions on that as well.
08:57:18 And so over here you have your actual store, you can break it down by the theme, things of the store there are different themes, you can customize it will walk into that, probably in the next video because I’ve already started putting some stuff in there.
08:57:37 And then you can do a blog, you have different pages, your navigation and then the different preferences that you have for your business. This is getting kind of into the the metadata and the how your, your store it shows are shared across the internet.
08:57:57 And so that’s something important to, to know for sure.
08:58:03 And then these are just some other sales channels, How can you make sure that you are linked there and that you are utilizing all of the features that come with it.
08:58:18 So, that is the back end of Shopify, I hope that you learned a little bit of something in this video.