Day 3: Set up Your Shipping Settings & Payment Gateway

Today is actually a pretty easy day! The only task today is to set up your shipping settings and your payment gateway on Shopify. And no, this isn’t hard to do. Linnaea’s video walkthrough below will show you how to easily do both, as well as edit some other settings on your new website.

So let’s get started. Begin by watching the video below, then go through the checklist after the video on how to set up these things. As always with these videos, it’s best to play on your phone or something while directly following along on your desktop and pausing when you need to!

First, click here to download today’s free printout.

How to Set Up Your Shopify Payment Gateway

Go to “Settings”–> “Payment Providers” on your Shopify dashboard
Under “Shopify Payments” (the first item on the right), click “Complete Account Setup.”
After that, just fill out the fields Shopify will give you with your personal information and bank account details. Make sure you get your bank account details right or you can’t get paid!
Click “Submit” and that’s it! You can now accept credit card payments from your customers.
Be aware that it might take a day or two for your bank account details to be verified, so it’s best to get this done right away here.

How to Set Up Your Shopify shipping settings

Go to “Settings”–>”Shipping” on your dashboard.
First, under “Packaging,” add your box size and weight. The weight should be about 3 lbs for the box and 4-5 lbs for ice, so around 7-8 lbs total. Adding your box size and weight here will help with calculating shipping more accurately.
Now at the top, under “General Shipping Rates,” say “Manage Rates.”
Next to the shipping zone Shopify has already put in, click the three dots to say “edit shipping zone.”
Here, type in the states you’ll be shipping to. Make sure “United States” isn’t checked, just the states you can ship to. Otherwise it’ll allow shipping to the entire U.S! To find out which states you can ship to within 1-2 days, see below this checklist.
Name your zone. Customers won’t see what you call it, so this is for you.
Once you’ve saved these details, delete all the rates that Shopify has pre-provided.
Click “Add Rate” to add a new rate.
Here’s where you can either specify a flat rate shipping that all your customers will pay, or you can use calculated shipping rates at checkout. Your choice. If flat rate, select “set up your own rates” and enter the dollar amount as well as a title (your customers will see this). Click done.
If calculated rate, click “use carrier rates” and then select “UPS” from the menu. Select only UPS ground as an option. Add a flat rate handling fee as well if desired (for example, the cost of your box if you didn’t include this in product pricing).
You’ll be prompted to create a UPS account by just adding your address and some basic information. Follow the directions, then click save.
And that’s it! Now see below for how to find out which states are within 1-2 days of you.

How to find out which states are closest to you

To find out which states are closest to you via UPS ground, click the button below to visit UPS’s calculator. Note that for the shipping date, you must specify either a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday.

Visit the UPS shipping day calculator

The map you get should look something like the one below. This one is our map, and as you can see because of our remote location our 1-2 day shipping options are extremely limited. If you’re in a more populated area, you shouldn’t be quite as restricted in your options.

last thing: add a banner to your store telling people where you ship

The last thing to do with shipping options is to let people know that you can only ship to certain states. Otherwise, someone who lives in a state you don’t ship to will get all the way to checkout before the store doesn’t allow them to checkout. This would be frustrating for them!

Most Shopify themes have an announcement bar that you can change in the customizer. Here’s how:

Go to the customizer and click “Header”
Scroll down until you see the announcement bar settings. Check “Show Announcement Bar” then uncheck “Home Page Only” (you want this on every page)!

3. Add your announcement, and change colors as desired. Done!

So that’s it for setting up your shipping settings and your payment gateway…and that’s also it for Day 3’s tasks! Yep, today was a pretty short day.

If you haven’t finished designing your storefront or adding all your products, now is a good time to do that if you’ve got some spare time today. Or explore your back office on Shopify a little more to familiarize yourself with how everything works.

And that’s it! Tomorrow we’ll start testing your store and customizing the whole checkout and ordering process.

Return to the course home page here.