How to Launch a Shopify Dropshipping Store with Hertwill in 60 Minutes

Launching an online store doesn’t have to be a long or complicated process. With Shopify and Hertwill, you can set up a professional, well-designed store and start dropshipping high-quality products from European brands—in just 60 minutes.

This playbook will guide you step by step. Whether you’re new to ecommerce or an experienced entrepreneur, the focus is on simplicity and efficiency—getting your store ready to accept orders within an hour.

But the work doesn’t stop there. We’re building an MVP (minimum viable product)—just enough to go live quickly. The goal is to launch fast, bring in traffic, and refine as you go. To demonstrate the process, I’m creating an example Shopify store called Factoryshoes, using Hertwill for high-quality products.

Prework

Choosing a Niche

Hertwill’s recommended niches include children’s items, footwear, cosmetics, and accessories (bags, jewelry). Design stores and gift stores (e.g., men’s gift stores) also work well. Whatever you do, don’t build a general store. A niche store is easier to brand, market, and differentiate—plus, you won’t be competing with Amazon and other giant retailers. You can learn more about choosing a niche here: How to Choose a Niche for Dropshipping.

For my example, I chose footwear, and my store will focus on selling no-nonsense, durable shoes made in Europe. It’s a solid niche because:

✅ Differentiation – I can craft a compelling brand story that sets my store apart from large shoe retailers.

✅ Exclusive Products – The shoes I sell won’t be available on Amazon, Temu, or other big marketplaces. Plus, European-made shoes are rather rare, which makes them even easier to sell.

✅ Healthy Margins – The pricing allows for a profit after covering costs.

✅ High-Quality Products – Since the products are well-made, there’s a strong potential for repeat purchases and word-of-mouth marketing.

✅ Professional Marketing Content – Products come with high-quality photos, marketing materials, and even some customer reviews, making it easier to build trust and drive sales.

One challenge with selling shoes is that they have a higher return and exchange rate compared to bags or cosmetics. However, this isn’t a major issue since Hertwill accepts returns and exchanges. Another factor is that shoes are higher-ticket items, meaning they aren’t typically impulse buys—it may take more effort to convince customers to make a purchase.

Choose a Name & Check Domain Availability

Your store name and domain should be simple, memorable, and easy to type (e.g., avoid hyphens or numbers). For example, “factoryshoes.com” is better than “shoe-factory-9-nine.com.”

You can also choose a name and domain that doesn’t immediately reveal what the store is about. While this might make it slightly harder for customers to understand at first, it gives you the flexibility to pivot to a different niche later. For example, instead of Factoryshoes, just Factory, which allows you to sell anything.

It’s also a good idea to choose a name that resonates with your target audience and is in the language of your main market. For example, in the German market, Fabrikschuhe would be better than Factoryshoes. Additionally, your domain extension should match your primary market—if you’re targeting France, use “.fr” instead of “.com.”

The most convenient way to buy a domain is directly inside Shopify later during setup. For now, just decide on a name and check if the domain is available.

For our sample store, I chose Factoryshoes. It’s not perfect, but it clearly conveys what the store is about.

Create a Simple Logo

Your store’s first logo should be simple, clean, and easy to read—avoid clutter or complex designs. Canva is a great tool for this. It has a free plan and is also useful for creating visuals later (social media posts, ads, newsletters).

Steps to Create Your Logo in Canva:

1. Visit Canva.com. Create an account (if you don’t have one) and search for “Logo.”

2. Choose a simple template. Use keywords like “minimalist” or “simple” to find a template that suits your style.

3. Customize your logo. Add your store name. Black works well for most logos. If you decide to use colors, stick to a maximum of 2 that match your Shopify store’s color scheme—don’t overdo it.

4. Export your logo. Download the logo as a PNG with a transparent background.

Here’s an example I made in less than 3 minutes for my fictional store. It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough to start with—and definitely better than Shopify’s default logo.

Keep These Things in Mind About Your Logo

✅ Avoid illustrations and icons unless you’re a designer—most of the time, they just make the logo look cluttered. Your logo doesn’t need an icon—it can be purely text.

