A Simple Guide To Starting A Shopify T-Shirt Store

T-shirts are one of the most lucrative businesses out there, and it's a unique product for dropshippers. Dropshipping t-shirts was one of the first booming dropshipping sectors, and it has never stopped growing since.

If you want to be in e-commerce, you already know about Shopify and that it's the perfect platform for e-commerce businesses. It enables easy sales and management for a dropshipper looking to sell t-shirts. Shopify t-shirt stores are easy to set up and simple to manage, so if you want to start selling t-shirts on a Shopify website, then you have come to the right place.

We here at DropshipUS work with hopeful dropshippers and provide them with the right website for selling their products using Shopify. Since we are one of the leading Shopify experts in the dropshipping world, we know all about creating a simple Shopify t-shirt business. There are a few different aspects to setting up the perfect t-shirt business, and that's what we will talk about here. So let's get into it!

Know All The Legal Requirements

Selling on Shopify is relatively easy. While the internet is an empowering platform for newcomers to the dropship nation, you can guarantee some people are looking to make a quick buck by scamming you. This is where knowing all the legal requirements come in handy.

There are four main criteria for an e-commerce site that you have to look into, and Shopify has a knowledge base for helping you out on that front. Here are the four main things you have to ensure when setting up your t-shirt business:

Refund Policy: The perfect refund policy will protect your business from rip-offs, scams, and false claims. You can check out Shopify's free refund policy template for more information.

Terms Of Service: You need to have terms of service page for your t-shirt business because it will help protect your website, company, and customers. You can use Shopify's free terms of service policy template for your site

Privacy Policy: The right privacy policy will help your business comply with all the laws and regulations while also encouraging customer trust. You can try out Shopify's free privacy policy generator for your t-shirt business.

Taxes: You know how the saying goes, "nothing is certain but death and taxes." So getting your tax work done early is the right way to go. Otherwise, you may end up hurting your business. Lucky for you Shopify has the right sort of tax guidelines for your t-shirt drop shipping operation.
Getting Ready For The First Sale

If you are starting up your t-shirt business, you need to set up, organize, and get ready for the first sale. The faster you can do this, the faster your first sale will come, and with that, your first steps to success will begin. There are four main things you have to ensure when getting your dropshipping t-shirt business ready. So let's talk about them:

Manage The Inventory

Knowing what you have in your inventory comes in handy when selling t-shirts. Make sure you know what sizes you have, know the exact number of shirts you have, and in which color.

Remember, you don't want to be in a predicament where you deny a sale to the customer and end up with a bad review. When sorting out your inventory, you have to make sure to add the necessary metadata so that your products pop up on search results.

Sorting Out The Shipping

If you are a dropshipper working with delivering good quality t-shirts across the states, you need to sort out your shipping options. You have to conduct thorough market research when trying to find the best shipping solution for your online t-shirt store.

You can utilize Shopify's shipping apps to make the shipping process easier for your customers. Ensure the customer can type in their desired shipping address and have all the shipping information they need.

You need to find the right sort of vendor to ensure you offer favorable shipping rates for your customers. We use FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon), which offers fantastic shipping rates to its customers. So make sure you do your research as a t-shirt dropshipper.

Sorting Out The Packaging

If you are shipping your t-shirts all over the country, then you have to make sure they maintain their shape when traveling vast distances. Try sorting out the right sort of packaging option for your product with your vendor, and make sure your customer is never dissatisfied with the delivery and outlook.

Integrating The Right Payment Gateway

If you think about the customer journey, you should know that making it easier for the customers to pay for t-shirts is one of the best things. While Paypal is the default on Shopify, you can change it to one of the payment gateway services you like.

You can check out Stripe as the first step when researching the payment gateway for your t-shirt business. Stripe is one of the most popular options for dropshipping t-shirt businesses, and it can help you out as well.

Optimizing Your Online Store

Merely creating a website where you list products will not be enough to succeed as a t-shirt business. There are a few things you have to ensure when designing your website. You have to keep in mind that there are a few things that you can do to optimize your website.

Things like fast loading times, intuitive design for both mobile and desktop, social proof and security signs, and optimizing the customer journey are things you have to do to optimize the site.

Remember to be consistent in color palettes, typographies, ETC. To ensure your customers fall in love with the website's interface. Along with these, here are some of the most critical aspects to optimizing your t-shirt business for maximizing your sales numbers.

Setting Up A Brand

You can never go wrong with innovative branding, and that starts with the name of your store. When you are setting up your website, make sure you buy a smart, fun, and unique domain. Make sure that the site has a catchy name and is very easy to remember.

