Set up your store before the first sale

Create your store

A store holds everything you sell on one website: products, orders, customers and their settings. Creating it takes one short dialog.

1. 1
   Open Orders in the sidebar. Until the website has a store, Orders, Products, Customers and Discounts each show Set up your store.
2. 2
   Choose Create store. The dialog starts with your website’s name, and the store address follows the name as you type.
3. 3
   Add a line about what you sell. The description is optional. Choose Create store, and the store opens on Orders.

The store name and address can change later under Website settings, then Store. If the name is empty, the dialog says Give the store a name first. If the address has no letters or numbers, it says The store address needs at least one letter or number.

Name the store and choose its currency

Open Website settings, then Store, then General. Set the currency before you add products, because every price you enter is in it.

Store name

Shows on receipts and order emails. Store emails use it as the name they come from.

Store address

Short and lowercase, with hyphens between words. Mirin uses it in links to the store.

Currency

USD, CAD, GBP, EUR, AUD, NZD, JPY or MXN. Prices, times and dates follow these settings everywhere the store appears.

Time zone and language

Order times and daily reports use the time zone. A new store starts on America/New York and English (US).

Edits wait until you choose Save in the header, the same as every settings page. The header says Unsaved changes while there is something to keep, and Saved once it is kept.

Connect Stripe to take payments

Shoppers pay by card at checkout through your own Stripe account, so each sale is paid into that account. You connect it once. The quickest way is to connect Stripe in Connectors by signing in, with no keys to copy. The keys below still work, and memberships use them.

1. 1
   Open Website settings, then Store. The Providers card sits under Payments and platforms.
2. 2
   Choose Add, then Stripe. Stripe is listed under Payments in the Add Provider dialog.
3. 3
   Paste both keys from your Stripe account. The Publishable Key starts with pk_ and the Secret Key starts with sk_.
4. 4
   Choose Connect. Mirin checks the keys while it connects. Stripe then shows as Active on the Payments tab.

Configure shows when Stripe connected and has Test Connection. To change keys, disconnect Stripe and add it again with the new keys.

Address suggestions at checkout have a page of their own now, under Store. See Suggest addresses at checkout.

Bring in a Shopify catalog

Already selling on Shopify? Connect it and your products, collections and custom fields come across, so you do not type the catalog again. Starting fresh? Skip this and add products in Products. The newer way to connect is the Connectors page, under Website settings, then Connectors, which detects your store from its address and shows each sync as it happens. Connectors walks through it.

1. 1
   Choose Add, then Shopify. Shopify is listed under Catalog.
2. 2
   Enter the Store URL. Type the part before .myshopify.com. A full address works too.
3. 3
   Paste an Admin API Access Token from your Shopify admin. Mirin checks it while it connects.
4. 4
   Choose what to sync and choose Connect. Products, Collections and Metafields start ticked. Metaobjects is there when you need it.

What you can do with a connected Shopify

Configure

Shows the Shopify store, when it connected, when it last synced and what it syncs. Test Connection checks the token still works.

Migrate

Makes every product from Shopify fully editable in Mirin and turns syncing off for good. Use it when you close the Shopify store.

Disconnect

Removes the connection, its saved credentials and its sync history. Products, collections, inventory, customers and custom fields stay in your store.

Keep the catalog in sync

Sync has one home: the row of the store you connected. Open Website settings, then Connectors, and choose your store’s name, such as Shopify, to open its row. Everything that used to sit on a separate Sync page under Store is there now, and an old link to that page opens Connectors instead.

• The state in words. Such as Up to date, with when it last synced, when it syncs next, and Sync now beside it.
• Keep up to date automatically. One switch. On, Mirin checks your store for changes on its own. Off, nothing comes in until you press Sync now.
• How often. How often the regular sync runs, and one table with a line for each kind of data: how many came in, when, and how often.
• Activity. The last three runs, every run behind See all, and any item that could not come in.

Keep a connected store up to date walks through that row with a working example. Orders already paid in Stripe come in from the Stripe row on the same page, under Past orders.

Tax, policies and support

You do not look up tax rates. Checkout adds US sales tax using the state in the shipping address, and a pickup order uses the state of the pickup location instead.

What changes the taxed amount

• Charge tax turned off. Those products stay out of the taxed amount.
• A discount. It lowers the taxed amount before tax is added.
• Shipping. It is taxed only in states that tax shipping.

How customers reach you

Policies

The web addresses of your returns, terms of sale and privacy pages. Leave one blank if you do not have that page yet.

Support

The email and phone customers can use to reach you. Mirin checks the email looks like an address before it saves.

Suggest addresses at checkout

As a shopper types their street, checkout can suggest full addresses from Google Places. One tap fills the street, city, state and ZIP code, so fewer addresses are mistyped. It uses your own Google key, so Google bills your Google Cloud account for the lookups.

1. 1
   Turn on the Places API (New). In a Google Cloud project with billing turned on, open APIs and services and turn on Places API (New).
2. 2
   Create a key. Open Credentials and create an API key. Under its API restrictions, choose Places API (New). Leave its application restriction at None, because Mirin asks Google from its server and a website restriction makes Google refuse it.
3. 3
   Add it in Mirin. Open Website settings, Store, Address suggestions. Choose Add a key, paste it and choose Save key. Mirin tries it with Google first and keeps it only when Google accepts it.
4. 4
   Try your checkout. Type the first letters of a street in the address field, pick a suggestion, and the street, city, state and ZIP code fill in.

• Working. Google accepted the key the last time Mirin asked. Shoppers see suggestions as they type the street.
• Not working. Google refused the key, and the page says why in a sentence, such as billing not turned on or a website restriction. Fix it in Google Cloud, then choose Test.
• No key. The address fields at checkout are plain text boxes. Checkout works the same, without suggestions.

Let shoppers pay with Apple Pay and Google Pay

Fast pay lets a shopper pay with the card already in their phone or browser, in two taps, instead of typing a card at checkout. It is on for every store that takes cards, and there is nothing to set up: Mirin registers each of your web addresses with Stripe for you. Open Website settings, Store, Fast pay to turn a wallet off or see each address.

Apple Pay

Shows in Safari on iPhone, iPad and Mac, where the shopper has Apple Pay.

Google Pay

Shows in Chrome and on phones with Android, where the shopper has Google Pay.

What each address shows

• Ready. Stripe knows the address, so shoppers there see the wallet.
• Not ready. Stripe has not accepted the address yet. Mirin asks again by itself, and Check again asks now.
• Not checked yet. A new address Mirin has not asked Stripe about. The next checkout there asks for you.
• Off. You turned the wallet off, so no address offers it.

Fast pay uses the Stripe account you connected for cards, and the money arrives there like any card payment. Without Stripe, the page asks you to connect it first. The wallets show on a checkout built to include them; if yours does not show them yet, ask us in the chat.

Hear about every order

Every paid order sends a short alert to each address in Send yours to, while New order to you is on. The alert has the order number, the customer, the items and the total, so nobody has to watch Orders all day.

What your customers receive, and when, is in Store emails.

Before your first sale

The store exists, Stripe can take payment and you hear about orders. These guides take it the rest of the way.

Data, at the bottom of General, clears imported or test data from the store. Nothing there can be undone.