Global E-commerce Beginner's Complete Guide! From 3 Months No Sales to 11K RMB/Week—10 Steps & 15 Pitfalls (Part 2)

Last time covered the first six steps: Global E-commerce Beginner's Complete Guide (Part 1)

Product selection - Register domestic company - Register domain - Brand visual - Register Shopify - Register payment and logistics services.

If beginners can successfully survive these six trials, congratulations—you've already left behind 80% of potential competitors, because I've seen too many so-called global e-commerce newcomers or观望者 get stuck at any of the above steps and give up.

But Lvsao still wants to share some motivational鸡汤 to encourage everyone.

If something truly has zero threshold and zero difficulty, and everyone can get started directly, does that thing really have money-making potential?

Aren't you brainwashed by those social platform posts saying "no threshold, no English needed, no computer needed, no inventory, just one phone to do global e-commerce"?

On the contrary, when something has high enough thresholds and enough difficulties, it can筛选掉 large numbers of people who can't persist or solve problems—only then does the information gap value of that thing become higher.

Makes sense now? Get it? Then get up and do it, shut up.

——Cross-border Motivational Gold Medal Lecturer @Lvsao

Step 7: Store Setup, Product Listing

Frontend Decoration

If you're using Shopify as a beginner, your store setup work has been optimized by Shopify to be simple enough—like building blocks, piece by piece, using free templates you can quickly build a decent and high-quality e-commerce website.

The simplicity of上手 and quality of the site is something only people who've studied frontend would appreciate more.

Backend Settings

Extremely important—backend policy supplements, brand info completion, market and logistics info completion, checkout method completion, etc. This relates to your overall site user trust, future account audits for various channels, etc.

For example, various policies—Shopify has dedicated templates for you, so convenient what more do you want.

Product Listing

Too many tips, limited space here, will open dedicated topics in the future.

Pitfall: Spending Lots of Time and Energy Obsessing Over Templates

This pitfall is something 99% of global e-commerce newcomers fall into—I'm really speechless, what criteria does someone with zero experience have to obsess over templates?

All kinds of "poor student with too many stationery" reasons—first thinking free ones don't look good, then thinking free ones don't have enough functionality. Talking like you're starting a multi-million dollar e-commerce business.

Just like your first time skiing, you嫌弃 the rental equipment. Spent $3,000 researching and buying the top equipment, skied once and had nothing to say—realized it's not the equipment, you're just a pure noob.

Just listen to Lvsao—pick any free template that looks good to you (and 99% of free templates have similar basic functionality), if you really can't decide pick Dawn, most people use it.

Beauty is your design issue; functionality can be solved through plugins or even simple code.

And those buying pirated templates on Taobao, getting warnings and store closures after a few days—I'm really speechless. You don't research the proper way, but you're full of tricks for the crooked way.

Pitfall: Buying Store Setup Services from the Start

I know many people believe in the principle of leaving professional things to professionals—it's not wrong.

If you're a brand or team or have overseas experience, fine, spend money for convenience and efficiency.

But if you're a 0-1 independent site solopreneur, store building ability is your bottom line, your bread and butter—how do you think about handing the most core capability to others?

At the very minimum, you should seek professional services to solve problems and improve quality only after various attempts, efforts, and achieving some results.

If you start with store setup services wanting to solve things with money, then platforms are actually more suitable for you.

Pitfall: Installing Plugins Randomly, Opening Markets Randomly

Don't rush to install various plugins—slowly study and learn built-in features, use plugins as needed later.

Of course, don't be too afraid of installing plugins either. Many people will渲染 anxiety about plugins affecting speed. You just need to master two points:

1. Understand whether a plugin actually affects your website code (meaning some plugins completely don't植入 into your website code)
2. Understand how to completely uninstall a plugin

Both can be solved by emailing the plugin service provider—for example, after uninstalling a plugin, remember to write asking if there will be残留代码, and if so request assistance to delete it, then run Lighthouse to check.

Don't rush to open multiple country markets—some people get cocky (like Lvsao), see Shopify markets, feel like it's just one click to open a country, might as well open it.

One pitfall is that for every market you open, Shopify will generate a subfolder subdomain for you, and for every page you generate (like a product), it will generate product landing page links for all countries.

For example, if you open 20 countries and upload 1 product, it will generate product links for 20 countries.

What's the bad consequence?

1. Pages without localized content adaptation are almost ineffective—won't get any traffic or conversions.
2. As you delete and modify in the future (like wanting to delete a product), you might generate 20x 404 pages, causing your pages index to be in extreme混乱状态, not good for SEO.

Fill in All Policies, Payment Methods, Contact Info, Brand Info!

Make your website look professional and trustworthy—this is the foundation of building user trust.