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Running a successful eCommerce store is all about making the right decisions at the right time. If you’ve outgrown your current platform or are struggling with limitations, it may be time for a change. At Fluency, we’ve worked with many merchants who’ve been through this exact dilemma and found Shopify to be the perfect solution. Shopify migration can seem daunting, but with the right steps in place, it can be a successful transition. In this article, we’ll walk you through why Shopify is a great choice for eCommerce businesses and provide a step-by-step migration process to get your store up and running.
Why Migrate to Shopify?
We’ve studied various eCommerce platforms, and Shopify consistently stands out. This platform is built for growth, flexibility, and ease of use and offers a range of benefits for businesses looking to grow their digital reach. Here are some of the benefits we think you should consider migrating your store to Shopify:
1. Ease of Use:
With Shopify, you can setup an online store in a few hours. One of the main reasons we hear from our merchants about switching to Shopify is how simple the platform is to manage and does not require any technical background.
2. Scalability:
One of the major challenges eCommerce store owners face is handling high volumes of data and sales. Therefore, it’s important to choose a scalable and robust infrastructure that can help you serve more customers. From what we've seen with our clients, Shopify’s scalability is unmatched, allowing you to add new features, products, or even expand into international markets without slowing down your site.
3. All-in-One Solution:
We’ve noticed that Shopify really offers everything in one place - from hosting and security to themes and apps. We think this means you no longer have to juggle multiple tools or integrations, which can be quite a hassle. With Shopify migration, you get a platform that covers everything, making it a lot easier for merchants.
The Step-by-Step Migration Process
Now that we’ve covered the benefits, let's get into the process. Replatforming can seem overwhelming, but we’re here to simplify things.
Step 1: Plan Your Migration
Before jumping into anything, it’s essential to make a plan. We recommend mapping out exactly what data you’ll be migrating (products, customer data, orders, etc.) and reviewing your current store setup to ensure nothing gets lost.
We’ve found that working with a Shopify migration expert or a developer can help ensure the process is smooth and error-free.
Step 2: Choose a Shopify Plan
Once your plan is in place, it's time to select the right Shopify subscription for your business. We recommend choosing one of the below given Shopify’s three core plans for small to medium-sized businesses.
- Basic: Ideal for solo entrepreneurs with smaller stores.
- Shopify: Ideal for growing stores in need of more team accounts.
- Advanced: Better for scaling stores in need of advanced analytics.
Step 3: Export Data from Your Current Platform
This is where eCommerce platform migration can get a bit technical, but don’t worry—we’ve got you. It involves exporting data (like products, customers, and orders) from your existing site in a format you can upload to your Shopify website. Most platforms provide a CSV or Excel file containing your customer data.
Step 4: Import Data into Shopify
Once you have your exported files, next, you’ll need to import your data to Shopify. You can streamline this process manually or by using various “Migration” apps available for Shopify. But we always recommend using Shopify’s built-in apps to ensure no data is left behind.
To import your data, you can either copy and paste content or export data into CSV files and and import them to your new Shopify store. You can also hire a Shopify partner to manage and complete your migration. The best option for importing process depends on the amount and complexity of the data.
Step 5: Review and Organise Your Products
Now that your data is safely on Shopify, it’s time to review and organise your products. We recommend double-checking that all your product information like product weight and pricing photos, descriptions has transferred correctly. It’s worth taking a moment to clean up your product catalogue by removing outdated or duplicate listings. From our experience, merchants often neglect this step, but it can make a world of difference in keeping your store organised and user-friendly.
Step 6: Choose and Customise Your Theme
Once you have your products ready, the next step is designing and changing the appearance of your Shopify site by using the Shopify themes effectively. The easiest way to do this is with a free or paid Shopify theme. You can tweak colours, fonts, and layouts to make sure your Shopify store reflects your brand’s unique identity.
Step 7: Configure Shopify Settings
Before you launch your new store, it's essential to configure some important settings. Configure payment gateways and shipping settings according to your business model. In our experience, this step can get a little technical, but once it’s set up, you’re all set to handle orders smoothly. We’ve noticed that when merchants spend a bit more time fine-tuning these settings, they can avoid issues down the line.
Step 8: Add Staff Accounts and Test Your Store
If you are running your store with “collaborators", now is the time to add staff accounts. Shopify allows you to create accounts for them and set right account permissions based on their roles in your Shopify admin dashboard.
Once you’ve done this, we recommend doing a full test of your store before going live to make sure that your Shopify site is working fine. At Fluency, we always run several test transactions to ensure everything—from checkout to shipping calculations—is working correctly. Trust us, it’s better to catch any glitches before your customers do!
Step 9: SEO Considerations
SEO is crucial for getting your Shopify store noticed, so we definitely recommend doing this step. After migrating, it's important to optimise your store for search engines, which includes editing meta descriptions, product titles, and URLs to ensure they’re SEO-friendly. At Fluency, we always advise merchants to integrate SEO into their migration process to give their store to boost the stores search engine rankings.
Final Thoughts
Shopify says that “getting a new storefront implemented is going to be 37% faster with Shopify than with the average competitor.” Migrating to Shopify and getting your store up and running may seem like a big task, but it’s easier than you’d think. Whether you’re a small businesses upgrading from other platforms or someone with outdated Shopify versions, the benefits of moving to Shopify are clear. At Fluency, we’ve helped brands at every stage of their journey navigate the process with ease, from start to finish.
Just ask Karolina, Co-founder of a sleep posture brand who we recently migrated from WooCommerce to Shopify:
Ready to make the move? Contact us today, and let’s talk about how we can help you with your Shopify migration.
