Shopify Store Setup and Migration
FREE 30-minute consultation, no obligation.
If you’re considering whether to migrate to Shopify or to set up a new store on Shopify, you’ve come to the right place!
Interstice Consulting is a certified Shopify Expert by virtue of our breadth of experience in working with many clients to migrate, establish or upgrade their Shopify e-commerce stores.
We’ve assisted a number of companies with fresh Shopify setups as well as migrations from other e-commerce systems like Wix Stores, CS-Cart, Magento, and Prestashop.
While it’s entirely possible to migrate or set up a new Shopify store on your own, it also makes a great deal of sense to work with a Shopify Expert to make sure your Shopify store is set up correctly with a sound structure, optimized for search engines, properly connected to your analytics programs, renders well on mobile as well as desktop, and supported with the best Shopify apps to increase your e-commerce conversions. In the world of business, time is money.
At the same time, we communicate regularly with our clients during each project so that they are fully aware of the status. Once the site becomes operational and we move towards scaling traffic and sales, we design daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual reports. Each client receives an in-depth quarterly online business review, as well as an annual review and planning meeting. We aim to be your true e-business partner.
Interstice Consulting offers a professional, efficient, and cost-effective service. Basic Shopify store migrations and setups can be done within a 1-2 week timeframe, excluding migrating your legacy data (products, customers, historical transaction data). Rates start at $3,000.
Our Basic store setup service includes:
- Advising on a theme and limited custom coding upgrades
- Connecting a domain name
- Uploading a model product
- Showing you how to upload products
- Setting up your site’s structure, homepage and navigation
- Advising on connecting a payment gateway
- Advising on the apps that could be useful for your store
- Training you to operate and maintain your store
- Installing the Facebook pixel and Google Analytics tracking code
If you need additional services beyond what is included in the Basic package, we can develop a customized quote. Additional services include graphic design, custom programming, configuring/integrating third-party apps, migrating legacy data, and copywriting.
Once your Shopify store has launched, we can also support your online marketing with our array of digital marketing services. Our focus is on performance marketing where the results of campaigns can be tracked. These include paid campaigns on Google, Facebook/Instagram, Bing, etc. We are also experts in email automation, having attained the Klaviyo Master agency designation.
Our approach is consultative and based on partnering with our clients: we start with helping you to develop an appropriate e-commerce strategy given your resources and work with you to develop an online business plan. We then work together to implement the plan.
Request a FREE 30-minute consultation, no obligation. Contact us at: ecommerce@intersticeconsulting.com
If you’ve already decided to set up on Shopify, whether as a new store or as a transfer from Wix Stores or another e-commerce platform, please tell us more about your needs by sending us an email at: ecommerce@intersticeconsulting.com
If you still haven’t made up your mind about Shopify, read further about why we believe that it’s the best e-commerce platform for most small and medium-sized stores (up to $10 million in online sales).
Why migrate to Shopify?
Here are the main reasons why Shopify is a sound choice for small to mid-sized e-commerce businesses:
- Shopify allows you to focus on your business, not on hosting a website: As a hosted platform, Shopify takes care of hosting, security, SSL certificates, payment processing and other technical details involved in running an e-commerce store.
- Shopify is optimized for e-commerce. E-commerce is the cornerstone of the company’s business model. Shopify Payments is powered by Stripe and offers merchants a quick and reliable payments infrastructure. Built-in support for PayPal is also available in most countries. New features like Amazon integration, Instagram and Facebook e-commerce, Google Shopping, Shopify Shipping, Apple Pay, etc. are rolled out to their subscribers regularly. This lets you compete with much larger e-commerce stores having dedicated teams. In essence, Shopify is your extended team of experts. Platforms like Wix or Squarespace are primarily website builders, which have bolted on e-commerce functionality as an afterthought. They have serious shortcomings for serious e-commerce businesses.
- Shopify’s platform can support your growth. With a network of over 1 million stores, the Shopify ecosystem is of sufficient scale that it offers numerous third-party apps to extend the core functionality. There are also a range of Shopify Experts who can modify your theme if you need specific features not found elsewhere. Getting started is easy: Shopify offers a variety of plans starting from $29 per month, up to their premium version, Shopify Plus, which gives you access to a dedicated support team.
For more analysis on these and other points, please our blog post about Shopify vs other SaaS platforms like Wix Stores, or about Shopify vs self-hosted platforms like CS-Cart, WooCommerce, or Magento.
Which is the best Shopify theme?
In most cases, we recommend the premium Turbo theme for your Shopify store due to its long list of features and speed. Speed is perhaps the top consideration for an e-commerce store, as it’s the foundation for your success and has a direct impact on your ability to scale your business. There’s little point in optimizing conversions if half your traffic drops off before viewing your content.
And when it comes to paid campaigns, a slow site can mean wasting 50% or more of your ad dollars on users who click on your ad but don’t have the patience to wait for your site to load.
Consider these 3 facts (source: DoubleClick):
- Over half of all mobile site visits are abandoned if the page doesn’t load within 3 seconds
- 3 out of 4 mobile sites take longer than 10 seconds to load and the average time to load is 19 seconds
- Mobile sites that load within 5 seconds earn up to 2X greater revenue than those whose sites load within 19 seconds
While the DoubleClick study looked at ad revenue and mobile users, the findings are consistent with our own experience with e-commerce sites. Mobile is typically over half of all e-commerce site traffic.
Migrating to Shopify can solve slow site loading times
How can you assess whether your current site has a speed issue?
A good starting point is to run your website through Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool. Then, crosscheck the results with the GTMetrix site. Test not only your homepage but other key entry pages, for example, product detail and category pages to which you might be running paid traffic.
In concert with these insights, which test your site from a limited number of server sites, we recommend that you install the Chrome plugin “Page Load Time” and try to load your site from different countries where you receive the most traffic, and on desktop as well as mobile.
However, the most direct way to find out whether your site is “leaking” visitors (and ad budget) due to your slow site speed is to dig into your Google Analytics or Facebook Ads Manager to check the difference between your paid clicks and actual registered website sessions.
Facebook Ads recently began tracking “Landing Page Views” separately from ad clicks, so it’s quite easy to identify any large gaps by reviewing your Facebook Ads Manager reports.
Armed with these insights, you’ll be in a good position to understand whether your current site is slowing down your business.
At the Shopify Unite conference in June 2019, the company announced that it will be building a dashboard into every Shopify store that assesses your site’s speed and lists technical issues which should be remedied, so you won’t need these 3rd-party tools much longer.
Ready to migrate to Shopify?
Request a FREE 30-minute consultation, no obligation. Contact us at: ecommerce@intersticeconsulting.com