✅ Black works well for most logos, but if you use colors, stick to a maximum of two. Why dark logos work best: Most online stores have a white background (if you don’t, you should), so a dark logo provides good contrast and better readability.

✅ Use a transparent logo in your store. This prevents unwanted background colors and ensures your logo looks clean and professional on all pages. When downloading from Canva, select the "Transparent background" option.

✅ Make sure your logo is readable on all screens, especially on mobile. This is crucial for text-based logos—keep the text clear and avoid making it too small (a common issue). The last thing you want is someone buying from your store and not being able to pronounce its name because your logo looks like abstract art.

✅ Include your brand name in the logo—unless you’re Nike or McDonald’s, people won’t recognize your brand from just a symbol.

Don’t Forget the Favicon

A favicon (fun fact: it’s short for "favorite icon") is a small but important detail that adds professionalism and trustworthiness to your store. It’s the tiny icon that appears in browser tabs, bookmarks, and search results, helping customers recognize your brand at a glance. It also gives your website a subtle but valuable boost in credibility and professionalism.

The good news? You can quickly turn your logo into a favicon or create one from text. Tools like favicon.io and similar generators make the process especially easy.

Also, you may want to test your favicon with light and dark browser modes.

Setting Up Shopify

Sign Up for Shopify

Sign up using this link to get 3 days free, then just $1 per month for the first 3 months. That’s plenty of time—if you can’t get at least some orders in three months, you probably won’t in six months or six years.

Select a Theme

Shopify’s free themes are a great starting point for any online store. They’re professionally designed, customizable, and mobile-friendly—perfect for building a clean, functional store without spending extra. For example, both Dawn and Taste are great choices for new online stores.

Another advantage? There are plenty of tutorials and resources available online for these themes, making it easy to find help when you need it.

Your store won’t fail just because you didn’t choose a paid theme. In my example store, I went with the Taste theme—but don’t hesitate to use Dawn, the default theme. It’s a great option too.

Store Settings

General

• Fill in your store details. Enter your business name, email, address, and other essential information.
• Set your store currency. Make sure the currency matches your target market (e.g., EUR for the EU, USD for the US).
• Enable automatic fulfillment. Turn on “Automatically fulfill the order‘s line items”—since you’re dropshipping with Hertwill, you want orders to be sent automatically for fulfillment.
• Set an Order ID Prefix. Use your store name or an abbreviation to customize your order numbers. For this example store, I’ll use “Factoryshoes” as the prefix (e.g., Factoryshoes-1001).
• Brand Assets. Upload your store logo and any other brand assets you already have—but don’t waste time perfecting this right now.

Payments

Under Payments, set up Shopify Payments or PayPal (or your preferred payment method). Start with the easiest option and add more payment options (including pay-later solutions) later.

Checkout

• Require phone number for shipping. Set Shipping address phone number to Required. This is essential for logistics companies to deliver Hertwill orders—it will only be used for shipping purposes.
• Enable marketing opt-in by default. Toggle on “Display a checkbox for customers to sign up for email marketing” under Marketing to grow your email list.

Shipping & Delivery

Click on General shipping rates and leave domestic shipping free (we’ll start with free shipping and later introduce a free shipping threshold, e.g., from €100).

For international shipping, either leave it as it is, set a higher amount, lower it, or even offer free shipping—but be cautious, as shipping costs can be high for distant locations (e.g., Australia or South Africa). For most merchants it usually makes sense anyway yo start just with focusing on one market, usually their domestic market and later expand to interantional markets.

If you click International, Shopify will redirect you to Markets to set up new regions for selling. Alternatively, you can skip this for now—but keep in mind that international customers won’t be able to purchase from your store until you configure this.

📌 Note: The Hertwill app does not configure these settings for your store—you will need to set them up yourself. You can find Hertwill’s shipping terms, including available countries, here: https://hertwill.com/shipping/

🚀 Tip: For most merchants, it usually makes sense to focus on one market first—typically their domestic market—and expand to international markets later. This is why we are not focusing too much on international shipping terms at the moment.

