Adding business settings for your store

This page was printed on Mar 07, 2023. For the current version, visit https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/intro-to-shopify/initial-setup/setup-business-settings.

Before you start setting up your Shopify store, you need to create a Shopify account and add some essential business information for your store. You don’t need to include every detail right away, but be sure to add the following items:

Store name
Legal business name and address
Store time zone
Default store currency
Default weight unit
Password to protect your online store

Create your Shopify account

Create a Shopify account to start setting up your store. You’ll need to enter a valid email address, a password, and the name of your store.

The store name that you choose becomes your primary domain, known as your .myshopify.com domain name, which looks like this: your-store-name.myshopify.com. This domain name is considered to be your default domain. You use this to log in to your store from now on.

You can change your default .myshopify.com domain name once, but you can change the name of your store as it appears on every page of your website, at any time. You can also buy a custom domain, and that doesn’t need to match your myshopify domain either.

Set or change your online store name and legal business name

Your online store name is the name that’s displayed on every page of your website. Your legal business name appears on your Shopify bill.

Caution

Changing your store name doesn’t change your default .myshopify.com domain name. Learn more about changing your default .myshopify.com domain name.

Steps:

From your Shopify admin, go to Settings.
Click Store details.
In the Basic information section, click Edit.
Enter your online store name and legal business name.
Click Save.

From the Shopify app, go to Store > Settings.
Scroll to the Store settings section.
Tap Store details.
In the Basic information section, tap Edit.
Enter your online store name and legal business name.
Tap Save.

From the Shopify app, go to Store > Settings.
Scroll to the Store settings section.
Tap Store details.
In the Basic information section, tap Edit.
Enter your online store name and legal business name.
Tap Save.

Set or change your business address

Your business address appears on your bill. With the correct address listed on your Shopify bill, you might be able to claim Shopify as a business expense.

Steps:

From your Shopify admin, go to Settings.

From the Shopify app, go to Store > Settings.
Scroll to the Store settings section.

From the Shopify app, go to Store > Settings.
Scroll to the Store settings section.

Click Store details.
In the Address section, click Edit.
Enter your business address, and then click Save.

Note

If your store uses Shopify Payments, then you need to disable Shopify Payments before you can change your store’s country in your Shopify admin.

You can change your contact information, so Shopify and your customers can contact you.

Steps:

From your Shopify admin, go to Settings.

From the Shopify app, go to Store > Settings.
Scroll to the Store settings section.

From the Shopify app, go to Store > Settings.
Scroll to the Store settings section.

Click Store details.
In the Contact information section, click Edit.
Enter your contact information, and then click Save.

Set or change your store time zone

Steps:

From your Shopify admin, go to Settings.

From the Shopify app, go to Store > Settings.
Scroll to the Store settings section.

From the Shopify app, go to Store > Settings.
Scroll to the Store settings section.

Click Store details.
In the Standards and formats section, from the Time zone list, select a new time zone.
Click Save.

Select a store currency

In the Store details settings page of your Shopify admin, you can choose which currency your store uses (for example, USD, EUR, CAD, AUD, JPY).

Caution

If you’re just experimenting with setting up a store, you can set and then change the store currency. But after you make your first sale, do not change the currency. Changing it will have an adverse affect on your prices, reports, past orders, and other historical data, and you can’t undo the change.

If you are using Shopify Payments as your credit card payment gateway, then you must change your currency by editing the bank account and currency settings used by Shopify Payments.

Steps:

From your Shopify admin, go to Settings.

From the Shopify app, go to Store > Settings.
Scroll to the Store settings section.

From the Shopify app, go to Store > Settings.
Scroll to the Store settings section.

Click Store details.
In the Store currency section, use the drop-down menu to select a new monetary unit.

Tip

You can change the way monetary amounts are shown by clicking Change formatting.

Click Save.

Display multiple currencies

If you are using Shopify Payments, you can setup your store to sell in multiple currencies. Customers can browse your online store and checkout in their preferred local currency.

If you aren’t using Shopify Payments, then you can customize themes to show multiple currencies on your online store, but they are for display purposes only. Your customers can check out only in the currency that you set on your Store details settings page under the Standards and formats section.

To learn more about using themes to show multiple currencies on your online store, refer to Support multiple currencies in your theme.

Set or change your store’s default weight unit

You can choose from the following default units of weight:

Pounds (lb) – Imperial system
Ounces (oz) – Imperial system
Kilograms (kg) – Metric system
Grams (g) – Metric system

Choose the weight unit that is most appropriate for your business. This is just the default value, and can be edited on a product-by-product basis later on.

