 In the previous lessons, you learned how to import products from your source site to your Shopify stores. And you also learned how to create wonderful and converting product pages with all of the relevant information inside. In this lesson, you're going to learn how to create a killer homepage, which is very important for the success of your store. And that is because usually when viewers enter your store, the first thing that they would usually see is your product page. And that's because when you're running ads, like on Facebook, for example, you're targeting the viewers to your product page. But in many cases, the viewer is going to go out of your product page into your homepage to see what else you have to offer. And to also check out your business and make sure that it looks like a real professional business. Everything needs to be on point. Everything needs to look professional, while all keeping it on a budget, which is what we're doing in this whole course. So let's go on to creating a wonderful homepage for your dropshipping business. The first thing that you need to do is on your Shopify dashboard on the left side, click on settings, then click on general. And now there are two things that we need to do here. One is change your store name to your business name. So for example, since I bought the domain doggydogclub.com for this website, I'm going to call this business or the store name doggy dog club. And then scroll down to the end of this page and under the store currency, change it to USD. So now all of your viewers will see the USD currency instead of whatever local currency Shopify gave you. Go ahead and click on save. And that's it regarding the settings page. Now let's head over to the online store, click on themes, make sure that you have the theme that you chose in the previous lessons. So I went for the debut theme, go ahead and click on customize. And here is how your store currently looks. So first we have the doggy dog club, which is the name that we just chose for the business in the settings page. Now the first thing that we want to do is add an announcement bar on the top, which usually promotes something like free shipping or some discounts or a promo code that they have going on. So the first thing that you want to do on the left side is click on header and scroll down to the announcement bar. Here uncheck homepage only and check on show announcement. Once you do that, you may have noticed that the announcement bar just showed up on the top of your website. And it says announce something here, which is the text box that you see down here on the left. So here we're just going to write free shipping for all orders. Of course, you can write whatever you want. I'm just showing you guys an example of what you can do with that announcement bar. You can also change the background color of the announcement bar and the text. But let's leave it as it is for now and go back. And now let's move on to the rest of the options that we have on our homepage. So this is the first thing that the viewer is going to see when he enters your homepage. It's a big in your face photo. And what we're going to do now is choose a cover photo to show all of the viewers who will enter our homepage. So on the left side, you have to select an image, but we don't have an image yet. So what you have to do at this point is head over to that resources PDF that you have for this course. Over there, you have links to free stock photo websites, which I talked about a few lessons ago. Go to those free stock photo websites and search for that big image that you want to showcase on your homepage. Of course, it needs to be related to the niche that you're going for. So let's go ahead and do that together. Since we're going for the dog niche, we're just going to go and search for dogs. This is the first site, second stock photo site, and the third stock photo site. I want to get a nice image which will attract dog lovers such as myself. So we're going to go with this photo where we can see a few dogs sitting side by side and it's really, really cute. If you're a dog lover, I'm sure that you're feeling the same feelings that I'm feeling when looking at this photo. So I'm just going to go ahead and download it. The next step is to go back to Shopify to exactly where we left off. So here on the left side, we clicked on that image with the text overlay. We're going to click on select image. Then you're going to upload a new image by clicking on it. Go to the downloads page where it's at and click on that image file. And there it is loaded onto your homepage. So once again, starting from the top, you have the announcement bar, you have your store's logo, and then you have this big photo of these cute dogs. We're going to go ahead and confirm it by clicking on select. And then if you scroll down to the text in this case, we're going to delete the text because I just want the customers to see the photo, but you can add text and feel free to do whatever you want. Just make sure it looks clean and professional. So that's enough for this image. We're going to go ahead and go back. Now you can go ahead and continue scrolling down to edit the rest of your homepage. You don't have to keep everything that you're seeing here, especially not in the beginning. We're only going to showcase the product that we want people to see on the homepage. So if you look on the left side, you have a title for everything that we're seeing here. For example, this image with text. So let's say at this point, we do not want to add this. So simply click on it and on the three dots over here, click on remove section. Do not worry, you can always add that section again by clicking on add section. And if you want to see exactly what you're looking at, simply click on the I over here. So if I click on it, as you can see it hit it from the front page. So that's how I know that I'm controlling this section over here. So in this case, let's also remove the text columns with the images. Now we have the featured collection. Let's keep that because I think we can make it look good. Next image with text overlay, we don't need it at this point, remove it testimonials, since we don't have any, we're going to remove it. And here you can have a gallery for photos, but at this point, we're going to remove it. So right now you just have your front page, the announcement bar, the logo, that big header photo, and we're going to add some of the products to the featured collection over here. So let's go ahead and edit that featured collection, go ahead and click on it. You can change the name, for example, to featured products or to anything else that you want. And here you have to select the collection that you want to showcase. So if you remember from the previous lessons, when I added that dual dog leash product to my store, I connected it with the homepage collection and I told you that you can do the