Taxes and Duties

Set this up according to your local tax laws. For example, if you need to collect VAT, you should configure it here.

📌 Note: If you use Shopify Tax, be aware that Shopify may charge additional fees depending on your market. Learn more here.

Domain

Connect your existing domain if you bought it elsewhere, or purchase one directly from Shopify (usually a bit more expensive, but for most domains, it’s only a difference of a few euros).

Languages

My strong recommendation is to start with one language—specifically the language that people in your main market speak. Expanding to multiple languages and markets can come later.

Policies

Return Policy

Hertwill is one of the few dropshipping apps that accept returns and exchanges. You can find Hertwill’s official return terms here: Hertwill Returns & Refunds Policy. Use these terms to create your store’s return policy. If you plan to offer free returns, here’s a simple template:

Return Policy Template

We are proud to offer high-quality products with very few returns or exchanges. However, if you need to return an item, no worries—returns are free.

You can return items under the following conditions:

• The product must be returned within 14 days of receiving the item.
• The product must be unused, undamaged, and include all original labels.

Returns are free.

How to initiate a return or exchange:

• To start a return or exchange, contact us at hello@yourstorename.com and we will provide a return shipping label.

When contacting us, please provide:

• Your order number.
• Specify whether it’s a return or exchange.
• The reason for returning the item.

What happens after the item is returned?

• If you requested an exchange, we will ship the new item to you.

• If you requested a refund, we will process it promptly, but please allow 5-10 business days for the refund to appear in your account.

Privacy Policy & Terms of Service

• Set these policies according to your local laws and how you intend to run your store (e.g., what customer data you will collect).
• Shopify provides auto-generated templates, which are a good starting point.
• You can also review privacy and terms pages from well-established online stores for inspiration.

Or, if you’re feeling scrappy—just Google it or use AI.

Shipping Policy

Your shipping policy should clearly cover:

• Estimated delivery times and shipping costs.
• For new online stores, it’s common to offer free shipping to your main market, or at least for orders above a threshold (e.g., €100).

Make sure this information is clearly presented so customers can understand it at a glance.

📌 Note: Hertwill shipping costs and delivery times depend on what you sell and where you ship to. However, almost all items ship out the next business day and come from Europe or the US. For detailed info, check the official Hertwill Shipping Policy.

Contact Information

• Use the “Insert Template” option to add a Contact page.
• Include your company email—make sure it matches your store’s domain (avoid using Gmail, Outlook, etc., as this looks less professional).
• IIf possible, add a phone number and physical address to build trust. However, be careful about publishing your personal address or phone number.

And that’s it. These policies and your contact page will automatically appear in your store’s footer. They add an extra layer of trust and provide key information for your customers.

📌 Note: Once your store is live, you’ll likely notice that pages like Shipping and Returns are among the most visited by your store visitors.

And with that, we’re done setting up Shopify General Settings—for now.

Let’s Add High-Quality Dropshipping Products with the Hertwill App

Install the Hertwill App in Your Store

Install the Hertwill Shopify app (rated 4.9/5) here—it’s quick and takes just a couple of minutes.

Honestly, it might be the easiest thing you’ll do all day. A couple of other things to know:

• Hertwill offers a free plan, so you can start without any upfront costs.
• Paid plans are available if you want to add more products.
• All paid monhtly plans start at just €1 for the first month.

What the Hertwill App Allows You to Do:

✅ Import high-quality dropshipping products to your store with just a few clicks.

✅ Automatically sync stock levels, so you never oversell.

✅ Fulfill orders automatically—Hertwill handles shipping and delivery through automated fulfillment.

Install Hertwill’s Shopify app for free here.

After You’ve Installed the Hertwill App

• Add your payment method to Hertwill here. When an order comes in and you request fulfillment, Hertwill will charge this payment method before processing the order.
• If you’re operating as a company, also add your company details, including your VAT number.

Everything else is pretty straightforward:

• Import List: Products waiting to be synced to your store.
• My Products: Products already imported into your Shopify store.
• Orders: Track orders and download invoices.
• My Stores: Manage multiple stores and switch between them.
• Dashboard: Yep, it’s a dashboard.

