Shopify is a Canadian eCommerce solutions company that has been operational since 2004. This is an easy-to-use and simple online merchant’s platform that lets one build and grow businesses without any hassle whatsoever.

Shopify boasts supporting online stores in almost every niche and domain out there. But, here’s a quick breakdown of the numbers involved industry-wise.

As of April 2021, 

• Over 75.5 thousand Shopify stores operated in the clothing segment. 
• Over 33.8 thousand Shopify stores operated in the home and garden segment.
• Over 6.2 thousand Shopify stores drop-shipped car and truck parts.

These numbers are only growing bigger and better with every passing day. 

According to Statista, Shopify stores experienced a whopping 50% increase in sales in 2019, as compared to the 21% increase experienced by the overall global e-commerce market. 

As an eCommerce store owner, we’re sure you would have come across Shopify and considered if it’s really worth either starting on or migrating to Shopify after all.

In this article, we will tell you all the reasons why Shopify is your optimal one-stop eCommerce solution and how you can seamlessly execute your Shopify migration.

Why migrate to Shopify 

1. Cost-effectiveness and transparent fee structure

Launching a full-fledged eCommerce website usually involves huge expenses including those of custom domain, hosting, web design, development, and management, among many other charges. 

With Shopify, you get a one-stop cheap, and effective solution. It is a completely transparent eCommerce platform with various pricing plans based on your store requirements. Shopify pricing is pretty straightforward and you can be assured that you won’t be charged extra for anything unknowingly. It is this transparency that sets it apart from other platforms out there.

Furthermore, even if you were to hire Shopify experts to help you in Shopify web design, development, and marketing, these charges are going to be much cheaper than having to build a custom website from scratch.

Shopify also offers a 14-day free trial. So, you can test the waters first and then upgrade to a paid plan.

Here are the pricing plans offered by Shopify. You can explore them more here.

2. A reliable eCommerce solution

As an eCommerce store, your website is your everything.

This is one of the biggest reasons why you should migrate to Shopify. You will obviously be spending a lot of time, effort, and resources on increasing your brand visibility and website traffic. Imagine losing all your prospective customers because your website was down! 

Shopify provides all its users with unlimited bandwidth to easily manage website traffic. They also have a dedicated team for platform maintenance. This team helps reduce any difficulties or issues so you can smoothly run your business. 

Here’s something interesting - Shopify can handle over 10,978 checkouts every minute without any downtime or hassle at all! Now, that is one powerful eCommerce solution!

3. In-depth documentation and proactive community

Understanding any new-age technological tool would require one to understand the basics of it. While migrating to and using Shopify is as easy as it gets, we understand if you need a little guidance in doing so.

Shopify has a wide range of learning resources to help you with just that and more! With clear API documentation, blogs, guides, and podcasts, you are all covered! Additionally, Shopify also has a dedicated community forum to help you along your online entrepreneurship journey.

4. Excellent customer support

Shopify describes itself as being more than a platform. Shopify considers you a partner and hence extends any needed help in the best possible way.

Shopify has a dedicated support team to help you tackle any difficulty in running your online brand. You can reach out to them via live chat, phone, and/or email. This service is available 24/7, 365 days of the year. 

Let’s say, you’re a small business with not a very robust team yet. You can still handle all and any technical issues that may arise without needing an internal tech specialist. The Shopify team will guide you in building an exceptional brand without much investment whatsoever!

5. SEO-friendly

As an online brand, SEO ranking has to be one of your top priorities. And so, we understand that the idea of migrating to Shopify might make you doubt how is it going to affect the SEO ranking that you’ve worked hard on achieving.

Well, Shopify is a platform built for eCommerce. And so, Shopify understands all your requirements inside-out. It is optimized to help you grow with minimal effort. So, by just making a few necessary alterations, you can still retain your previously-achieved SEO rankings.

By creating the right redirects for the page, and minimizing the changes on pages you can still maintain and even boost your page performance. Incorporate high-performing keywords and reduce the length of URL strings to take your SEO game to the next level.

6. Secure hosting and even more secure transactions

All your account information and hosting are always secure with Shopify. They actively prioritize your security and privacy. This is an eCommerce platform that is invested in your business as much as you are!

Shopify doesn't just help you set up an online storefront. Instead, they aid in hosting, ensuring secure checkout transactions, and much more. 

7. Ease of scalability

Expansion is an important aspect of any growing business - online business included. How you execute your plans to scale is going to determine the success and future of your online store. 

Shopify gets that. This is why they have developed Shopify Plus. This is an advanced enterprise commerce platform that is ‘built for change’. And you can set it up by yourself within minutes! 

Today, over 10,000+ brands are already leveraging this optimal solution. It’s time you migrate to Shopify and take your online business to the next level as well. With Shopify Plus, you can easily manage complexity and integrate systems to keep your business running and revenue increasing.

Considerations to keep in mind during your Shopify migration

1. Backup everything

It is very important to backup your old website. The method and process to do so will vary depending on your previous service provider. It is always better to be on the safer side so none of your necessary data is compromised during Shopify migration.

2. Setup 301 redirects from the old URL to the new Shopify URL

We don’t want you to lose the valuable backlinks and ranking that you would have achieved in the past years. And so, to preserve the SEO listing of your online store, you will have to add redirects from your old URL to your new Shopify store. 

This means that each page, collection, and product that you are migrating from your old site will need an appropriate 301 redirect set up. And remember, redirects won’t work in Shopify unless the old page has been deleted.

3. Be mindful of the timing

It is detrimental that you execute your Shopify migration only when the time is right. Otherwise, it will cost you in terms of sales opportunities and revenue.

What we mean is you don’t want your website to be under maintenance during the holiday season, for instance. Analyze your previous data and see which time fits perfectly for your store so there’s less traffic and also adequate staff support to aid in the migration.

4. Annotate launch in Google Analytics

Head over to Google Analytics and select Audience>Overview.

Next, click on the Create New Annotation button.

It’s also crucial to note the date of migration in Analytics so monitoring website traffic and activities post the migration becomes easier. 

5. Understand the nuances of migrating from different platforms 

The migration process may look different when you’re switching from different platforms. Make sure you have gone through all the documentation and how-tos in detail to ensure you don’t miss out on an important step. 

We have covered migration to Shopify from other ecommerce platforms here: 

• Migrate from Wix to Shopify
• Migrate from Etsy to Shopify
• Migrate from Squarespace to Shopify
• Migrate from Magento to Shopify

Conclusion

We understand that you would most want the very best results for your online eCommerce store. At XgenTech, we help you bring your ideas to life with Shopify web design, development, marketing, and support services from experts. 

Our team of Shopify experts works with Shopify merchants like you to migrate to Shopify to build a store that reflects the personality of your brand and caters to the functionalities you require. Whether you want to revamp your existing design or build a new one from scratch, we will help you create a positive shopping experience on your Shopify store design. 

Reach out to us at info@xgentech.net and we’ll help you set up your Shopify store design!