same. If you didn't do it, you can obviously do it anytime you want. But once you do that, all you have to do here is click on select collection and then choose which collection you want to showcase here. So I have my homepage collection, which I connected one product to. So once I clicked on it, as you can see, it's showing up over here. Now I do have a couple of more products that I added to my store. So all I have to do is go back to those products. Let's do that really quick so we can see it here. Head back to the AutoDS platform, go to your products page, click on the product that you want to edit, scroll down to collections and add it to the homepage collection. Save that product and let's do the same with these two products because I want to add all of them to that same homepage collection. So once again, to this product and to these squeaky dog toys over here, collection, homepage and save. Now let's head back to Shopify, click on select collection again, click on homepage and there we go. All of those products in one click of a button are on my featured homepage. Go ahead and click on select. And now let's check out our homepage. You have your top announcement bar, you have your logo, you have your nice big image, which you can also add a text overlay to. And if you scroll down, you have your featured products, one, two, three and four. If you click on any one of them, you'll obviously be taken to the product page. And as you can see, you already have a store that's starting to look really good and really professional. So that's it regarding the featured products. Let's go ahead and go back. By the way, there's more options like adding more products per row and adding more rows. I can't go through each and every little option. But I am showing you guys how you can go ahead and create your store and have all of the important things that you need. So you can go ahead and play around with this, add more sections, see what each section does, and how it affects the overall look of your homepage. Just make sure that your homepage looks clean, not too messy, and that each feature that you're adding looks clean, professional and relevant, just like what we're seeing in front of us now. Now, another section that I encourage you guys to add to your homepage is a newsletter subscription option. So click on add section, scroll down until you reach the newsletter and click on it. Once you click on it, it will add it to the homepage. As you can see over here, subscribe to our newsletter, which is right under the featured products. So we're going to keep this one that we just made over here, we're going to click on select, and you can change the text over here. For example, let's keep in touch, go back. So here you have your subscription option that you added under the featured products on the homepage. That's enough sections for now. Once again, you don't want too much of a mess on the homepage, especially not from the start. Later on, start adding more things and test out each feature to see which one works better than the other. But once again, as you can see, the homepage already looks fine, and it's more than enough to get started. The next thing that I want you guys to do on the left side, click on theme settings. And here you can change the colors of your text and the headings and everything else. I'm not going to do it now. I just want to show you guys where this option exists. You can also change the typography, the fonts. But what I do want you guys to add is the favicon. Now what exactly is a favicon? You see these icons that we're seeing up here on the top of each tab. So Shopify has their favicon, AutoDS has their favicon, Pixabay, the stock photo website has theirs and so forth. You also want to have yours. It just gives your website a much more formal look and will give the customer a feeling that you are a real website and you want them to feel that connection. And the best news about this is you already have a favicon saved on your computer from your previous lessons. Remember that Hatchful lesson where you created your own store logo? This is exactly what we're going to use now. So click on favicon, click on select image. Now go to the directory where you downloaded that Hatchful folder that got sent to your email. And you'll see that one of the file names is called favicon.png. Go ahead and click on that and click on open. You see that small little logo? That's your favicon. Go ahead and click on that and click on select. Now let's go ahead and save everything that we did. On the top right, click on save. And just so you know, this icon over here will also show you a mobile version of your homepage. The customer opens up his mobile phone, goes to your homepage. This is what he sees, free shipping on all orders. Here's your logo. Here's the main image on your homepage. And the featured products. He can simply click on them to go inside the product page. Let's keep in touch. Enter your email address. And that's enough for the homepage. Do not worry about the bottom footer. We did not talk about that yet. But as you know, you shouldn't worry because as you can see I'm going through each and every single thing that you guys need to know in order to have a successful and converting Shopify store. So go ahead and click on the exit button on the top left after you saved everything that you did. Now on the right side, go ahead and click on view your store. And voila, here is your store. And this is everything that you learned in this lesson. We have your top announcement. You have your logo. You have the big image with those cute puppies. Scroll down to see those featured products. Click on any of them to go inside that product page. As you can see, everything is optimized and everything looks good. And if you scroll down, you'll see that Shopify also added the other products as a form of cross sales to also try and sell them while we're trying to sell this product at the same time. Let's go back to the homepage, scroll down, see that subscribe button and do not worry that it still shows up over here. We're going to get to that bottom footer menu soon. Right now I just wanted to go over the main aspects of your homepage. And once again, as you can see, it's already looking good. And your assignment for this lesson before heading on to the next one is to create your homepage, go through everything that I talked about in this lesson and check out additional options that you have from the homepage, which I showed you guys, go ahead and make a nice, clean and professional, not too messy homepage. And I'll see you in the next lesson where we will start learning about store policies and legal pages. Do not fall asleep just yet. You need to have these pages on your Shopify store. And I'm going to simplify this process as much as possible for you. So go ahead and get that homepage that you were looking for. And I'll see you in the next lesson.