Before Importing Products—One Quick Step

After you’ve finished installing the Hertwill app, let’s take care of one small thing before we start importing products: Make sure the Hertwill location is included in your shipping profiles.

How to do it:

1. Go to your Shopify Admin → Settings → Shipping and Delivery.
2. Click on your default shipping profile (usually the first one listed).
3. Under Fulfillment locations, make sure Hertwill is checked and listed.

Importing Products

Browse Hertwill’s catalog for high-quality European dropshipping products. You can add them to your store with just a few clicks.

Adding Products to Your Store

• Click the “Add to Import List” button on any product you want to import—you can do this from both catalog pages and product pages.
• Navigate to your Import List.
• Set prices here, or adjust them later in your Shopify admin. Don’t be afraid to set higher prices to leave room for discounts and promotions. If you are not eligible to buy items from Hertwill with 0% VAT, include VAT in your cost here.
• Click “Sync”, and your products will appear in your store as draft products.
• You can sync products individually or in bulk.

📌 Note: Bulk syncing a large number of products can take time, as Shopify limits the sync speed when a certain threshold is reached for lower-tier plans.

Approval for Premium Brands

If you see “Apply for a Brand” instead of “Sync”, it means the product belongs to one of Hertwill’s premium brands. No worries—just click the button, and the brand will be notified of your request to sell their products.

Why do premium brands require approval?

They want to make sure their products are sold in stores that look trustworthy and align with their brand. In short, they just want your store to look professional—which you need anyway if you want to make any sales.

📌 Note: Plenty of products don’t require approval—you can find them here.

🚀 Tip: Here you can find more tips on getting brand approvals.

Factoryshoes Store Example

Since we’re building the Factoryshoes store, let’s start by adding some shoes—all from European brands and made in Europe.

We’ll begin with Samelin shoes, including the legendary Norwegian M77 boots, which will probably be our bestsellers.

📌 Note: If you want to find products across all categories that are made in Europe, you can find them here.

🚀 Tip: You don’t need hundreds of products to get started—sometimes 10 to 20 products is more than enough. When we launched our shoe store, Saapavabrik, in the Estonian market, we started with just one brand (Samelin) and around 25 products for the first six months. Even now, with just six brands, it generates over €300,000 in annual sales.

Now Let’s Edit and Publish Your Products

Now that we’ve synced some products to your Shopify store, it’s time to edit and publish them (products arrive in draft status by default). Edit product titles, descriptions, prices, and anything else necessary. For example, if you’re targeting the German market, it makes sense to translate product titles and descriptions into German.

✅ Also, make sure all products have the Sales Channel set to “Online Store.”

🚀 Tip: You can edit products individually or in bulk in Shopify admin. Bulk editing is faster and more efficient when adjusting multiple products at once.

Once you’re done editing, set all products to Active to make them live on your store.

Pricing & Charm Pricing

In general, I recommend setting higher prices to leave room for discounts. Also, set product prices to end in 9—this is known as charm pricing. I got this tip from Richard Shotton’s book The Choice Factory: 25 Behavioural Biases That Influence What We Buy. He points out that prices ending in 9 often boost conversion rates because customers subconsciously perceive them as better deals (e.g., €79 feels like a better deal than €76).

In short, ending prices with 9 could help improve conversions while also increasing your average order value. It’s not magic, but it’s a small tweak that’s easy to implement—so why not do it?

Sales Prices

For new online stores, I recommend launching a sales campaign right away—and always keeping at least some items on sale. People love discounts, and this is one of the fastest ways to drive orders.

✅ Use bulk edit to change both the Base Price and the Compare-at Price in one go.

✅ I typically start with at least a 30% discount, but the bigger the discount, the better.

✅ Early on, the goal isn’t profit—it’s getting orders and building momentum.

✅ We’re not using discount codes here—the discount will be shown directly in the pricing.

Setting Sales Prices

• Set the Compare-at Price (this is your original/full price).
• Adjust the Base Price (this is your sale price).

