Mastering migration: Replatform with Shopify Plus to launch, sell, and scale faster Contents The most uncomfortable word in ecommerce? 3 Before migration 10 During migration 20 After migration 27 Migrating your mind 41 THE MOST UNCOMFORTABLE WORD IN ECOMMERCE?
MASTERING MIGRATION: 2 / 41 The most uncomfortable word in ecommerce?
“We’ve already invested so much in our current platform.”
“The timing isn’t quite right.”
“Won’t that take us a year or more?”
“We’ve got more pressing projects right now.”
THE MOST UNCOMFORTABLE WORD IN ECOMMERCE? If you’re reading this, your business is at a crossroads.
And it isn’t failure that’s led you here — it’s success. Growth has a dark side. Especially in high-volume ecommerce:
• Mounting tech debt
• Lack of platform control
• Unreliable online performance
• Rising costs for maintenance and hosting
Still, few words are as daunting as migration. Even if you haven’t experienced the horror stories firsthand, you’ve heard about delays, missed deadlines, and broken promises.
MASTERING MIGRATION: 3 / 41 We understand. And it’s why we created this guide …
To share migration insights from some of the nearly 4,000 brands that have successfully switched to Shopify Plus.
We’re pulling back the curtain to reveal exactly what you can expect before, during, and after. It’s a comprehensive overview that includes migrating orders, customers, products, and the myriad support awaiting you.
The transparency, depth, and detail offered within will equip you with the confidence necessary to take control of your commerce future to begin saving time and money and to start selling more – faster.
Welcome to the other side of the fence. Welcome to Shopify Plus. THE MOST UNCOMFORTABLE WORD IN ECOMMERCE? THE MOST UNCOMFORTABLE WORD IN ECOMMERCE?
MASTERING MIGRATION: 4 / 41 Migration is a dirty word around here. We’ve tried every platform because we’re nimble and we switch when something isn’t working. It’s costly to switch and migrating is a major upheaval. THE MOST UNCOMFORTABLE WORD IN ECOMMERCE? We’re married to Shopify Plus and love the technology. Save yourself the time and money and just start with Shopify and you won’t need to worry about switching as you grow.
PAUL HODGE CEO at Laird Superfood former BigCommerce merchant
MASTERING MIGRATION: 5 / 41 The difference starts on day one
Like your brand, every replatform to Shopify Plus is unique. But regardless of where you’re migrating from — a SaaS platform, an open source system, or a custom-built solution — the one constant is that …
Every business migrating to Shopify Plus is immediately assigned a personal Launch Engineer.
Your Launch Engineer (LE) serves as a direct point of contact on platform-specific matters. LEs can direct you to the right migration partner through the Shopify Plus Partners Program.
They also help align your team and/or partners to successfully execute data migration, development requests, CRM, ERP and 3PL integrations, domain and URL structure, quality assurance, and platform training.
Your LE will help set expectations, consult with you and your team on best practices, and establish a timeline for your launch.
Thanks to their expertise …
Migrating to Shopify Plus typically takes four months instead of the industry standard 8-12 months. THE MOST UNCOMFORTABLE WORD IN ECOMMERCE? THE MOST UNCOMFORTABLE WORD IN ECOMMERCE?
Be prepared — or make sure your partner is prepared — to answer technical questions like:
• Who will be migrating your data?
• What can’t you do on your current platform?
• What costs you the most time to currently execute?
• What could be automated to save you time and resources?
• How many products, customers, and orders need to be migrated?
Be sure to connect the right people with your Launch Engineer. The employees or partners who know your data best will need to help your LE understand how your data is mapped and structured, what (if any) metadata exists, or if you’ll require order transaction history.
MASTERING MIGRATION: 6 / 41 The move from Magento to Shopify Plus took four weeks. I knew some basic HTML and loved my in-house developer, but with the help of Shopify Plus’ Launch Engineer, I could do most everything myself. THE MOST UNCOMFORTABLE WORD IN ECOMMERCE? Whenever I had a question or request, they were there. The barrier to entry was almost non- existent, which felt freeing.
CASSIE SMITH Ecommerce Manager at Jones Soda
MASTERING MIGRATION: 7 / 41 Expert Tip
For even faster launches, establish easy access to all your existing systems or databases so backups can be made. This ensures multiple people on your launch team can access and make changes rapidly rather than relying on a single person who may be away or busy with something else.
Launch Engineer spotlight
In just 42 days, Shopify Plus Launch Engineer Nina Sijakov helped L'Occitane — the major natural beauty and skincare products brand — build a turnkey multi-channel storefront to capitalize on an urgent holiday sales opportunity.
“It was an inflexible deadline,” says Sijakov, “but I love a challenge and told them I was all in. Despite a really quick turn around, we had the whole shop set up in a few weeks. It was great.” THE MOST UNCOMFORTABLE WORD IN ECOMMERCE? THE MOST UNCOMFORTABLE WORD IN ECOMMERCE? Certainly, 42 days isn’t a common time frame — especially if you’ll require third-party integrations, frontend customizations, or if you’ll use the Shopify API to build something from scratch.
