Migration from Shopify to Woocommerce
Client
Mister Smith Interiors
Overview
This e-commerce site was originally built using Shopify but it had some specific requirements that Shopify was unable to achieve and so we were tasked with migrating the site to Wordpress and Woocommerce to provide greater flexibility.
Budget
££
Services
- Wordpress Design
- Wordpress Development
- Shopify Migration
Highlights
The website needed to keep the same design but update the functionality. In particular the search system needed to be quick and allow for more than 1000 ‘tagged’ items to be returned, which was a limit Shopify had. We also needed to find a way of uploading new products or initiate bulk product price updates quickly. Finally we had to be able to sell by the metre and ensure that Google shopping and Facebook shop could use an accurate per metre price, another limitation with Shopify.
Challenges
The toughest challenge was being able to migrate ~5000 products, plus their variations, from Shopify to Wordpress. We initially tried the plugins that are available to do this but they couldn’t successfully transfer the data, as we needed it and so we developed our own import process that used an export from Shopify and then bulk automated the import so it could be set up exactly as needed without being a manual task.
Speed was also a challenge and so we implemented a combination of server configuration and optimisation plugins to ensure the shop owners could manage the admin systems efficiently and searches could be run for visitors. The search results also needed to display the variation product and not the parent product so searches that included colours would return the specific colour variation, improving the users experience.
We tried to find a way of using each brands own product files to be able to update pricing, new product ranges and to remove discontinued items. Unfortunately there was no consistency between the brands. Some provided excel files, others PDF files but there was no solution to be able to automate a merge of all the data into one format so we had to find our own solution.
Ampersands quick response time is a huge benefit, meaning I know changes will be made quickly and seamlessly allowing me to spend more time on the other areas of my business.
Ben Smith
Result
We started by recreating the site design and layout to mirror the Shopify theme, this was the easy bit!
We have introduced an index based search engine that monitors changes to products and reinforces, as necessary, to ensure search results show the most relevant and up to date information.
To overcome the bulk change process we have ended up using WP sheet editor that allows us to export products, by brand, update the prices and any other changes and then import again.
Products can now sync with Google shopping, Facebook shop and Pinterest without displaying inaccurate pricing.
Find out what Ben Smith thought about Ampersand Studio and how we developed this project.
We continue to support the Mister Smith team to ensure the site remains up to date, secure and backed up, as well as helping with product imports, in particular with image optimisations.
