The technology you use to run your business should make your life easier, not harder.
Time you spend troubleshooting software is time you could be spending on higher-impact activities for your business—and ideally, your software can help you identify what those activities are, too.
That’s why so many merchants turn to the robust, turn-key platform provided by Shopify over stitching together similar functionality through plugins and 3rd-party services with WooCommerce. With built-in hosting, analytics, marketing features, shipping services, live 24/7 support, and a carefully curated app store, Shopify is made for entrepreneurs who want to build and sell, not manage an ever-growing list of tools.
Moving from WooCommerce to Shopify is a significant decision for your business, and when you’re ready we want to make the switch as effortless as possible.
Starting now, you can directly import your WooCommerce store to Shopify, no external apps or services required—it’s included for free on all Shopify plans, including trials.
To import your WooCommerce store to Shopify:
- Open a Shopify store
- Select “WooCommerce” when asked what platform you’re coming from
- Export your WooCommerce data
- Upload the file in Shopify
- Review and update your imported data
“I was ready to pay for help migrating from WooCommerce if I had to. When I signed up for my trial, Shopify told me how to download the file from WooCommerce and then upload it, and it literally took about 30 minutes to get all my products and contacts moved over. I was just kicking myself for not doing it sooner.”
That’s the “how” of switching from WooCommerce, but Shopify merchants are more qualified to explain the “why.” We spoke with business owners running different types and sizes of businesses about making the switch and why they decided it was time.
Add features without slowing down your store
When you’re just starting out, your focus is understandably on the foundational tasks you need to get your business off the ground.
But even early on, you’ll come across new tasks your online store needs to handle, and new ways to support your growth. Many of those tasks can be handled directly in Shopify, as opposed to requiring an additional extension with WooCommerce. For the ones that aren’t, you can turn to the Shopify App Store for vetted, professionally developed apps that won’t conflict with your store or your theme.
That’s what Brian Podolak, a former consultant for high-growth businesses like DeliverLean and Funky Farms CBD, and now a full-time business development manager at Arise Bioscience, noticed with multiple clients who moved from WooCommerce to Shopify.
“One client of ours had about 25 different WooCommerce plugins installed, so the speed of their store just crawled to a halt, and things stopped working. We took all the different WooCommerce plugins they were using and trimmed things down to seven different apps that covered everything in Shopify, so it was a lot simpler.”
Podolak’s client also had a list of new functionality they needed to add to their store, and doing so would have required adding yet another set of plugins to WooCommerce. Given that their site was already loading slowly, and that some plugins would likely conflict with others, the move became necessary.
“With the Shopify App Store, there seems to be an app to do just about everything you can think of—you aren’t stuck customizing everything for your store,” says Brian. “And every app person I've ever worked with, their support has been amazing.”
24-hour support so you can get back to selling
When you’re faced with a challenging technical question, you need answers so you can get back to running your business and making sales. That’s why our support team is around to help 24 hours a day, 7 days a week by phone, chat, or email.
It’s one of the main reasons Erik Morin, co-founder at Massage Guns, a tool to help athletes recover after strenuous workouts, was ready to make the move from WooCommerce to Shopify.
“The question wasn't if, but rather when we’d make the move to Shopify. We knew the day would come when our WooCommerce website would not hold water for our popularity. Our page load times continually rose, and WooCommerce customer service was absent for the entire year, so we migrated our whole website to Shopify.”
Built-in analytics that surface the most important data
The right data can help you make savvy decisions for your business, saving you time and helping you focus on your highest-impact activities. That’s why analytics are such a crucial companion as you grow. With Shopify, all the information you need is at your fingertips, which is what Tahwii Spicer, founder of The Eco Baby and Z. Birdie noticed after she made the move from WooCommerce to Shopify.
“I really appreciate the home dashboard where it tells you how many people are on your site right now and also where they're coming from,” says Tahwii. “One of the biggest things I learned was that I have so many organic visits from Pinterest. I never would have known without digging deeper into my analytics, and as a one-woman show I don't have time to do that very often. Now I know I should focus a whole lot more on Pinterest because I have quite a few visitors coming from pins organically. That knowledge alone is worth the monthly price I pay for Shopify, in my opinion.”
"That knowledge alone is worth the monthly price I pay for Shopify, in my opinion."
Run your business from the palm of your hand
Running a business shouldn’t mean being chained to a desktop for hours every day. Shopify’s mobile app is built to help you run your business from wherever you find yourself, whether that’s handling customer service in line at the store, or adding new products from your phone as you unpack them.
That flexibility was one of the unexpected benefits Tahwii has relied on the most since moving her two businesses to Shopify.
