by Laura McLoughlin
Setting up a successful eCommerce business is cause for celebration. You have worked hard to get this far. There may come a natural ceiling to your efforts, where it will be necessary to consider moving platforms. Here we will guide you through the signs that you might need to migrate your online shop to Shopify. There will be distinct pain points that you will begin to feel that can only be resolved by seeking out an appropriate tool for the size of your business.
Fees are getting out of control
On some eCommerce sites, you will need to buy storage elsewhere. The bigger your website grows, as you expand your lines, the more space you will need. You will also likely need to buy in outside expertise to optimise your catalogue to ensure that your page load speeds are efficient. If you grow too big without the right structure in place, you can ruin what traction you have succeeded in gaining in the market.
You can spend a lot of money expanding your capacity. Alternatively, you might do the cost/ benefit analysis and realize it is not worth adding to your store. You have hit a natural ceiling in your business, and it is time to switch over to Shopify. This eCommerce platform is cloud-based and an end-to-end solution. What does this mean for you? It means as your company grows, there is a transparent fee structure that helps you to map out your next steps with ease. If you need more space, you merely need to purchase the next subscription package up.
You struggle with other scalability issues
Starting small is admirable. However, to grow from a sole trader to an SME and then to large and enterprise-level trading requires some agility. As you succeed in one marketplace, you may naturally see ways to diversify. If you are stilted by the online structure of your website, then you will hit that ceiling too. You may be faced with the proposition of reinventing yourself from start to finish.
There is no ceiling to your scale in Shopify. There is an enterprise-grade solution. Even then, where you think there is naturally no further way you could be supported by your subscription package, you will be allocated a Merchant Success Manager. The dedicated expert professional will then work with you to target your business and make choices that will ensure further growth.
The simple movement up the subscription packages allows you the agility required for further growth and increased opportunity.
You want a consistent experience no matter the device
You may have reached that point with your business where you want your mobile store to be as effective as your website. You may consider investing in developing an app or making your website mobile-friendly. This cross-channel consistency is essential to customer experience, which has become central to success in eCommerce.
Shopify has a backend dashboard that makes the management of your different portals as easy as drag and drop. You can build the different views of your product for the various devices used by your customers. There are uncomplicated templates that make this straightforward enough for any businessperson to shape a brand. There are also ways of making these templates bespoke, with customised choices of colour, images, fonts and more. It is easy to tweak the look of your online image across devices.
You feel stifled by your provider, but you worry about losing customers
Getting found on the search engines is the key to much success in the world of eCommerce. Therefore, although you may feel stifled by your current provider, you think migrating your shop would cause the unpicking of a successful SEO (search engine optimisation) strategy. You might believe changing your site would change all your URLs and essentially set you back to the beginning.
Fortunately, a move to Shopify will help you make a move while improving your SEO and your SERPs position. You can create page directs, which mean when your client follows a link to the previous URL, they are redirected to your new site. Therefore, your previous blogging strategies and work on web copy can continue to do its excellent work.
There are also ways of improving SEO using Shopify. There is a tool that identifies duplicated copy, which will stop your site facing penalties. There is also a high-performing keywords tool, a means of shortening URL strings as well as options to simplify your site directory.
Compliance issues are growing
The bigger you get, the more responsibility you will carry for the security of customer data and the safety of their money. It is far easier to work with a platform that covers these issues for you. Therefore, migrating to Shopify will help. The company has achieved a Level 1 PCI certification, so you are covered by the best security for your cart and broader website.
Overall, moving to Shopify is a personal matter related to your company and the stage it is at. Perhaps you will decide that today is not the day to make that leap, but are now better informed to make that decision in the future, or alternatively, you may be seeing the need to move more clearly and urgently than you had prior. There is the option of employing specialised agencies to help with your move, or taking the reigns entirely solo.
The choice, of course, is entirely in your hands.
Laura McLoughlin is a Digital PR with past experience as a website editor and writer. Away from the keyboard, you can find her binging nature documentaries and dreaming up travel plans. Laura works with Glaze Digital in Northern Ireland.
