Case Study - Moving from Wix to Shopify | Rebuilding Resellerstore
I helped Reseller finish their website design that was originally done with Wix a while back. Now their business is expanding and they want to launch an e-commerce store, which I advised was best done on Shopify.
- Date
- Roles
- Designer,
- Developer
- Tech
- Shopify,
- Lightspeed
The Challenge
Switching the site over from Wix to Shopify wasn't really a pain point as the site needed a redesign to suit the new e-commerce features anyway. What was a bit tedious, was dealing with the integration for their Point of Sale (POS) system Lightspeed.
There was a lot of back-and-forth on whether switching POS systems to Shopify was a preferred method to save on an additional subscription cost. There were also some difficulties working between the data models that Lightspeed has for their products vs what Shopify expects.
The website also needed some quality images to compliment to modern rebuild. As these things go, there was a bit of time spent waiting on images to finish particular section designs or website features.
My Approach
Over a couple of client meetings we got down which parts of the old website we wanted to keep and how we were going to change around the landing page to suit the integration of an online store. We also discussed the filtering system for products and how to be managing inventory between Reseller's POS (lightspeed) and Shopify. There's a tiny bit of extra work to be done in syncing the inventory up due to not using the native Shopify POS, but the client was happy forgoe the additional switching costs for this extra bit of effort.
I had to learn the Shopify system and templating (Liquid) framework, which was easy enough. I did have to adapt the code of the template that we went with off the shelf to get the filtering/sorting system working as intended. I also only applied minimal styling changes in the CSS.
The Outcome
The end result is a bright and welcoming website that exemplifies the client's brand. The site is obviously fully responsive with the usual Shopify features and feel. I've incorporated the content of the old landing page so that the site not just provides an online store, but also illustrates Reseller's values and business operations (they do consignment selling, so this needed to be included and clearly displayed).
Next Steps
I think next steps would be to think about switching over to the native Shopify POS for easier inventory management. SEO improvements could also be made to the site, in particular a more targeted strategy for keywords and locality.