Congratulations on your decision to upgrade your online store to Shopify. To help make the process as fast and painless as possible, we’ve put together this resource to get you started.
Below you’ll find a tool to help you import your existing store, important information about using Shopify as well as some of the differences you can expect to find between our platform and some of the other ecommerce providers.
Shopify Import Tool
To help get you up and running quickly on Shopify, we’ve developed a convenient import tool that allows you to transfer your existing product catalogue over to our platform.
Whether you’re coming from Volusion, Wordpress, Magento, Bigcommerce, eBay, Etsy, or others, this tool is a convenient way to assist with the migration process.
Get Started Now
Some Things To Look Out For
Shopify offers a lot of power and flexibility, but we do do some things differently than other ecommerce platforms. Here are some things to look out for:
Collections
Here at Shopify we use ‘collections’ in place of what other ecommerce companies call categories. Based on our testing, we find that grouping your products in high level collections and then using ‘tags’ to specify sub categories provides a better user experience for the customer when navigating and searching for products on your website.
In addition to regular collections, we also have ‘smart collections’ that let you set simple rules that automatically place products in them based on factors like price and inventory. For example you could create a ‘Stocking Stuffer’ smart collection with a rule that adds any items in your store that are under $20.00.
Variants
A product variant (or variant for short) is a different version of a product, such as a size or a color. Without variants, you would have to treat the small, medium and large versions of a t-shirt as three separate products. Variants let you treat the small, medium and large versions of a t-shirt as variations of the same product.
Learn more about product variants.
Linklists
In Shopify, a linklist is (as the name suggests) a collection of links. The main purpose of linklists is to create menus and submenus in your store’s navigation. A brand new shop has one linklist for the Main Menu, and another for the Footer, both of which cannot be deleted. You edit your linklists, and create new ones, on the Navigation page in your shop admin.
Automatic Tax Calculations for U.S. Shops
One thing many U.S. based shop owners switching to Shopify aren’t aware is our automatic tax calculation feature. All the customer needs to do is enter their Zip code and Shopify takes care of the necessary tax calculations automatically.
Learn more about tax calculation by Zip code.
Shopify Apps
The Shopify App Store is a collection of free and premium plugins that extend the functionality of your online store and is a great way to add more specialized features to Shopify. From displaying customer reviews, upsells, advanced shipping and fulfillment and more, there's an app for almost anything.
Still have questions? Contact a Shopify Guru now.
