People often ask: how long does it take to set up a Shopify store?
Setting up a Shopify store involves many steps, each taking a certain amount of time.
Plus, various factors can influence how long the entire process will take.
To help you, we will break down the process of building a Shopify store into steps and outline the time required for each one.
If this sounds interesting, keep reading!
Tip: Have you already created your Shopify account? If not, sign up by clicking this link here to get a free 3-day trial + 1 month for $1!
The time needed to set up a Shopify store per task
To help you estimate the time it takes to set up a Shopify store, we have divided the process into six steps:
- Initial set-up and picking your plan
- Finding a supplier and integrating it into your store
- Adding products
- Designing your Shopify store
- Installing Shopify apps
- Setting up the technical aspects
We will give you an estimation of the time it takes for each step.
Obviously, your time may vary based on factors like your previous experience, available resources, and the type of store you’re creating.
Let’s get started.
Note: If you’re interested in creating your own Shopify store, we have a detailed guide for that. In this article, we will focus on the time factor rather than the process of actually building your Shopify store.
1. Selecting a Shopify plan and doing the initial setup
The first step in starting a Shopify store is to sign up for a Shopify account.
This involves creating your account and selecting a Shopify pricing plan, which isn’t a super lengthy process.
Depending on how certain you are about what you want, you can estimate spending one to two hours on the signup and selecting the plan.
At this point, you should also have purchased a domain to add to your Shopify store.
The same is true here; adding a domain to Shopify doesn’t take too much time. You can expect to spend one to two hours on it.
Time for picking a Shopify plan: 1-2 hours, depending on how certain you are about what you want.
Time for buying and adding a domain: 1-2 hours, depending on your requirements and how long it takes to connect the domain.
Total initial setup time: Between 2 and 4 hours.
2. Finding a supplier and integrating it into your Shopify store
If you want to sell through your Shopify store (which most people do), connecting an ecommerce supplier to it is a good idea.
Depending on whether you already have a supplier or not, this can be a quick process or take some time.
If you don’t have a supplier yet, check out these articles listing some of the best suppliers:
Most of these suppliers directly integrate with Shopify, so the setup process is relatively quick.
You can expect to spend one to five hours selecting and integrating your supplier.
Time for finding and integrating a supplier: 1-5 hours, depending on whether you already know which supplier you want to go with and whether they have direct Shopify integration.
Total supplier integration time: Between 1 and 5 hours.
3. Adding products
Adding products involves two main steps: finding products and adding them to your Shopify store.
If you already know what to sell, you will save time here. If not, we would recommend you to read these articles from us:
You can also use different product research tools to speed up the process. These tools compile many popular products, making it easier to find the best ones.
Finding products to sell takes two to eight hours on average, depending on your requirements, the number of products you want to find, and your niche.
After this, you need to add the products to your Shopify store.
If your supplier has a Shopify integration, this will be faster since you can import product descriptions, images, prices, and other information simultaneously.
If not, you’ll need to manually add the products through the Shopify admin dashboard.
Let’s say you want to add five different products to your store.
Importing five products would require five hours of work, including writing product descriptions, selecting variants and images, and performing other import tasks.
Time for finding products: 2-8 hours, depending on the number of products you want to find and your requirements.
Time for importing products: 1-5 hours, depending on how many products you want to import.
Total time for adding products: Between 3 and 13 hours.
4. Designing your Shopify store
Designing your Shopify store starts with selecting a theme.
This is relatively quick and can be done within one to two hours since you can easily select from Shopify’s free themes or opt for a paid theme if you want more features.
Next, you need to design the store.
This will probably be the most time-consuming part of setting up your Shopify store.
Depending on the quality of the design you want, this will take 5 to 20 hours using one of Shopify’s themes.
You can also save time on your design process by outsourcing some of the work. While you can outsource other steps as well, the design process is often the easiest to delegate.
Here are a few helpful resources for outsourcing if you’re interested:
Time for selecting your Shopify theme: 1-2 hours, depending on whether you already have a theme in mind.
Time for designing your Shopify store: 5-20 hours, depending on the design quality you desire.
Total time for designing your Shopify store: Between 6 and 22 hours.
5. Installing Shopify apps
To extend the functionality of your Shopify store, you can install Shopify apps.
If you already know which apps you want, the process is relatively quick. If not, researching the best apps will take the most time.