“Not only am I running my businesses, but I also have really young kids so I often have to stop and go feed the baby or go pick up somebody from school,” says Tahwii. “There's always something going on, but no matter where I am, I can be in contact with customers through Kit, and I can use the Shopify app to handle important tasks and not forget about them, even if I’m on the go.”
Shopify’s mobile app lets you manage the most important parts of your business from the palm of your hand.
This flexibility is something that came as a pleasant surprise. Since Shopify’s mobile app lets you manage the most important parts of your business from the palm of your hand, Tahwii found she was able to tackle her to-do’s even when her desktop wasn’t in reach. Specifically, she found it a relief to be able to seamlessly switch between administrative work and the responsibilities of everyday life.
“I have a newer printer that connects to wireless printing so I can pick the order, print out the packing slip, print out the label, stick it all on, and I'm done,” she said. “Literally, sometimes I'm nursing the baby and I'm printing labels in the other hand, which saves me so much time and makes it possible to balance it all.”
Create a seamless experience for online and offline customers
You should be able to create a consistently delightful experience for your customers no matter where they buy from you.
Shopify gives you a single place to manage your business, so you can easily bridge the gap between online and offline shopping. You’ll be able to handle all your in-store point of sale needs, track inventory across multiple locations, and help customers with their purchases no matter where they made them or where they’re coming to you for help.
That’s one of the main reasons Benjamin Hills, owner of Flying Crow Coffee in Springfield, Vermont, made the move to Shopify.
"I had been trying to integrate gift cards for online and in-store use between my café and my online store,” says Benjamin. “There’s no integration between my previous payment provider and WooCommerce’s gift card options, so if a customer bought a gift card online they couldn’t use it in store, and vice versa."
Moving from WooCommerce to Shopify helped Benjamin skip the process of trying to navigate multiple tools and plugins to integrate his in-person retail with his online store, and gave him a single place to track and manage all of his inventory and purchase data.
Convert more sales with payment options and cart recovery
One of the most important conversion moments for your store is the checkout process, and it’s easier to convert customers if they can pay with their preferred method.
That’s one of the reasons Mayank Jain, ecommerce and IT manager at Ibkul, was happy to make the move from WooCommerce to Shopify.
“We were having trouble getting all of these different payment systems up and running—that became one of the key reasons we moved to Shopify. We wanted to offer multiple payment options, including Apple Pay and Google Pay, which was a struggle to configure on our WooCommerce website.”
On top of making it easier for their customers to complete a purchase, Ibkul’s team also took advantage of Shopify’s built-in cart recovery options to capture sales they may have otherwise missed out on.
“We didn't have any system in place for recovering abandoned carts,” says Mayank. “With Shopify it was incredibly easy to get an abandoned cart email set up and it works very well for us. We have more than doubled what the industry standard is for abandoned checkout recovery.”
Streamline shipping and access better rates, all in one place
Fulfilling orders is something that scales in complexity as your business grows. Packing a few orders by hand is no problem, but managing a few hundred orders is a different story—so you need tools that can scale right along with you as your shipping needs change. That might mean relying on additional tools, or expanding your shipping to serve multiple countries.
With Shopify, managing your shipping process is streamlined at any scale.
With Shopify Shipping, you’ll be able to print all of the documents you need to include with international shipments, access negotiated rates with major carriers like DHL, UPS, and USPS in the United States, and Canada Post in Canada, and provide accurate estimates of shipping times, even if your products are held at multiple warehouses.
That was one of the major reasons Brian recommended one of his clients make the move to Shopify.
“Shopify Shipping gives you a real-time quote of what the different carriers are going to charge you,” says Brian. “Customers don't really care that their two items are in different locations, they just want to get their product. They want to have a clear shipping cost and time, and Shopify helps to do that—even when products are at two different warehouses.”
Stop losing sales to slow-loading pages
Data shows page load times can have a dramatic impact on your conversions. Visitors are 32% more likely to instantly leave your mobile website (or “bounce”) as page speed increases from 1 to 3 seconds, according to Google. That’s why site speed matters so much in ecommerce: slow page speeds cost money.
When Ibkul made the switch to Shopify, they noticed a boost in page speed almost instantly.
“In terms of site performance we've done much better compared to what we were on WooCommerce, without much direct work on it as a team,” says Mayank. “Primarily because Shopify uses a content delivery network (CDN).”
While any site can take advantage of the improved speed offered by a CDN, it’s an enhancement we’ve built into Shopify to speed up your site, save you time, and take one more technical task off of your to-do list.
Focus on your business, not on the technology
Step-change growth happens when you have the headspace needed to work on your business, not in your business, dealing with the technology that was supposed to save you time. There are enough big hurdles and tricky to-do’s you need to wrangle when starting and scaling a business—troubleshooting your technology stack shouldn’t be one of them.