Setting Up the Store

Picking a platform

There are lots of ways to sell online. Your own store on a platform like Shopify.

Store words in plain English

A few terms you'll meet:

• Product: one thing you sell, with its own page.
• Variant: a version of a product, like a different color or size.
• Collection: a group of products, like "Kitchen" or "Desk".
• Theme: the design and layout of your store.

The store bot

When you connect the store, you'll be asked to approve what the bot can access. Read that screen.

Showing changes before making them

Most store platforms don't have a perfect preview for every change, so the "preview" here often means the bot showing you exactly what it will change before it does it. A list.

Building the first products

For Shelf Life, the first round of setup might look like this:

• You give the bot the product list, with names, variants, costs and a few notes.
• It creates each product as a draft, with placeholders for photos and the listing text that Chapter 6 will write.
• It sets up collections: Desk, Kitchen, Plants.
• It lists everything it created and anything it wasn't sure about.

The pages customers expect

Beyond products, a store needs a few pages:

• About: who you are and why you make what you make.
• Shipping: where you ship, how long it takes and what it costs.
• Returns and refunds: your policy, in plain words.
• Contact: how to reach you.

Shipping settings

Shipping is where a lot of small shops lose money. Charge too little and you pay the difference on every order.

The theme

Your store's theme is its look. A bot can suggest themes that suit your products and help you adjust colors, fonts and layout.

Keeping the store tidy

Over time, stores get messy. Old products that don't sell.

Walkthrough: setting up the first collection

• The owner gave the store bot a spreadsheet with product names, variants, costs and a line of notes for each.
• They asked: "Create these as draft products in my store, in a new collection called Desk. Don't publish anything. List what you created and anything you weren't sure about."
• The bot created six drafts and flagged two problems: one product had no weight listed, which shipping rates need, and two names were almost the same.
• The owner fixed the weight and renamed one product.

What went wrong: the published draft

One evening, the owner asked the store bot to "get the new plant feet ready". It created the product and, because the request was vague, set it to active.

Keeping a change log

One more habit worth having. Ask the store bot to keep a simple change log: what it changed, when and why.

A worked example: the about page

The first draft of the Shelf Life about page, written by the store bot, said the shop was "passionate about bringing innovative organization solutions to homes everywhere." The owner read it out loud and laughed. Nobody talks like that.

A worked example: the shipping rates

Shelf Life started with one flat shipping rate for everything. It was simple, and it lost money on heavy orders and overcharged on light ones.

Questions people ask

Should the store bot have full access? Give it what it needs for the jobs you've given it.