But Sijakov and her fellow LEs can help you launch in half the time it takes on other platforms.
NINA SIJAKOV Launch Engineer Shopify Plus
MASTERING MIGRATION: 8 / 41 Question: How do LEs help businesses make the right decisions?
“Quite often the person who made the decision to launch on, or replatform with, Shopify Plus isn’t the same person responsible for getting the brand’s store up and running on Shopify Plus. So we’re there to educate, make product recommendations, and help the merchant make smart business decisions that help them make more money.”
Question: How do businesses with skilled partners benefit from LEs?
“Even the best design and development agencies don’t know every inch of Shopify Plus. But the launch engineers do. So we work directly with agencies to quickly turn a merchant’s wish list into reality.” THE MOST UNCOMFORTABLE WORD IN ECOMMERCE?
Question: How about giving us an example?
“Sure. We recently had a merchant who needed to schedule regular theme changes. This is a manual process that can take time and energy away from growing sales, so we recommended the merchant automate the process with Launchpad, an ecommerce automation tool that allows merchants to schedule, coordinate, and execute major commerce events in advance.
“We routinely help merchants discover solutions that position them to focus on what matters rather than the technology that makes their stores work.”
MASTERING MIGRATION: 9 / 41 Before migration
How quickly you launch on Shopify Plus is directly correlated with the quantity of data you deem necessary to migrate. Determining what data to bring with you is a crucial first step.
After that, there are multiple ways to import your data to Shopify Plus:
1. TRANSPORTER
2. CSV FILES
3. API
4. THIRD-PARTY TOOLS
For one-on-one guidance...
Talk to a migration expert BEFORE MIGRATION BEFORE MIGRATION
MASTERING MIGRATION: 10 / 41 1. Transporter
Transporter, our proprietary data migration solution, accelerates and simplifies the process of switching platforms so you can launch faster – without all the heavy lifting.
With powerful importing, helpful error messages, and the ability to delete data, Transporter lets you intentionally create the foundation for your online store, allowing you to confidently plan for the future.
In just a few clicks, and with expert guidance, it’s a painless experience that frees your Launch Engineer and Agency Partners to focus on higher-value tasks that increase your ROI.
Typically, it takes 8-10 weeks to complete a full migration. But with Transporter, we’ve slashed that time so you can launch sooner and make money faster.
Specifically, Transporter allows you to import customers and products, as well as order records and metafields, into your Shopify store. The app accepts CSV files for each of these record types, processes them, and then imports them as objects into Shopify. The app supports shipping and transaction lines, ensuring you have the data you need to calculate key metrics across platforms.
Transporter is the fastest way to import data — faster than both CSV and API. The app accepts metafields to support complex data sets and allow for larger CSV file sizes.
Currently, the CSV file limit for products and customers in the admin is 15 MB and 5 MB, respectfully. Transporter allows up to 100 MB.
Whereas the traditional CSV import emails errors encountered during uploading, Transporter allows you to export errors and download them in a CSV file to view each line in context, so you can fix them in the right way with the errors properly exposed.
Transporter is the only way to get order data into Shopify via CSV other than API, which isn't much a solution for non-technical merchants. Lastly, it lets you delete data in bulk, providing a truly iterative migration solution. BEFORE MIGRATION
MASTERING MIGRATION: 11 / 41 I’m absolutely sold on the Shopify Plus platform and love using it. We were part way through a painful Magento 2 implementation that I had to pull the plug on. Using Transporter, we did the whole migration in-house and launched in four weeks. … Everyday I’m discovering something new and it makes ecommerce management a breeze. I appreciate the simplicity and power of Shopify Plus. BEFORE MIGRATION BEFORE MIGRATION
JOE AINSWORTH, Ecommerce Developer at Whistlefish
MASTERING MIGRATION: 12 / 41 2. CSV files
You can use CSV files to import products or make changes to your products and inventory. If you have a CSV file that was exported from another store or came from another source, make sure it matches the CSV file format. If the format doesn't match, or if there are any missing headers, then the import will fail.
Your product CSV can’t exceed 15MB. If you get an error when trying to upload a new CSV file, check to make sure it hasn't exceeded the size limit.
If you want to make changes to your products using a CSV file, then you need to export your products first. You can make changes to your CSV file in a spreadsheet program like Google Sheets, then import your updated CSV into the Shopify admin.
You can find more information about our CSV templates for products and for customers. Orders can only be imported to the admin through Transporter or Shopify’s API.
The order of the data import is important. Start with products, then customers, and finish with historical orders. BEFORE MIGRATION
MASTERING MIGRATION: 13 / 41 3. API
Shopify’s API is another viable option to import your data. Once you’ve built a custom app, you can use our APIs to import product, customer, and order information:
• POST Product API
• POST Customer API
• POST Order API
Remember again that the order in which you import data is crucial for successful data migration:
1. Import products first
2. Import customers next
3. Finish by importing orders
When migrating, we recommend having your Launch Engineer suppress order notifications. If actioned correctly, an order imported via the API shouldn’t trigger an order notification for your customers. However, it’s best to suppress this to ensure it won’t happen.
Keep an eye on the processed_at field. This needs to be set to make sure your orders don’t appear as imported on today’s date.
4. Third-party tools
You might consider using a third-party data importation service. If you have an Agency Partner, check with them first, as many have already built tools to make the process easier and faster.
If you’re not working with an Agency Partner, or fancy yourself a do-it-yourselfer, consider Cart2Cart, an automated shopping cart migration service that promises to migrate your data in just a few minutes. Importantly, your Launch Engineer will help you narrow the options and recommend the best migration option or partner for your business.
BEFORE MIGRATION Remember, even with a partner or third-party tool, the data migration process is still a BEFORE MIGRATION hands-on process. In addition to understanding your data architecture, you’ll also likely have to parse it (i.e., reconcile and review) once it has been migrated to Shopify Plus.
MASTERING MIGRATION: 14 / 41 KEY CONSIDERATIONS
One crucial detail to keep in mind is that, although customer accounts are created in your Shopify Plus storefront when migrating customers, they won’t have passwords.
Why? Because passwords are encrypted so they can’t be migrated.
Prior to launch, you’ll use Shopify’s Bulk Account Inviter tool to invite your customers to reset their passwords. This is actually an opportunity to engage your customers in a unique way. Often merchants will use this as a marketing opportunity to invite customers by segment, offer discount codes, or entice customers with other offers to reset their passwords.
The URL invite links expire after seven days, so plan your communications campaigns accordingly.
Additionally, if you migrate pending refunds, those transactions will need to be
BEFORE MIGRATION issued through your previous gateway, as they can’t be refunded through Shopify.
Lastly, you’ll need to run a delta (or incremental) migration after your site’s launch to account for any changes between your initial import and your switch-over date – namely, new orders. It's important to make sure none of the APIs are triggering notifications on Shopify or within third-party apps during this time.
MASTERING MIGRATION: 15 / 41 Key Shopify Plus features
While migrating data, it’s important to be aware of several Shopify Plus features you can rely on to offer a best-in-class customer experience post-transition:
GIFT CARDS
As a Shopify Plus merchant, you’ll have access to our Gift Card API. This API allows you to import gift cards in bulk. You’ll need a developer to create a private app using this API so you can create gift cards in bulk. You can also work with one of our partners to do this.
If you have physical gift cards with a different POS system, you might need to integrate and sync those cards using our Gift Card Adjustment API. We recommend talking with your Launch Engineer about your gift card workflow to decide the best strategy moving forward.
STORE CREDIT
When migrating from different platforms, merchants often choose to create gift cards in bulk for any leftover store credits. However, if you’re looking for a store credit functionality for exchanges and returns moving forward, speak with your LE as some of our Technology Partners have used Shopify’s gift card engine for this exact purpose.
If your current shop has additional loyalty data to migrate — e.g., loyalty points — your Launch Engineer can recommend a workflow or Technology Partner for this solution.
DISCOUNTS
The way you create discount codes will depend largely on your business use case. Do you send codes individually? Do you generate codes automatically? Are you looking to automate discounting on your cart? Discount codes can be created in bulk with our PriceRule API. BEFORE MIGRATION BEFORE MIGRATION PriceRule allows you to create discount codes using conditions. It’s a helpful API to use if you need to create discount codes in bulk or migrate discount codes to Shopify.
MASTERING MIGRATION: 16 / 41 CHECKOUT
To customize your checkout, use our checkout.liquid with JavaScript (JS) to insert code where needed, as the bulk of the page utilizes liquid drops. Due to the hosted nature of our checkout, most of it is rendered on the server side. To change it, you need to use JS to intercept what the server sends back and make your changes.
Essentially, the browser makes a page request to the server. The server renders all the liquid code and sends back the HTML page. The browser then has to use JS to alter anything with that HTML.
The checkout flow is something that cannot be altered or combined into a single page. We don’t recommend making changes that rely on page structure, like hiding certain fields, since these types of customizations can break when we ship fundamental updates to check out.
Generally, it’s easier to build checkout modifications in your cart rather than the checkout, as the cart page is much more flexible. The CSS template for checkout is rendered within your checkout.liquid template.
MULTIPASS API
The Multipass API, available exclusively to you as a Shopify Plus merchant, is a great resource if you have an existing site you'll be keeping — such as a blog, forum, or parent company site. With Multipass, you can log users seamlessly into your Shopify environment.
Multipass allows you to exchange an external login for a Shopify session token. Users from your external site will be logged in with the same email they use for your original website. If there isn’t an account in Shopify under that email address, one will be created.
This is a helpful resource that normally requires special development, but it will keep you from having to sync or integrate these separate databases.
USER API BEFORE MIGRATION The User API allows you to make GET calls to the admin to pull certain information about user (staff) accounts, logged-in users, owners, etc. This is great if you’re managing a large number of staff accounts, and enables you to view if they’re logged in as well as the permissions they’ve been granted.
Companies that have a lot of customer service staff often find this API very useful.
MASTERING MIGRATION: 17 / 41 Migration spotlight: SweetLegs
In 2016, the SweetLegs website crashed on the most important shopping day of the year: Black Friday. In the aftermath, this multi-million dollar brand decided it couldn’t face 2017’s holiday season exposed to the same risks.
Unfortunately, due to internal delays, SweetLegs didn’t start the migration process until a month before Black Friday of 2017. BEFORE MIGRATION BEFORE MIGRATION
MASTERING MIGRATION: 18 / 41 We started in the first week of October and it was up the first week of November. In about a 30-day turnaround, we were fully done, launched, up and running, orders coming in. With our craziest month to date — $2 million in sales, over 10,000 transactions, and insane amounts of traffic — we no longer worry about sending marketing emails in batches or crashing the site. We can truly
BEFORE MIGRATION focus on growing our business!
CHRIS PAFIOLIS CEO of SweetLegs former WooCommerce merchant
MASTERING MIGRATION: 19 / 41 During migration
Once you’ve made substantial progress or have finished the data migration process, it’s time to turn your attention to designing the store of your dreams and ensuring customers have a world-class experience when visiting.
The complexity involved in executing your vision is yours to decide.
Frontend design on Shopify can be extremely easy — particularly if you use one of the beautiful and responsive themes we’ve pre-built for you.
In addition, Shopify Plus provides you with the capability to build an ultra-custom storefront, as evidenced by many of the key features we outlined earlier. Your Launch Engineer can provide you with options for additional design and development resources if necessary.
Your backend product categorization, and items like tags on products that are migrated over, can impact the frontend of your store. This includes functionality like collection navigation, search filters, etc. Keep this in mind and have the team working on your data migration work closely with merchandisers and any front-end designers.
For one-on-one guidance...
Talk to a migration expert DURING MIGRATION DURING MIGRATION
MASTERING MIGRATION: 20 / 41 THEMES
A theme is a template that determines the way your online store looks and feels. Think of the admin as your office and stockroom, and your online store as your sales floor. Your theme is the architecture and design of your sales floor. Different themes have a variety of styles and layouts and offer a unique experience for your customers.
Themes are customizable, so you can tailor them to suit your unique brand. You can customize your theme in an intuitive way using Theme Editor. For more advanced customizations, you can edit your theme code if you have developer resources.
It’s important to note that making changes to your theme or switching to a new theme doesn’t affect other parts of your account. Theme changes only affect the frontend (or customer-facing portions) of your store. They don't affect the backend (what you see in the admin).
For example, if you wanted to fully redesign the look and feel of your store, your product catalog and inventory would not be impacted.
You can browse the Shopify Theme Store to find a design that fits the look and feel you want to offer for your store. When choosing a theme, pay close attention to the features best tailored to your target market:
• How does the navigation work?
• How are the collection and product pages displayed?
• Does it offer infinite scroll, color swatches, and other UX necessities?
Use one that’s as close to the experience you’d like to provide, with the feature set that you’d like within a theme. If it’s not exactly what you need, remember you can always customize it to suit your needs.
Every template on the Shopify Theme Store has a list of features, live demo, and can be previewed in your store for free as a “try before you buy” experience.
Once you’ve chosen your theme, you can start customizing it in the Theme Editor by adding content, branding, imagery, color styling, etc.
Theme Editor previews your changes in real time and is intuitive to navigate. Each area of your website (product pages, cart, checkout, etc.) will have its own settings within
DURING MIGRATION the theme that you can change, as well as fully-customizable homepage sections.
Here are some useful resources for customizing your theme within the Theme Editor.
MASTERING MIGRATION: 21 / 41 CUSTOMIZATIONS
Importantly, you have full access to the code of any theme you purchase from the Shopify Theme Store. With the proper resources, you can customize these themes to work or look as you desire:
• Add a slide-out cart instead of a traditional cart page
• Insert a video on the homepage slideshow to convey your brand
• Build your own theme with the help of our provided frameworks and tooling
You can also outfit your store with advanced customizations or even build your own custom theme. For inspiration, check out these ultra-custom Shopify Plus stores.
Most frontend developers familiar with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are comfortable working within a Shopify theme development environment. However, they might need some brushing up on Liquid. So ... what is Liquid?
LIQUID
Liquid is a template language created by Shopify and written in Ruby. It’s now available as an open source project on GitHub and is used by many different software projects and companies. Liquid is the backbone of all Shopify themes and is used to load dynamic content to pages of online stores.
Website developers use a template language to build web pages that combine static content, which is the same on multiple pages, and dynamic content, which changes from one page to the next.
A template language makes it possible to re-use the static elements that define the layout of a webpage, while dynamically populating the page with data from a Shopify store. The static elements are written in HTML, and the dynamic elements are written in Liquid. The Liquid elements in a file act as placeholders; when the code in the file is compiled and sent to the browser, the Liquid is replaced by data from the Shopify store where the theme is installed.
For example, if you wanted to output the title of a product from the backend of Shopify on a product page, you could use the {{ product.title }} placeholder within the product template, which would dynamically populate the information on each product page.
DURING MIGRATION The following resources will better acquaint you with Liquid: DURING MIGRATION
• Liquid cheat sheet
• Collection of Liquid themes
• 11 tips for using Liquid
MASTERING MIGRATION: 22 / 41 BUILDING YOUR OWN THEME
Not in love with the options out there? Do you have an artistic vision in mind that you’d like to build out on Shopify Plus?
If you have the development resources, we provide the tooling and framework to make this as accessible as possible for you through two avenues:
First, Slate is a tool for developing Shopify themes and is composed of two parts:
1. A theme scaffold consisting of templates, sections, starter styles, and helper scripts that you can use to base your theme upon
2. A toolkit of commands to compile theme files and sync your local files to your development store
The theme scaffold gives you a solid foundation to start designing your theme without having to create a theme file structure from scratch.
The command line toolkit provides a build process that compiles the theme files and assets into a compatible theme. The toolkit can be used to watch your local files for changes, and it can publish your theme to multiple stores. The build process is based on the folder structure of the theme scaffolding and cannot be modified.
Second, the Shopify Theme Kit allows you to set up a theme development environment using your own development tools to interact with the Shopify platform:
• Use workflow tools like Git for your team of developers to collaborate
• Upload themes to multiple environments (e.g., multiple stores for multiple currencies)
• Watch for local changes to your theme and upload automatically to Shopify Works on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS
If you prefer to use a custom build process, it’s recommended to use the Shopify Theme Kit for syncing your local theme files to your stores.
Need more? Discover more about advanced theme customization here, and get more
DURING MIGRATION depth about building your own theme here.
MASTERING MIGRATION: 23 / 41 SEO
One of the major concerns associated with replatforming is losing the organic search rankings you’ve worked to improve since your brand was born. Interestingly, SEO is similar to handing an infant over to another; the baby’s safety hinges on doing so gently and slowly.
The key is budgeting necessary redirect time so that your old store’s URLs correspond to your new ones on Shopify Plus. The larger your product catalog, the bigger this job becomes, as you’ll need to redirect each of your old URLs.
Physically redirecting URLs will likely take place after data migration and as you or an Agency Partner makes the required integrations just before launch. However, planning for redirects long before the physical work begins is crucial in meeting your launch deadline.
301 REDIRECTS
301 redirects ensure that old pages and offsite links — e.g., search engine results, historical social posts, earned backlinks, etc. — remain relevant for both customers and SEO.
The best approach is to use a one-to-one redirect mapping strategy. This means all pages on the legacy site are redirected to the most relevant page on the new site.
It’s not uncommon to see this strategy pushed by the wayside to replatform more quickly and easily. We highly recommend taking the time to do this properly and to keep this process in the hands of someone who is well-versed in your product catalog/webstore. This person should have a deep understanding of where your customers should land on the new site if they click on or touch an old link.
Don’t cut corners with a third party that simply maps links based on the most appropriate name or URL match.
Failing to redirect old links to your new Shopify Plus pages is likely to result in lost sales and frustrated customers. For example, if a consumer with intent to purchase one of your products clicks on an old link and lands on a page that doesn’t contain that product,
DURING MIGRATION they’re likely to be frustrated, bounce, and look for the item somewhere else. DURING MIGRATION
MASTERING MIGRATION: 24 / 41 Migration spotlight: EmazingGroup
The Emazing Group, which offers light gloves, LED toys, and full men's and women's lifestyle apparel under several brands, routinely lost its top organic Google search rankings for important keywords while on Magento due, in part, to the platform’s indexing issues.
Since replatforming, The Emazing Group credits Shopify Plus with helping it significantly increase organic search traffic. Even more important, the company’s SEO strategy has resulted in a material spike in sales and has helped it achieve the following results:
31%31% year-over-year increase in organic traffic to its EmazingLights brand
130%130% year-over-year increase in organic traffic, 22.59% increase in conversion rates, and 227% increase in revenue at its iHeartRaves brand DURING MIGRATION
MASTERING MIGRATION: 25 / 41 The impact that Shopify had on our SEO strategies was groundbreaking. We could have never achieved such results with Magento. We were able to lock down top spots for some of our most valuable keywords, bringing in new customers and more revenue than ever before. We would have never been able to scale without Shopify! DURING MIGRATION KATIE KNOLL AFTER MIGRATION Digital Marketing Manager, The Emazing Group
MASTERING MIGRATION: 26 / 41 After migration
Before introducing you to key integrations, sales channels, and crucial requirements after launching your new Shopify Plus site, it’s important that we highlight some of the more advanced features and functionality you may want to include.
If you’re interested in scoping your own migration project…
Talk to a migration expert AFTER MIGRATION
MASTERING MIGRATION: 27 / 41 Shopify Scripts
Shopify Scripts are code snippets you or your agency partner writes to customize your store and offer a uniquely compelling customer experience.
There are three different script types:
• Line item scripts
• Shipping scripts
• Payment scripts
With these types of scripts, you can simplify your customer’s purchasing journey by automatically making changes to a cart or checkout without the use of a discount code or third-party solution.
Unlike apps that communicate with Shopify’s API, Shopify Scripts runs custom Ruby code on Shopify’s servers, which allows you to focus on the customer experience without having to worry about support or server maintenance headaches.
A script is assigned one of the three types when you create it in the Script Editor app, based on which template you choose to start with.
Only one of each script type can be published at the same time. However, you can include multiple pieces of logic (“campaigns”) within one script, in case you need to run multiple line items or shipping promotions at once. AFTER MIGRATION AFTER MIGRATION
MASTERING MIGRATION: 28 / 41 LINE ITEM SCRIPTS
Line item scripts affect line items in your cart so you can change prices and issue discounts dynamically. These scripts are run whenever a change is made to the cart.
How can line item scripts help your business?
• BOGO (buy one, get one) campaigns and variations (buy three, save 25%)
• Subscription-based pricing: become a member or “accept marketing,” save 15%
• Increase average order value by offering savings thresholds: spend $100, save 10%; spend $150, save 15%; spend $200, save 20%; etc.
• Custom wholesale experience with different customer-level pricing (bronze, silver, gold, platinum-level customers, all with different levels of discount), quantity breaks (discounts based on bulk number of items purchased), and more AFTER MIGRATION
MASTERING MIGRATION: 29 / 41 SHIPPING SCRIPTS
Shipping scripts interact with shipping options and can change or grant discounts on shipping rates. These scripts run when the checkout reaches the shipping options page.
How can shipping scripts help your business? Here are some examples and use cases:
• Offer free shipping to select (VIP) customers
• Customize (e.g., reorder) shipping rate displays at checkout
• Increase average order value by offering free shipping based on cart value
• Hide certain shipping options conditionally; for example, when certain products can’t be shipped to specific locations, or with certain shipping carriers, based on laws or restrictions
PAYMENT SCRIPTS
Payment scripts interact with payment options and can rename, hide, and reorder payment gateways. Note that payment scripts don’t interact with payment gateways shown before the checkout screen, such as Apple Pay. These scripts run when the checkout reaches the payment page.
How can payment scripts help your business? Here are some examples and use cases:
• Customize payment gateways displayed at checkout
• Provide financing options on high-value items only or by cart value
• Offer unique payment terms (e.g. Net 30) to wholesale or B2B customers
• Display less conventional payment methods (like bank transfer or email money transfer) for products considered “high risk” (like CBD or vape juice) AFTER MIGRATION AFTER MIGRATION
MASTERING MIGRATION: 30 / 41 Integrations and partners
Without internal development resources, you’ll likely need assistance creating and implementing solutions like Shopify Scripts and integrating all the tools at your disposal prior to launch.
Fortunately, Shopify Plus has spent years building out a partner ecosystem that specializes in delivering world-class results. Your LE can help guide you to the right solution.
Partners are asked to join the program only after they have demonstrated their ability to build on Shopify Plus. They are backed by a portfolio of world-class implementation work and go through a rigorous vetting process to ensure they are meeting the high expectations we and our merchants have for them.
AGENCY PARTNERS
Full-service agencies that provide a comprehensive suite of creative, marketing, and development services.
SOLUTIONS PARTNERS
Designers and developers that specialize in Shopify Plus themes, app integration, and customization.
TECHNOLOGY PARTNERS
Third-party ecommerce technology providers that extend the value of Shopify Plus with innovative software solutions.
See the full list and find the partner right for you. AFTER MIGRATION
MASTERING MIGRATION: 31 / 41 Integration types
Partners can provide solutions or help you integrate systems with your new Shopify Plus store, such as:
ORDER MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
OMS are often tied into or have inventory management functionality already operating within their platforms. Order management ultimately will help you control, automate, and have one single source of truth for orders coming from multiple locations.
ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING
ERP systems are usually a merchant’s single source of truth where all internal operations happen, including orders, CRM, financial management, and reporting, among other systems.
Often merchants will integrate their Shopify Plus stores directly into their ERP. Then, they use the store as a source of data or on orders to fulfill from within their ERP system, which is usually connected to warehousing or other inventory-based systems for fulfillment.
INVENTORY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
IMS are a great solution for merchants who find it difficult to keep track of stock in a single location or multiple locations. IMS helps merchants manage their stock effectively while keeping count of inventory in other marketing channels for their business, such as Amazon, retail, and wholesale. AFTER MIGRATION AFTER MIGRATION
MASTERING MIGRATION: 32 / 41 PRODUCT INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
PIM are often used by merchants who have complexities in their product data, particularly companies with global footprints and products with localized content, across multiple catalogs, and requiring frequent updates. A PIM traditionally helps solve for managing complex product catalogs by centralizing and optimizing data flows and facilitating product data quality assurance.
EXPANSION STORES
Multi-storefront Shopify Plus merchants are companies that have multiple instances running independently. We call these Expansion Stores, and they are used primarily to operate natively in multiple geographies or to create separate branded experiences.
To synchronize Expansion Stores, you’ll need a specialized application or third-party technology that supports unique multi-store builds, like an ERP.
MULTI-WAREHOUSE
Larger Shopify Plus merchants with a global footprint often have multiple warehouses around the globe and integrate them with their Shopify Plus storefronts. To efficiently send orders from multiple storefronts to the correct warehouses — based on the order location from the buyer — merchants often integrate robust inventory management or ERP systems with their Shopify Plus store.
Partnering with a professional technology solution and a local warehousing company is one way Shopify Plus merchants execute with multiple warehouses. Others partner with international logistics companies that can hold stock and distribute and fulfill orders as necessary.
Once you’re through integrating, you’re nearly ready to launch. AFTER MIGRATION
MASTERING MIGRATION: 33 / 41 Pre-launch checklist
Right before you launch is when you implement the URL redirect strategy outlined earlier and ensure your organic search rankings are intact. To execute, we’re detailing several steps and offering a variety of tools to help you execute efficiently and effectively:
1. CRAWL THE LEGACY SITE
Crawling your legacy site will produce a list of all URLs that exist on your old site. It will give a strong understanding of your website structure and the URLs that need to be redirected.
Creating 301 redirects will avoid 404 events (dead links), which negatively impact your SEO and conversion rates due to poor user experience. Creating redirects for your previous URLs with new paths will ensure a seamless experience for your visitors.
Tools that can help crawl your legacy site include:
• Xenu Link Sleuth
• Screaming Frog
• Integrity for Mac
• Google Webmaster Tools
These tools allow you to export a list of your URLs into a spreadsheet, which is very useful once you need to set up URL mapping and create 301 redirects.
2. LIST BACKLINKS
External pages that link to a website are important for organic search ranking and trust. You need to identify the pages linking to your site. Tools that can be used to perform a backlink analysis include:
• Open Site Explorer AFTER MIGRATION AFTER MIGRATION
• Majestic SEO Tools
• Google Webmaster tools or Google Analytics
MASTERING MIGRATION: 34 / 41 3. 301 REDIRECTS
It’s crucial that all legacy page URLs are mapped to their newer, most relevant counterparts. 301 redirects will safely pass PageRank from your older pages to the newer ones and will enable you to maintain search equity.
In Shopify, these can be added manually in the admin through your Online Store > Navigation section, via the Redirect API, with CSV imports, or using an app.
4. REDIRECTS WITH SHOPIFY APPS
Use apps like Transportr (not to be confused with Transporter, noted above) or Traffic Control to easily create necessary redirects from your Shopify admin. You can bulk upload redirects via CSV to assist in speeding up the process rather than manually adding them individually through the Shopify admin interface.
The apps identify 404 events in real time and trigger you to redirect them if you happen to miss any prior to launch.
5. CUSTOMIZE YOUR 404 PAGE
Customize the content of your 404 page during the transition in case any links slip through the cracks and a customer lands on a 404 page. Customizing the 404 experience can reduce bounce rates, pique interest, and keep visitors from seeking out one of your competitors.
You can customize this page by heading to Online Store > Themes > Edit Code.
Consider including some customer service options or search functionality to your prospective customer to allow them to continue their search rather than hitting a dead end. AFTER MIGRATION
MASTERING MIGRATION: 35 / 41 6. CANONICALS AND NOINDEX/NOFOLLOW CONSIDERATIONS
To avoid duplicate content, in some situations you may want to consider using rel canonical tags. These are used to tell Google and other search engines which version is the “preferred” version of a webpage. By default, themes purchased from the Shopify Theme Store will account for duplicate URLs generated by our platform (for example, in the event a product exists in multiple collections and then has multiple paths/different URLs it can be reached from.)
If you’re building your own theme, you’ll want to include the following in the head of your theme.liquid:
You may have more specific business requirements around canonicalization depending on your merchandising strategy or otherwise. If you’re concerned you may have duplicate content, it’s worth reading more from Google’s documentation.
You may have pages on your site that you don’t want indexed by search engines at all, like a marketing landing page that should only be accessed through an email link or a private product that only some customers should be able to see.
To ensure these are hidden from Google and prevent other search engine bots from indexing, use noindex and nofollow meta tags. These are meta tags used to tell robots not to index the content of a page, and/or not scan it for links to follow.
It’s worth noting that adding these meta tags to objects — i.e., products, pages, blog posts, etc. — can be managed programmatically through Shopify’s API by adding a metafield to the object with some specific information within.
7. DOUBLE-CHECK METADATA
Metadata is crucial in optimizing your new site. Much like your old site, which would have been optimized for SEO onsite, you’ll need to ensure you have meaningful meta title and meta descriptions.
These are generally added when creating your products, pages, and blog posts in the “Search Engine Preview” section. They can also be added at the Store/Website level in the Online Store > Preferences section of the admin. More information is available here.
AFTER MIGRATION If you have a large product catalog, an app such as Smart SEO can be helpful to AFTER MIGRATION dynamically generate metadata for your site’s products, collections, and content pages.
MASTERING MIGRATION: 36 / 41 Post-launch checklist
Immediately after launch, it’s crucial to re-submit your sitemap to Google to ensure your new site is crawled and re-indexed. This sitemap will dictate which pages Google should be indexing, as there will likely be significant changes versus your previous site.
Once you’ve done this, it’s time to experiment for growth with the tools, solutions, and functionality that initially prompted you to migrate to Shopify Plus.
Shopify Plus is the only commerce platform to offer a proprietary collection of ecommerce automation tools engineered to help you scale faster on autopilot:
LAUNCHPAD
Pre-plan, schedule, and automate all the activities necessary to execute flash sales, special product launches, or sales campaigns. With Launchpad as your command center, you can load up everything on your to-do list, monitor campaign performance for real-time adjustment, and instantly roll it all back once the sale or event is over. AFTER MIGRATION
MASTERING MIGRATION: 37 / 41 FLOW
Without any coding, merchants can use the first ever commerce automation platform to virtually eliminate repetitive, manual, and time-consuming holiday campaign tasks. With Flow, you can simplify processes using “trigger, condition, action” formulas to create custom workflows which are interpreted, stored, and executed automatically by the platform.
Shopify Plus Agency Partner Rehash saved 750 staff hours by automating the tagging and merchandising of 300,000 products for Gazelle Sports. This use of Flow enabled Gazelle's replatform from Magento to launch a full month sooner than expected. AFTER MIGRATION AFTER MIGRATION
MASTERING MIGRATION: 38 / 41 MERCHANT SUCCESS MANAGER (MSM)
Once you’ve successfully launched, your Launch Engineer will work with you for about a week to ensure your new store is operating as you desire.
During that time, your LE will introduce you to the Merchant Success team. The Merchant Success team acts as advisors, platform insiders, and merchant advocates. They’ll partner with you to grow your business and achieve your objectives with Shopify Plus.
SHOPIFY PLUS ACADEMY
Shopify Plus Academy is a program designed to help you get started quickly and keep you moving toward your business goals by providing resources and access to:
• Courses, pre-built dashboards, and webinars
• Self-directed, single subject options
• Structured course modules
Here you can learn about commerce topics at your own pace and in your own way — so you and your team can focus on growing your business. AFTER MIGRATION
With Shopify Plus Academy, learn what you need and when you need it, so you can spend more time on what matters most: growing bigger, faster.
MASTERING MIGRATION: 39 / 41 SHOPIFY PLUS COMMUNITY
As a new Shopify Plus member, you have exclusive access to a thriving online community for merchants and partners. This is a place for businesses on Shopify Plus to network, collaborate, and share strategies and experiences.
Get connected and request access. If you don’t receive a response in a couple of days, reach out to your LE or MSM. Please note: requests will only be accepted when Shopify group admins confirm you’re affiliated with Shopify Plus.
PRIORITY SUPPORT 24/7
As a Shopify Plus merchant, you have access to Shopify Plus priority support via email, chat, or phone. You can go to your Settings > Account page for the specific phone number and email address to use or open a chat window directly with a priority Guru.
IN-ADMIN CHAT
Connect to Priority Support chat anywhere from your Shopify Plus admin by clicking your name at the top right corner and selecting “Shopify Plus live chat.” MIGRATING YOUR MIND AFTER MIGRATION
MASTERING MIGRATION: 40 / 41 Migrating your mind
The fear, uncertainty, and doubt that often accompany the thought of replatforming are often significantly more difficult to overcome than any of the technical hurdles you may encounter.
Migrating your mind is often tougher than migrating your store.
And yet, nearly four thousand of your peers and competitors have done both. They’ve already gone through the migration process we’ve detailed above.
Today, replatforming is the furthest thing from their minds as they focus entirely on scaling rapidly with a multi-channel global growth strategy.
Join them, won’t you?
• Stop worrying about your website
• Build your business with confidence
• Build it with Shopify Plus
Talk to a migration expert MIGRATING YOUR MIND
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