A Guide to Switching Platform to Shopify
If you're currently running an online store that’s not on Shopify, you might have asked yourself “Should I migrate to Shopify?”.
Although switching to Shopify might make sense, it's crucial to explore its benefits and drawbacks thoroughly and make an informed decision. In this guide, we'll delve deeper into the pros and cons of Shopify, its features, and the process of making a switch.
Benefits of using Shopify
Shopify is a powerful e-commerce platform designed to provide users with a seamless online store experience. It can scale from £1 to £1B without you having to spend more on web development, servers or maintenance. So what are some of the main benefits of Shopify?
Fast-loading: Shopify is built by some of the brightest minds in e-commerce and embraces the latest tech, ensuring your site loads quickly and efficiently.
Scalable infrastructure: Shopify takes care of hosting your store for you and handles boring stuff like CDN, static content caching policy, valid SSL certificate and other technical aspects. If your current storefront doesn’t come with these, moving over means an instant upgrade.
Great back office UX: Shopify's core product is the store admin. It has strong foundations and is built on sound UX principles that make using the admin easy and intuitive.
App Store: Shopify offers a wide range of third party apps, free or paid, that can do virtually anything you can think of. There are many articles exploring this topic like 15 Best shopify apps or Top 20 free shopify apps.
Future-proof: With a large team of developers constantly improving the platform, Shopify stays up-to-date with the latest technologies. Shopify runs as a SaaS, meaning you benefit from these changes as soon as they become available.
Potential Drawbacks of Shopify
Before you decide to switch to Shopify, here are a few things to consider:
Dependency on apps: It's easy to become over-reliant on third-party apps, which often come with a cost. While some apps are free or low-cost, others can be expensive, especially if you’re a small business.
Development costs: As Shopify development is more complex, custom changes to your Shopify store can be more expensive on average than WordPress or other PHP-based stores, as you may need to hire a Shopify expert to handle the more complex modifications. Although as Shopify’s adoption grows, these costs will go down.
Mismanagement risks: Just like any platform, Shopify can become slow if not managed properly. Be prepared to invest time in optimising and maintaining your store to ensure it continues working smoothly. This can mean doing things like optimising images or cleaning up after apps you’ve uninstalled.
Limited content management: Out of the box, Shopify’s CMS isn't as robust. If blogging and custom content is key to your store’s success, you might need to reconsider or factor in the cost of a landing page builder like Shogun or PageFly.
Steps to Take Before Switching
Before committing to the switch, consider the following steps:
Assess your pain points: Make a list of your pain points with your current platform and analyse whether Shopify can address these issues.
Try it out: Create a test store on Shopify. It’s free and will allow you to get used to the new platform and see if it meets your needs. Gain some experience by using the interface, features, and app integrations without fully committing to the switch. For example, if you sell clothes and having a size guide is crucial, see what’s available on the App Store for displaying size guides on product pages.
Evaluate costs and ROI: Assess the costs and potential ROI, including app subscriptions, theme costs, development costs, and the learning curve associated with adopting a new platform.
Plan your migration: Evaluate your current website's content and functionality to determine what you will migrate to Shopify. The list will contain products, customer data, order history, blogs, landing pages and any custom features you may have implemented.
Backup: Make regular backups of your current store.
Making the Switch
What should you look out for? Each store is different and you will probably have around 50-100 things you want to test and make sure work. Things like contact form, emails, checkout are core functionalities that need little work to go live, but should still be tested in case they’ve been heavily modified.
Here are some things to keep an eye on if you are migrating:
Redirect testing: Ensure that your old URLs redirect correctly to the corresponding new URLs in your Shopify store. This can be done using Google Search Console tools and manual testing. Shopify's Admin panel allows you to add redirects easily. You should generally have a “301 (permanent) redirect” when accessing the old addresses.
Google Search Console: Monitor your store's SEO performance after the migration process. If done correctly, your search engine rankings shouldn’t see a negative impact and organic traffic should stay the same.
Analytics: Make sure Analytics tools are set up (e.g. Google Analytics) for your new Shopify store and monitor essential metrics, such as visitor behaviour and conversions.
Google Lighthouse: Run a Lighthouse report to assess your new Shopify store's performance, accessibility, and overall user experience.
Payment gates: Verify that all payment gateways are correctly set up, integrated, and functioning in your Shopify store.
Main customer paths: Test the primary customer journey, such as viewing products, adding items to the cart, and completing the checkout process. This helps identify and resolve any obvious issues that may affect user experience and conversions.
Content pages: Review your store's content pages, such as Reviews or FAQ, to ensure they display accurately and convey the intended message.
Legal stuff: Copy over your shipping, return, refund, privacy policy and TOS pages. You might have to update links to those pages in your Google Shopping admin page and point them to your new Shopify pages. Note that these pages are usually marked as no-crawl for search engine bots and you can add your policy pages using Shopify admin.
Blog pages: If you have a blog, make sure all posts have been correctly migrated and display as intended in your new Shopify store.
Let your customers know: Now’s a good time to let your customers know your store might look a little bit different and not to panic, it’s the same business just a slightly different look!
Conclusion
I hope this article has provided you with valuable insights to consider when evaluating if migrating your store to Shopify is the right move for your business or if the platform isn't quite the perfect fit yet. Switching platforms is a complex task that, when executed well, can lead to cost savings, increased revenue, and automation of various aspects of your business, allowing you to concentrate on what truly matters.
The points discussed above represent just a portion of the factors to consider, and they require further exploration to grasp their full implications.
In the end, the goal is to help you make an informed decision that best supports your business's growth and success.