You didn't buy a theme to spend a month in settings menus. You bought it to sell. This guide sorts everything Taiga can do into the order that actually affects whether someone buys, so your first hours go toward what pays off, not toward what just feels productive.
Work through priorities 1 and 2, and you already have enough to launch. The rest can wait. A live store beats a perfect draft sitting in preview mode with half its pages unfinished.
Before you start, you need a Shopify store with Taiga installed and a handful of products loaded. This guide picks up from there, not from installing the theme or finding your way around Shopify's admin. For more general guidance, see Shopify's checklist for starting a new store.
Prefer a shorter version? Our Taiga Setup Checklist covers these same six priorities.
Priority 1: Win the first three seconds
A visitor forms an opinion about your store before they've read a single word. A strong header and hero earn you their attention in that instant, and everything else on the page gets to build from there.
Confirm your preset (Taiga, Hehku, Meadow, or Bubbly) roughly fits your brand before you build on top of it. Every choice below, from hero image to badge colors, will follow its lead.
Header
- Add your logo and check it holds up on a phone screen, not just your laptop.
- Build your main menu around your best categories, not all of them. The more items you list, the harder it gets for a visitor to find what they actually came for.
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Turn on search as soon as your catalog grows past what fits comfortably on one page.
Homepage hero
- Skip stock photography. Use a real photo of your product or space, or an impressive video if you have one that shows it well.
- Write a headline that says what you sell and who it's for. Save the clever tagline for later, once people already know what you do.
- Send the hero's button to your best collection, a seasonal campaign, or your newest arrivals, not your homepage. Visitors are already there.
This is the one spot almost every visitor sees. Get it right before you touch anything else.
→ See the Header and navigation and Homepage guide for a clothing store.
Priority 2: Make Your Products Impossible to Walk Past
Long before someone reads a product description, they've already judged the product from its product card image in a grid. That smaller preview is doing more selling than most merchants give it credit for.
Product cards
- Turn on the secondary image so hovering reveals a second angle.
- Turn on badges for sale, new, and low stock, and use the theme's custom badge text ("Best seller," "Selling fast") wherever it's true. A badge like that can turn a passing glance into a buying click.
- Turn on quick buy for products that don't need extra explanation before buying. The fewer clicks between browsing and buying, the fewer chances someone changes their mind.
- If your products come in multiple colors, turn on swatches so customers see the choice right from the grid.
- Match your product card's aspect ratio to your product's shape, square for boxy items, portrait for anything tall like bottles, so images don't end up awkwardly cropped.
Product pages
- Add three to five images per product, including one showing scale or context (worn, plated, styled on a person). One photo on a plain background rarely tells a customer enough to feel sure about buying.
- Keep the visible description short, just enough to answer what it is and who it's for. Move materials, sizing, care, and shipping details into collapsible sections instead of one long block of text. Most people just scan for what they need. A curious few will click for the rest.
- If something about the product is hard to judge from a photo, like fit or scent strength, use the attribute insights feature to show it as a visual scale, with extra detail available underneath if a customer wants to read more.
- Turn on review stars if you have real reviews to show. An empty review widget quietly tells customers nobody trusts this product yet.
- Confirm "Add to cart" is visible without scrolling, on desktop and in a phone held in one hand.
If you touch one thing on this list, make it photography, on the card and the page. Nothing else here works as hard.
→ See also the Product Cards and Product Pages for more detailed information.
Priority 3: Clear the Road to Checkout
Every extra click, every confusing cart, every "wait, is that shipping cost right" is a chance for someone who already wants to buy to change their mind. This priority is about getting out of their way.
- Turn on filtering and sorting once a collection passes about fifteen products. Beyond that, finding the right product takes real effort instead of a quick look.
- Whichever cart type you use, drawer, page, or notification, check that it reacts the moment something's added, with an obvious next step to checkout. Don't make a customer go hunting for their own cart.
- If you offer free shipping past a threshold, turn on the shipping progress bar. Watching a number close in on "free shipping" nudges customers to add one more item rather than stop short of the threshold.
- Turn on cart recommendations for a quick add-on suggestion, and enable accelerated checkout buttons like Shop Pay for anyone who'd rather not type in their details again.
None of this adds anything new to your store. It just gets out of the way of a sale that's already happening.
→ For more information, see the Collections and Cart.
Priority 4: Answer the Doubt Before it Becomes a Bounce
Right before someone pays, a quiet voice asks: is this a real business, will this actually arrive, what happens if I need to send it back. This priority answers that voice before it answers for them.
- Write a real About page. Who you are, why you started this, where you ship from. A blank or placeholder About page reads as "maybe this isn't a real business," and that thought alone costs sales.
- Add your Shipping, Returns, and Contact pages, linked from the footer where anyone can find them without searching.
- Show reviews somewhere beyond the product page too, like a homepage section. Let new visitors see proof before they even start browsing.
None of this is complicated to set up. It gets skipped because it doesn't feel like "real" store work, but it's often the difference between a hesitant buyer and a completed order.
Priority 5: Brand Consistency
By now, the pieces that most affect a sale are in place. This priority is about making sure they all look like they belong to the same business.
- Confirm your preset (Taiga, Hehku, Meadow, or Bubbly) actually fits your brand, not just your industry. It's a starting point, so keep it if it works or adjust the colors and fonts until it does.
- Carry the same color scheme and imagery style across your homepage, collections, and product pages. A store that looks different page to page reads as unfinished, even when each page is fine on its own.
- Keep your product photography consistent throughout the catalog. A page of studio shots next to a page of phone photos undoes the trust you just built.
A simple store that holds together will sell better than a flashy one that doesn't. With the fundamentals already in place, this is what makes everything feel complete.
Priority 6: Final Launch Check
This is the walkthrough you do the night before, or the morning of. Nothing here changes what you sell. It just catches what would otherwise embarrass you in front of a customer.
- Open your store on your phone and actually use it. Most of your traffic will show up there first, and small problems hide well on a laptop screen.
- Click through your menu, a product page, and checkout like a stranger would.
- Ask a friend, family member, or someone outside your business to try buying something. They'll notice what you can't, you already know where everything is.
- Place a real test order. Confirm shipping rates, taxes, and the confirmation email all show up the way you expect.
- Check your footer and menu links. A dead link two clicks into checkout is a bad place for a customer to find one.
- Keep an eye on image file sizes. Shopify and the theme handle a good amount of optimization automatically, but see Shopify's guidance and our Videos and images in sections.
This step doesn't sell anything new. It protects everything you've already built.
You Don't Have to Finish This List to Launch
Get through priorities 1 and 2, and you already have a store that makes a strong first impression and sells its products well. Launch there if you're short on time, and come back for the rest once real customers are walking through the door. A live store that's still a work in progress beats a perfect one still sitting in draft.