To help you with research, here is an article we wrote on the best Shopify apps in 2024.
On average, we estimate that it takes one hour to research, install, and start using a Shopify app.
So, if you install five different Shopify apps, it will take five hours in total.
Time for installing Shopify apps: 1-5 hours, depending on how many Shopify apps you need to install.
Total time for installing Shopify apps: Between 1 and 5 hours.
6. Setting up the technical aspects
Setting up the technical aspects of Shopify includes configuring shipping rates, payment gateways, standard pages, and more.
If you’re not sure about all the technical aspects required to launch a Shopify store, we recommend using our Shopify store checklist that covers all the bases you need to do.
On average, we estimate it takes between two to five hours to set up the technical side of your Shopify store.
After this, you’re pretty much ready to launch your Shopify store!
Time for setting up technical aspects: 2-5 hours, depending on your previous experience and the complexity of your system.
Total time for setting up technical aspects: Between 2-5 hours.
How long does it take to set up a Shopify store in total?
So, how long does it take in total to set up your Shopify store?
Based on our calculations of the different steps, we concluded that setting up your Shopify store takes between 19 and 54 hours.
Here’s a quick recap of the time estimates for each step:
- Selecting a Shopify plan and doing the initial setup. 2 to 5 hours
- Finding a supplier and integrating it into your Shopify store. 1 to 4 hours
- Adding products. 3 to 13 hours
- Designing your Shopify store. 6 to 22 hours
- Installing Shopify apps. 1 to 5 hours
- Setting up the technical aspects. 2 to 5 hours
Obviously, different factors influence the time it takes to set up your Shopify store.
We already covered some of these factors, let’s discuss a few more that might affect your timeline.
What affects the time it takes to set up a Shopify store?
Let’s go through the different time-influencing factors!
Five factors determine how long it takes to set up your Shopify store: your previous experience, store type, the amount of content creation, the level of customization you want, and the resources available.
Let’s break each of these down in more detail.
1. Your previous experience
Your previous experience plays a major role in the time it takes to set up your Shopify store.
For example, if you’re a beginner and have never used Shopify before, you need to spend additional time learning the platform, understanding the features, and getting used to the process.
If you have previous experience with Shopify, you already know how the setup process works, and all the steps will be much quicker.
You may also already have an ecommerce supplier and know which Shopify apps you want to add.
If you’re completely new to Shopify, we would recommend you read these articles from us:
2. Store type
The type of store you’re setting up can greatly influence the setup time.
There are three different store types:
- General store. General stores have a variety of products in multiple categories. The categories are usually filled with dozens of products, giving customers various options.
- Niche store. Niche stores specialize in a specific category or theme of products and typically have fewer products than general stores.
- One-product store. A one-product store sells a single product or a limited range of products related to one primary item.
In most cases, a general store is the most time-consuming, a niche store is the second, and a one-product store is the least time-consuming.
The main reason is that general stores have the most products, and adding them can take a long time.
If you want to save time, we recommend creating a one-product or niche store. If you’re not sure which one is right for you, read our article:
3. Content creation
Content creation includes doing tasks like:
The more content you create, the longer it will take. This is something you should take into account when calculating the total time it takes to create a Shopify store.
4. The level of quality you want
The higher the quality you want, the longer it usually takes.
For example, one of the quickest ways to create product descriptions is to use one of the available dropshipping AI tools.
However, using AI tools might not be as good as creating them yourself and studying customer pain points, but this takes longer.
Similarly, when designing your Shopify store, one of the available Shopify themes can help you do that relatively quickly.
However, if you want higher quality, a landing page builder like PageFly may be more suitable, although it takes longer.
5. Your available resources
Do you have the resources to outsource some of the work, or do you need to do everything yourself?
The setup time for your Shopify store depends significantly on this.
For example, you could hire someone from Fiverr or Upwork to write product descriptions, optimize your website, or find winning products.
This would significantly reduce the setup time.
Conclusion
To conclude, it takes between 19 and 54 hours to set up your Shopify store.
This estimate is based on factors including your previous experience with Shopify, your store type, the level of content creation, the quality you want, and your available resources.
Other factors may also influence the time, but these are the main ones.
While we focused on the time aspect here, we also have a detailed guide on setting up your Shopify store, which we recommend checking out.
Good luck!
Want to learn more about ecommerce?
Ready to move your online store to the next level? Check out the articles below: