Getting started

Storeforge gives your business a shop online: a storefront customers can browse, a cart, checkout, and an order book, with card payments settling straight into your own bank account.

1. Register

Sign up at the Storeforge landing page with your email and a password. You get a 14 day free trial with no card needed to start. A confirmation link goes to your email; you don't need to click it to start setting up, but you'll need it before you can take live card payments, add a custom domain, or give staff their own logins.

2. Set up your shop

From the dashboard:

Add your first products under Products. Give each one a name, price, photos and, if you sell more than one of something, variants (size, colour) with their own stock counts.
Pick your delivery options under Delivery: flat fee, free over an amount, or more than one option (for example Standard and Express).
Set your shop's look under Online store: colours, fonts, layout and a banner photo. Most shops start on the default theme; a custom-built theme is also possible, see the Your shop's look page.

3. Turn on a way to get paid

Under Settings, Payments, connect your own Yoco or PayGate account for card payments, or turn on selling on account (EFT, invoice, pay-on-account) if your customers are on credit terms. See the Payments page for what each one needs.

4. Go live

While your shop is on trial or without a payment method armed, it still works for testing (a built-in payment simulator stands in for a real card). When you're ready for real customers, connect a real payment method and pick a plan under Settings, Billing.

Finding your way around

The sidebar has your day-to-day pages: Orders, Products, Customers, Discounts, Messages, Analytics and Online store. A page's own sub-pages open under it while you are there, for example Collections and Gift cards under Products. Extras you choose to add, such as Email marketing and Product reviews, sit under an Apps heading. Add or remove them on the Apps page.

Press Ctrl+K (or Cmd+K on a Mac, or just /) to jump to the search box at the top. Type at least 2 characters to find an order by number, name or email, a product by name, type, tag or barcode, a customer by name, email or phone, or a page in the menu. Quick actions such as Add product and New order are in there too, and so is Add for any app you have not added yet.

Settings opens with a list of the other settings pages: Delivery, Courier, Notifications, Email sender, PayPal, Staff, Billing, Activity, Security and Menu. Below it is the main form, with a short menu that jumps to each section: shop, contact details, delivery, shop address, invoices and banking, ad tracking, payments, abandoned checkouts, Online store, returns, orders, selling on account, exporting your data and your login. Activity, the log of who changed what, shows once you have staff logins or add-ons. Webhooks, API keys and the order intake key show once you add the Developer tools pack (see Apps).

Open Settings, Menu to choose which pages show in your sidebar and in what order. Untick a page to hide it, and use the arrows (or drag a row on a computer) to move it. Home and Settings always stay. Each login has its own menu, so your staff can tidy theirs without changing yours. A hidden page still opens, and the search at the top still finds it, marked "Hidden from your menu". Reset to the standard menu undoes everything.

A small ? next to a page's heading opens the help topic for that page.

If a form won't save

If you leave a required box empty or type letters where a number goes, you land back on the same page with a short note naming the box, for example "Price needs a number". You don't get an error screen, and nothing is saved until it is fixed.

Need a hand at any point? [email protected] or WhatsApp 073 429 5517.

Still stuck? [email protected] or WhatsApp 073 429 5517.