Choose something short and sweet. Having a name that's too long and generic will only hurt your branding efforts. You can try buying the domain from Shopify Domains or GoDaddy if you like, and make sure you have a logo for your brand when setting up the site.

Setting Up The Aesthetics Of Your Store

One of the best things about Shopify is the fact that they offer fantastic versatility when setting up an online t-shirt business. You can easily find plenty of customizable Shopify themes that can jumpstart your business.

You can buy free themes as well if you want, but from our experience, the free ones have the best features you can integrate to generate traffic and sales. You can use Shopify's T-Shirt Themes for research and jumpstarting your creative process. Usually, paid Shopify themes to come with the following features:
Social proof like Instagram feed and testimonial area.
E-commerce hacks like quick product view.
Full-width layout and fonts.

Your theme determines the entire aesthetic of your online t-shirt store. If you are confused about things like your business's theme, you can check out the Shopify community forum or other forums you can find with a simple search on Google.

If you like, you can talk to one of the experts, and we can help you find the right sort of theme for your Shopify t-shirt business website. Now the next step is to set up the structure so your t-shirt business.

Setting Up With The Right Structure

Online businesses only succeed when the website structure is right. Navigation is one of the biggest reasons why t-shirt businesses usually fail.

Your customer should navigate through your site intuitively. You can check out successful Shopify's t-shirt business websites for inspiration. There is a basic architecture to creating the perfect website, and they are in the following:
Home page
Categories Page
Product Page
About Page
Contact Page
A Frequently Asked Questions Page:
Social Media Shortcuts
A Footer

Ensure you follow every step and have all the elements within site to ensure seamless user navigation. Creating the perfect site is much more than just assembling these pages, so working with Shopify experts like the developers in DropshipUS will help you have the best online store.

Optimizing Your Site Loading Speed

Online customers usually don't have enough patience, so they typically don't visit websites that take a long time to load. Optimizing the site's image loading speed will guarantee you have a fast site. When creating the site, talk to your developers, and ensure all the images they use are no more than 300 KiloBytes.

Another essential tip you can remember is that JPEG files are usually lighter than PNG files. Only use PNG files when you need a transparent background on the image; otherwise, JPEGs are always better when optimizing your site for loading speed. Here are ways you can optimize the images for your online t-shirt store:
Try using a free image resizer service like TinyJPG.
You can use Photoshop's "Save for web" feature to get optimized images.
You can look for a Shopify App that can optimize all your website's images.

Remember, site loading speed isn't only vital to your Shopify t-shirt business' in client retention but is also critical to bringing in organic traffic as it plays an essential role in SEO. So talk to experts when creating your t-shirt store online about optimization.

Personal Care & Digital Marketing

Online customers need to connect with the brand or store to make a purchase, and that's where understanding modern digital marketing efforts will come in handy. Make sure you create customer touchpoints and monitor user data to optimize your dropshipping marketing strategy.

Integrate Google Analytics to know what people are doing and optimize your site to ensure you don't lose traffic. Understanding the need for digital marketing will go a long way in ensuring you can generate your business traffic.

Try learning digital marketing for free; Google offers free digital marketing courses on their Digital Garage Platform. Here are some other things that will help you better care for your customers when they visit your site.

Let Google know your website exists by submitting it for indexing on Google.

Utilize Google My Business.

Share everything everywhere. Utilize Social Media, Email, forums, and every other available channel.

Try working with online influencers.

Start PPC campaigns and bring in paid traffic.

Encourage website and product reviews.

Partner Up With The Right People

So there you go, that's the DropshipUS strategy to creating a Shopify t-shirt business. Follow everything thoroughly, and soon you will have a successful t-shirt store on your hands.

Now there are many technicalities involved in setting up the perfect t-shirt website, but you may not have enough capital to set up a team as a new dropshipping entrepreneur. This is where partnering up with the right dropshipping website developer will help you. Work with someone who understands and excels in Shopify website development.

That's where the DropshipUSA team comes in. We can help you build a successful Shopify website with all the right attributes that will make your online t-shirt business a success.

So if you have any queries about creating the perfect website to sell t-shirts, then feel free to drop them in the comments below or hit us up on our socials. We will be more than happy to answer everything for you.

So with that being said, we come to the end of our discussion for now. We will come back with something new for you about the dropship nation. Until then, see ya!

Originally posted in: https://dropshipusa.io/blogs/news/simple-guide-to-starting-shopify-t-shirt-store