Don’t forget—you can bulk edit prices. The Compare-at Price will display as the original price, while the Base Price will show as the discounted price on your store.

Example:

If you set the Compare-at Price at €149.99 and the Base Price at €89.99, your customers will see €89.99 as the sale price marked down from €149.99.

What happens on your store:

• Both prices (full price and sale price) will show on product pages and collection pages.

• Only the sale price will show at checkout.

Don’t forget—you can bulk edit prices.

📌 Note: To show proper crossed-out (strikethrough) prices on product and collection pages, you’d need a third-party Shopify discount app from the Shopify App Store. But to start with, Shopify’s built-in pricing tools are good enough.

Change Product Descriptions and Titles

Hertwill’s product titles and descriptions are provided in English. If you’re selling in a non-English market, you’ll need to translate them. Even if you’re keeping your store in English, I recommend improving the product descriptions later by adding your own touch—tailoring them to your target audience.

For example: If you’re selling Samelin boots in Germany, you should mention that Samelin has also manufactured boots for the German army.

🚀 Tip: Use tools like ChatGPT, DeepL, or other AI translators to speed up the process. You can also bulk import translated descriptions if needed.

Collections and Categories

Now let’s create collections (in Shopify, collections are groups of products organized by a common theme, category, or feature).

Go to Products → Collections to get started.

For small stores, it’s usually best to keep collections broad instead of mimicking huge marketplaces like Amazon or Zalando with tons of micro-categories.

Exception: If you’re heavily focused on a niche, creating a specific collection might make sense. For example, if there’s strong search demand for “vegan leather boots,” you could create a Vegan Leather Boots collection to target that search intent.

For my Factoryshoes store, I’m starting with just these collections:

• Men’s Footwear

• Women’s Footwear

• SALE
• New

Adding Products to Collections

You can manually add products to collections for now, but later it’s worth switching to automated collections (at least for some of them) to save time.

For example, here’s how to automate your “Sale” collection:

1. Go to Shopify Admin → Products → Collections
2. Click Create Collection
3. Name it: Sale (or Discounts, Deals, etc.)
4. Set Collection Type to Automated
5. Add these conditions:
1. Compare-at price is greater than 0
2. Price is less than Compare-at price
6. Click Save

Now, any product with a discount will automatically be added to your Sale collection.

🚀 Tip: You can also assign Categories to products (yes, the whole Collections vs. Categories thing in Shopify is confusing). Categories add metafields that can improve search functionality, filters, and cross-channel sales. It’s optional at the start, but useful later—and you can bulk edit them when ready.

Menus

Navigate to Content → Menus in Shopify to manage your store’s menus.

Main Menu

Your Main Menu should include your main collections and a Sale section. Adding a New section can also make sense.

Why? Most visitors come to your store to browse products, so it makes sense to make navigation as convenient as possible. As for “SALE”—people love discounts. The Sale section is crucial for getting your store off the ground and should be easy to find on any page your customers visit.

Also, consider including a Story/About Us page to help build trust—but only if it contains real, meaningful content. Avoid generic, AI-generated About Us text—it often does more harm than good.

💡 UX Best Practice: On desktop, your store should have a traditional, visible menu (not a burger menu). A clear, always-visible menu makes navigation easier and improves the user experience.

Why Menus Matter More Than Search for Small Stores

According to Baymard Institute, in clothing and apparel stores, users prefer browsing via menus and categories rather than using search. For small online stores, this is even more important—you want visitors to navigate through your menu, not rely on search.

Why?

✅ You control the customer journey, guiding visitors to the products you want them to see.

✅ Search in small stores often performs poorly. If a customer searches and doesn’t find what they’re looking for, they might leave.

✅ Small stores don’t have the vast inventory of big marketplaces, so search results can often feel limited.

That’s why a well-structured menu is critical.

This is it for now. We’re not touching the Footer menu or the Customer account menu yet

Customizing Your Shopify Theme

To customize or change your theme, go to:

Sales Channels → Online Store → Themes — from there, you can customize or switch themes.

As mentioned earlier, free Shopify themes are a great starting point. They’re professionally designed, customizable, and mobile-friendly, making them ideal for building a clean and functional store without extra cost. For example, both Dawn and Taste are solid choices for new online stores. And remember—your store won’t fail just because you didn’t pick a paid theme. Anyway, before you click “Customize” and get started, keep in mind that theme settings might vary slightly depending on which theme you choose.

🚀 Tip: Google some examples of real stores using your chosen theme to get inspiration. For example, here are a few built on Shopify’s default Dawn theme.

In my example store, Factoryshoes, I’m using the free Taste theme.

General Web Design Rules That Will Help You

Keeping it familiar means good UX and trustworthiness

Your store should feel familiar and trustworthy, with everything where people expect it. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel.

Example:

• On mobile, the shopping cart should be in the top right corner.
• A chat feature (if you add one) should be in the bottom right corner.

Don’t improvise. Big websites with millions of users can experiment—you can’t. Stick to best practices. Shopify’s most popular themes already have solid UX—just don’t mess it up.

White (or at Least Light) Background Wins

Unless you’re a designer, stick to a white or light background. It makes your store look more professional and easier to navigate. Major online stores and marketplaces do this for a reason—white backgrounds keep things clean and help products stand out.

Stick to Default or Regular Fonts

No fancy experiments here. You want your store to look familiar and readable. Unless you’re a UI/UX designer, default fonts or simple, common fonts (Arial, Helvetica, etc.) are the way to go. No store ever became successful because of a quirky font—but bad typography can definitely hurt your conversions. Same goes for font colors.

Avoid Long Text

Keep headlines and product descriptions short and to the point. Save the long paragraphs for your About Us page, not product pages or homepage. Instead, write something relevant and clear. People come to browse and shop—not read a novel.

Also, skip AI-generated fluff like:

"Step into style."

Mobile First

60-80% of your visitors will be shopping on mobile. Always design and test with mobile as your priority. Test everything on your phone. In Shopify, use the mobile preview toggle (upper right corner) when customizing your theme. Luckily, Shopify themes are already mobile-optimized—just don’t mess it up.

Let’s Start with the Theme Settings

• Logo
• Upload the logo you created earlier.
• Upload the favicon you created earlier.

• Colors & Typography. Shopify’s free themes already come with solid font hierarchy and well-balanced colors. If you want to customize them and make your store feel more personal, keep this in mind:
• Good UX means sticking to a maximum of 2 fonts. Avoid handwritten or overly stylized fonts. Safe bet? The classics in Google Fonts.
• Don’t go wild with colors. Pick one primary accent color (like blue) to highlight key elements.
• A white background works best 99.9% of the time—unless you’re a designer.
• Animations
• Turn on either Vertical Lift or 3D Lift for product images.

• Badges
• Position on cards: Set to Top Right (it’s a better spot for them).
• Sale badge color scheme: Leave it as is—or if you’re feeling ambitious, change it to red. To do this: 1) navigate to Colors and create a new color scheme with a red background; 2) then go back to Badges and select that color scheme for the Sale badge.

• Social Media
• Add your social media links to your store.
• Create accounts for the main social platforms you plan to use (Instagram, TikTok, etc.).
• Having these icons on your site adds a small but important layer of trust.

• Currency Format
• Disable currency codes—people recognize the currency from the symbol (€, $, £).

That’s it for now! Just remember, these settings (and others) might vary slightly depending on the theme you’re using.

Now, Let’s Move to the Most Important Page: The Homepage

Your homepage should be clean and simple, with a strong cover photo and a clear Call to Action (CTA) button. This is the page most visitors will see first—so it’s important to get it right. And it’s perfectly fine to take extra time to make sure you do.

But before we jump into making the homepage look sharp, let’s first add a title and meta description. Your title and meta description are what show up on Google and other search engines. They give potential customers the first impression of your store before they even click through.

To do that, go to your Shopify admin:

Sales Channels → Online Store → Preferences → Search engine listing.

Alright—now let’s make the homepage look great and trustworthy.

Header

Announcement Bar

The announcement bar is the top bar at the very top of your website. Set up a message for the announcement bar, such as:

• End of Season Sale – Up to 50% Off
• Free Shipping on All Orders Over €99

You can add multiple rotating messages, but don’t stack multiple announcement bars on top of each other. If you don’t have anything important to say, don’t add one. And no, “Welcome to the store” isn’t important.

Header Settings

Set the Desktop logo position to middle left—it’s a natural placement and helps keep the header compact, unlike top center, which makes the header unnecessarily large. (Avoid oversized headers—you don’t want your header taking up too much screen space.)

Sticky Header on Scroll Up is a good option—it improves navigation without being intrusive.

I also recommend turning off the Country/Region Selector and Language Selector for now. We’re starting with just one market to get the store going before expanding. You should do the same—pick one market and focus on that.

Template

Image with Text (Your Main Banner)

This is often the first thing people notice when they land on your store—and they’ll make a snap decision about your brand based on it. So take your time, choose wisely, and don’t be afraid to test different images.

• Choose a picture that fits your niche and sets the right mood or emotion.
• Images with people tend to perform better than those without.
• Make sure there’s a clear call to action with a button.
• Any text over the image should be easy to read.

Hero images should have a single point of focus—either the product or the feeling you want to convey. Keep it simple. Avoid cluttered, overly busy images with too many colors or objects—they overwhelm users and dilute your message.

At Hertwill, many of the product images are good enough to use as your main image. Some brands also provide extra content, like additional images and videos (and even customer reviews).

• You can adjust the image overlay opacity, but don’t overdo it—darkening the image too much is a common mistake.
• If you use a video instead of an image, make sure the file isn’t too large or it could slow down your page.
• Always check how your banner looks on mobile.

Here’s an example from my sample store, Factoryshoes, using a Hertwill image as the main homepage banner. You’ll find that image here (and you can find more Samelin images here to use). By the way, the model in the photo is Estonian jazz singer and songwriter Ingrid Rabi.

And here’s another example from my sample store, Toyfactory. This one is built on the Dawn theme, and again, we’re using images available through Hertwill. These two images feature Meowbaby products and can be found here.

📌 Note: All these pictures, and many more, are available for you if you use Hertwill.

CTA & Button

Your main banner should always include a clear message and a CTA (Call to Action) button that speaks directly to your visitors. Here are some examples:

If you’re running a sale:

• Text: End of Season Sale – Up to 50% Off
• CTA Button: Shop Sale

If you’re highlighting new arrivals:

• Text: New In: Award-Winning Sandals Made in Europe
• CTA Button: Shop Now

You get the idea—never leave your main banner empty. Always include a message and a button.

Featured Collection

It’s usually smart to follow your main banner with products. Featuring bestsellers, new arrivals, or sale items works well. Whatever you choose, make sure these are your strongest products—the ones most likely to grab attention and convert. In our example store, since we’re running a sale, we’re featuring products that are on sale right now.

Why This Matters:

• You want visitors to see products right away—don’t make them scroll too much to find them.

• People come to your store to browse and (hopefully) buy, so show them products upfront.

Settings for Featured Collection:

• Enable “View All” – If you have more products on sale (or whatever collection you’re displaying) than the ones shown, let users see everything easily.
• Show second image on hover – Helps customers quickly see different angles or variations of a product.
• Show vendor – Displays the brand name.
• Show product rating – Adds a layer of trust. Hertwill provides real reviews and ratings from actual users for many products.

What Else to Add to Your Homepage

Now that we’ve covered the key sections of your homepage, you have some freedom to decide what to add next. As a rule of thumb, anything that builds trust and makes your store look more credible is a good move.

Good options include:

• Value props – Highlight things like free shipping, fast delivery, or a 2-year warranty.
• Testimonials or reviews – Real customer feedback builds credibility fast. Especially effective if you can show reviews with photos of real people using or holding your product.
• Trust icons – For example, a Trustpilot badge, ratings, or logos of trusted partners (e.g., payment providers).
• A short section about your store’s unique selling point or story—or even better, show the real people behind the business. Keep it short.

It’s also helpful to add product collections. This makes it easier for visitors to quickly find the categories they’re most interested in.

For example, here are the value propositions I used in Factoryshoes. The name of that section in the Shopif is "Multicolumn".

And here is a simple product review, built using the "Image with text" section.

And here is a really, really simple short block aimed at reinforcing the fact that all shoes sold by Factoryshoes are made in Europe. I used the "Rich text" section for this.

Again, all of these could be better and there could be more, but right now we’re trying to move as fast as possible and improve everything later.

Footer

Let’s keep the footer simple for now. Here’s what to turn on (or leave on) in the footer settings:

• Show email signup – but don’t just write “Subscribe.” No one signs up for that. Offer real value, like:
• A proper discount
• Free shipping
• A free item
• Show social media icons – adds trust, and you’ll need social media anyway to bring in traffic
• Show payment icons – helps build trust and people want to know you accept familiar payment methods
• Show policy links

Product Pages

We’ll leave the header and footer as they are for now and focus on the Product Information section. Here are the key sections for your product pages:

Product Page Sections

• Text: Brand (vendor)
• Product title
• Price
• Variant picker – I prefer dropdowns if there are lots of variations (e.g., shoe sizes).
• Buy buttons – toggle on Show dynamic checkout buttons. And if you’re wondering why the buy button sits so high (before the product description, for example)—it’s simple: you don’t want users to scroll to find it.
• Product description
• Share button
• Related Products – set to:
• Show second image on hover
• Show vendor (brand)
• Show product rating

In a perfect world, we’d add more here—like, for example, a shorter product description—but the goal is to get something decent live fast and improve it later. So this is it for the moment.

Collection Pages

We’ll leave most things as they are, but under Product Grid settings, turn on:

• Show second image on hover
• Show vendor (so the brand is visible)
• Show product rating
• Enable sorting

Checkout

We’ll leave most of it as is, but make sure of the following:

• Upload your store logo—but keep it small.

• Don’t add background images (keep it clean).

• You can leave the colors as they are for now.

Important: Set the Checkout layout to One-page (fewer steps = higher conversions).

About us / Story page

Having been in ecommerce for a long time and partnering with thousands of dropshipping stores through Hertwill, we’ve noticed that the About Us page gets quite a lot of visits, especially compared to policy pages (with the exception of the shipping page) and the contact page. Makes sense—people want to make sure the store they’re about to buy from is legit and trustworthy. So, we’ll be creating an About Us page for our store as well.

In general, the About Us page should avoid fluff, feel like it was written by a real person, and avoid any BS. Images help a lot, especially if they show the real people behind the store.

When creating the Story page for Factoryshoes, I added an image of my backpack and Samelin hiking boots and wrote a genuine text (AI helped me fix the grammar, obviously). It took me about 5 minutes—it's not great, but it’s a decent start.

Contact Page

I went a bit extra and added an Image with Text section below the contact form. Images help build trust, just like listing a physical address does.

One more rule—never list an email address that isn’t from your store’s domain (e.g., don’t use your Gmail or Hotmail). It looks unprofessional.

Finish!

And that’s it! We now have Factoryshoes—a Shopify store built with Hertwill products. You can check out this example store here.

Conclusion

What we didn’t cover in this guide:

• Setting up other key apps besides Hertwill, like Google for Shopify or Klaviyo (for email marketing).
• Creating social media accounts and posting some basic content.
• The hard part: driving traffic and turning visitors into customers.
• And plenty more (let me know if you think something crucial is missing).

But here’s the thing—the store is now good enough to start bringing in traffic. It’s far from perfect, but that wasn’t the point. The goal was to launch a solid store fast, so you can start learning and improving while real visitors are already browsing. This way, you’ll get actual data on what products they check out, what they buy, and where you can make adjustments.

And one last thing: although the store we built in this guide is a shoe store, the niche doesn’t matter. This guide works for anything from children’s stores to cosmetics and apparel shops.

Thanks for reading—and of course, give Hertwill a try if you want to sell high-quality dropshipping products. - Joosep (co-founder of Hertwill).