Moving to Shopify: Does it Make Sense?

Our guest author Chris from the OMR Education Team draws a small conclusion to our switch to Shopify in this article after his feedback on the Zapier Integration. For this, he asks himself the questions: What has the switch to Shopify brought us? What challenges were there with the new shop system software? And what advantages and disadvantages does the tool bring with itself?

Almost a year ago we moved our OMR Education Shop to Shopify. Coming from WordPress and WooCommerce, there were several pain-points that we had to solve with the move. Our goal was to increase the implementation speed and consume less tech resources. Whether it all worked out, you'll find out in this article.

Finally more flexibility in the marketing team 

Speed in implementation is everything in marketing. In order to actively bring this speed on the road, a marketing team must be able to act autonomously and preferably without the use of tech resources. In practice, marketeers must be able to quickly try new features and possibly discard them again.

New features often come in the form of apps or plug-ins on the website. Unfortunately, this was not easily possible with WooCommerce, because here a new plug-in like to shoot the whole page. Therefore, everything had to be carefully tested in advance, which of course required tech resources and therefore meant the loss of speed. 

Shopify's Pagebuilder makes everyday life easier

If a new template for a product or collection page is needed today, we can start implementing it more or less directly. Shopify offers a variety of page builders with really outstanding usability, allowing even laypersons to create appealing websites and optimize them for different end devices. 

And landing pages?

Also, since the switch, we have gained in terms of implementation speed. Depending on how complex the desired designs are, the implementation now takes only a few hours - Greetings go out to my colleague Ravi. He conjures up the designs faster than his shadow.

Updates are less of a problem

In the earlier set-up, especially the recurring WordPress updates were a challenge. With each new version, we had to test the compatibility of the installed plug-ins. More often than not, there were difficulties and we had to rebuild set-ups completely or find alternatives.

This point has also disappeared here, as the apps installed in Shopify do not have the necessary integration depth to sustainably disturb the entire shop. 

Closed vs. Open Check-out

Of course, it was cool that you could customize the entire checkout process to your needs with WooCommerce. This is only possible with Shopify in the Plus version.

Theoretically, you could have created a 10-step checkout form. With different cross-sells for example between the pre- and last name query. Of course without a practical sense, but it would have been possible.

Some features, like the "Order Bump", I even miss on the checkout page. 

However, and my opinion has been increasingly confirmed over the past years: Actually, I don't want to have anything to do with the check-out of my online shop. 

Why?

Well, where I can't reach, I can't break anything.

Also, the Shopify checkout is widespread and therefore also known to the users. So, you can assume that Shopify has done (and tested) everything to perfect this check-out.

In parallel, the best programmers should currently be working on the (further) development of the check-out for Shopify.

For us that means: We don't have to worry about this important thing anymore. We don't have to test if everything is still working in the check-out. Others are now doing this for us.

In the end, we have also gained time here. 

Many apps that really bring something

Shopify's App Store is full of useful apps that are quickly installed and immediately move your store forward. Almost any use case is conceivable:

• Cross-Sells on the product page
• Post-Purchase Upsells
• "Back in stock" notifications for currently sold-out products
• Fulfillment of digital products
• Bundling of items
• etc.

From a marketing perspective, the move to Shopify was a real success. A real enabler and time-saver compared to before. 

These freed resources, which previously flowed into troubleshooting and shop maintenance, we now use for active further development.

By the way: this is not a Shopify affiliate article or the like, but just a field report after a year of working with this shop system - from a marketing perspective.

If you now feel like starting an E-commerce, but don't want to work with Shopify, there are of course other E-commerce platforms & shop systems:

• Shopware
• commercetools
• Adobe Commerce Cloud
• JTL
• Spryker

And, if you're not sure which tool suits you, we've already prepared a Shop system Software Guide for you.