Note

Before choosing your default weight unit, your should choose your Unit system from the same screen.

Steps:

From your Shopify admin, go to Settings.

From the Shopify app, go to Store > Settings.
Scroll to the Store settings section.

From the Shopify app, go to Store > Settings.
Scroll to the Store settings section.

Click Store details.
In the Standards and formats section, use the Default weight unit drop-down menu to select the weight unit of your choice.
Click Save.

Metadata, such as a page’s title and meta description, is displayed in search engine results. It doesn’t affect your chances of being listed by a search engine, but a good meta description can increase the likelihood that visitors will click through to your store. It’s a great way to attract more traffic.

The title and meta description must be unique for each page, and must describe the content of that page. For every product, page, or blog in your Shopify admin, there’s a search engine section where you can input the information as you want it to appear on search engine results pages.

There is a 70 character limit for titles. Not all search engines will truncate after the character limit is reached, but most will truncate on a word, rather than in the middle of a word, to improve readability.

You can see a preview of how your page appears as a search result on a Google result page.

Steps:

From your Shopify admin, go to Online Store > Preferences.
In the Title and meta description section, enter your home page metadata under Homepage title and Homepage meta description.

Note

Search engines will list only about 140 characters of your meta description below your title tag, so keep it short.

Click Save.

Common questions

What happens when I leave the title tag blank?

Your theme will use your shop name followed by the title of the content, or it will use the title of the content followed by your shop name. If this is what you wanted to use anyway, then there’s no need to edit the title tag at all.

Where’s the title tag in my Shopify theme? Can’t I edit my HTML pages directly for this?

The title tag only shows up in one file of your Shopify theme: theme.liquid. The theme.liquid file is used on every page of your website. The Liquid tag that outputs the title tag in your theme.liquid file is {{ page_title }}.

Your website is not made of static HTML pages that you can edit piece by piece. Content is output dynamically by a relevant template.

My employee wants to edit my webpages directly instead of my theme.liquid file. How do I get FTP access to my website to edit the HTML of each page?

There’s no FTP access to your web pages. The code for your title tag is in your theme.liquid file. The code will be inside the head element in theme.liquid. For more information about Liquid, see our guide to SEO for theme designers.

I edited my title tags. Why can’t I see my change when I visit Google?

You might need to wait a couple of weeks for your edits to show up in search engine results. It can take some time for search engines to crawl and re-index your content.

Format your order IDs

By default, your first order ID is given the format #1001. Orders after that are incremented by 1 for each new order.

You cannot change the number that your orders begin at (1001), but to customize the format of your order IDs you can add or edit an order ID prefix or suffix.

Add or edit an order ID prefix

Steps:

From your Shopify admin, go to Settings.

From the Shopify app, go to Store > Settings.
Scroll to the Store settings section.

From the Shopify app, go to Store > Settings.
Scroll to the Store settings section.

Click Store details.
In the Standards and formats section, edit the Prefix text field.

You can delete the # or replace it with any characters A-Z, 0-9, or symbols. You can replace it with multiple characters if desired.

Click Save.

Add or edit an order ID suffix

Steps:

From your Shopify admin, go to Settings.

From the Shopify app, go to Store > Settings.
Scroll to the Store settings section.

From the Shopify app, go to Store > Settings.
Scroll to the Store settings section.

Click Store details.
In the Standards and formats section, edit the Suffix text field.

Enter a combination of characters: A-Z, 0-9, or symbols.

Click Save.

Change your myshopify.com domain name

Early access

Changing your .myshopify.com domain name is in early access and is only available to certain merchants.

When you signed up for Shopify, you had the opportunity to either create your default domain name, that is your-store.myshopify.com, or you had one generated for you. If you later decide that you want a different .myshopify.com domain name to display to your customers, then you can change it, but only once.

Alternatively, if you want to change the web address that’s displayed to customers while they browse your online store to emphasize your brand, then you can buy and add a custom domain. When you use a custom domain name, your customers don’t see your .myshopify.com domain name.

Caution

Make sure that you record and keep your original .myshopify.com domain name somewhere safe, regardless of whether you created it or whether it was autogenerated. After you change your .myshopify.com domain name, you still need to use your original .myshopify.com domain name to log in to your store and to identify your account when you contact Shopify Support.

Steps:

From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Domains.
On the Domains page, click Change to a new myshopify.com domain next to your default domain name.
Enter a new name, and then click Add domain.