If you’re running your online store on Turbify, you may have realized that while the platform has served you well, it’s starting to feel a little behind the times. Many store owners on Turbify find themselves in a similar situation, contemplating a switch to a more modern and feature-rich platform like Shopify. But is the process of moving from Turbify to Shopify as daunting as it sounds? The answer: It can be surprisingly smooth and stress-free, especially with the right approach and support from a developer like Your Store Wizards, who specialize in platform migrations.
Turbify vs. Shopify: Why Make the Move?
Let’s start with Turbify, formerly Yahoo! Store, itself. Originally designed as an eCommerce platform for small businesses, Turbify has been around since the 1990s, and while it has its strengths, the platform is beginning to show its age. It lacks many of the advanced features and flexible design options that modern online store owners need to stay competitive. In contrast, Shopify is a newer, constantly evolving platform that provides a streamlined, user-friendly experience with robust eCommerce capabilities and a vibrant app ecosystem that gives you the tools to customize, scale, and grow your business.
Here are a few key differences between Turbify and Shopify:
- Design and User Experience: Shopify offers a wide selection of professionally designed themes that make creating a visually appealing and user-friendly store easier. Turbify’s design options are limited and often require extensive custom coding to achieve the same polished look. Additionally, since Turbify uses a proprietary programming language called RTML, finding a developer these days can be challenging.
- Scalability and Features: Shopify is known for its scalability, which allows you to start small and expand as your business grows. With advanced features like multi-channel selling, abandoned cart recovery, and a built-in blogging platform, Shopify provides all the tools to help your business thrive. Turbify’s feature set, in comparison, is very limited, which can restrict growth.
- App Ecosystem: Shopify’s app marketplace is packed with thousands of apps designed to help store owners with everything from SEO to advanced marketing automation. Turbify doesn’t have an app ecosystem, making it harder to add functionality without custom development.
Migrating Your Data: Getting the Essentials from Turbify to Shopify
When moving from Turbify to Shopify, one of the most crucial aspects is making sure your data makes the transition smoothly. Data migration includes products, pages, images, categories, and, ideally, order and customer data. With Turbify, exporting data is a bit limited, especially when it comes to customer and order information. While you can generally export products and categories without much hassle, customer and order details often aren’t as readily accessible.
Here’s a breakdown of what’s involved in a data migration:
- Product Data: Exporting product information from Turbify is typically straightforward, allowing you to bring over product names, descriptions, prices, and images. Shopify also makes it easy to import product data, so this part of the migration is usually seamless.
- URL Redirects: Ensuring your URLs remain consistent, or setting up 301 redirects, is critical for preserving your SEO rankings. Shopify offers easy-to-use redirect options that help guide customers to the right pages, even if the URLs change during the migration.
- Customer and Order Data: Due to limitations in Turbify’s export options, migrating customer and order data may require a bit more creativity. While basic customer information can sometimes be exported, order history might be harder to retrieve. This is where an experienced migration partner like Your Store Wizards can help, as we’ve developed ways to handle tricky data migrations and retain as much customer information as possible.
Designing Your New Store on Shopify
Once your data is in place, Shopify shines by making the store design process remarkably easy. With hundreds of free and premium templates to choose from, you can quickly set up a sleek, professional storefront. Each theme is customizable, allowing you to tweak layouts, colors, fonts, and images without needing advanced coding skills. If you’re looking to create a unique, standout design, Your Store Wizards can take an existing theme and customize it to match your brand or design a completely unique theme from scratch.
Shopify’s theme editor is easy to use, so if you’re comfortable with simple design changes, you can make most adjustments yourself. But for a fully personalized look, a developer like Your Store Wizards can help you create a site that truly reflects your brand identity.
Why Choose Your Store Wizards for Your Migration?
Migrating from one platform to another is a significant task, and with the unique challenges presented by Turbify, having experienced professionals by your side can make all the difference. At Your Store Wizards, we offer a complete Turbify-to-Shopify migration package that covers every aspect of your transition, from data migration to design. Here’s how we simplify the process:
- Data Migration Expertise: We ensure your products, categories, and pages make the move without issues. For customer and order data, our team knows how to get as much information as possible from Turbify to Shopify, using advanced methods developed through years of experience.
- Design and Customization: Whether you prefer a polished Shopify theme with some custom touches or a completely unique design, we’ll work with you to create a store that’s fresh, modern, and ready to impress your customers.
- Experienced Guidance: With hundreds of successful platform migrations under our belt, we’ve refined our process to be as smooth and stress-free as possible. Our team is well-versed in both platforms, ensuring that we can troubleshoot any issues quickly and efficiently.
Learning the Ropes on Shopify
One aspect of moving to a new platform that can sometimes be overlooked is the learning curve involved. Moving to Shopify isn’t just about getting your data and design in place—it’s also essential to understand how the new platform works. Store owners will need to get familiar with managing orders, updating products, handling customer inquiries, and organizing web pages on Shopify before going live.
Fortunately, Shopify offers an extensive support website full of guides, video tutorials, and resources to help new users feel at home on the platform. Take advantage of this educational content to make the transition as smooth as possible. Your Store Wizards can also help with onboarding, walking you through some of the most important features to get you started on the right foot.
Don’t Make a Move Until You Talk to Your Store Wizards
If you’re thinking about switching from Turbify to Shopify, don’t make the move alone. Your Store Wizards is here to help with a free consultation where we can discuss what’s involved in the migration process, set up a free Shopify demo store for you to explore the platform, and provide a customized quote with affordable payment terms for your migration.
Whether you’re looking to take the leap yourself or want a team of experts to handle the migration from start to finish, we’re here to make the experience easy, stress-free, and exciting. Use the form below to contact us today to see how Your Store Wizards can help your store reach new heights on Shopify.
Scott Sanfilippo began his eCommerce journey in 1994 by co-founding one of the Internet’s first online retailers, TheFerretStore.com, which was acquired by PetCo in 2006. In 2001, he co-founded the eCommerce design and marketing firm Solid Cactus, which was acquired by web.com in 2009. Today, Scott is the General Manager of Your Store Wizards and lives in Delray Beach, FL. Scott can be contacted at scott@yourstorewizards.com.