Etsy to Shopify Migration : The Ultimate Guide [Update]

I grew up making beautiful paper mache boxes for the weddings of all my cousins, Why don’t you selling on Etsy? One of them suggested and that was the day I realized that my unique handcrafted boxes were loved by the locations even I was not aware of!4 years of amazing selling Etsy gave me and we start expanding, while expanding there were issues which I somewhat ignored because I did not want to move from the platform which gave me my first sale !but then my mom said when you have to grow you must try new things!

So the search began! I wanted to go ahead with a more better eCommerce solution but with as easy or even more better than Etsy because we wanted to grow technically but had very less technical expertise on the system of codes! My team of seven had fairly less idea on coding!

I googled “Most easy e-commerce platform”, the top ten links flapped Shopify, my brains started wondering what is it? The curiosity turned to excitement when I went on to their site and started reading through the blogs their feedbacks and omg what amazing reviews!

I made up my mind that yes I need this! I will have to go ahead with this platform leaving my Etsy for growing and expanding even more!

The next question was! How will the migration happen? Who will migrate? I thought why not we as a team give it a try and we did it! This made me think on to go ahead and write a full guide as to anyone who is moving from Etsy to Shopify has a swift move! So here goes

The Ultimate Etsy to Shopify Migration Guide

Shopify is so user-friendly in all perspective that you just need to click click go its DDD(drag-drop and done). You may go ahead with starting from scratch by creating an entirely new look or consider just moving some parts and keeping all others same!anything can be done with ease in Shopify. Here's what you have to do.

1. Register on Shopify(you get a free 14-day trial, try completing the migration in that time)
2. Once done that enter your store general details
3. Then try selecting a theme of your choice from ONLINE STORE>THEMES(there are free as well as paid themes)
4. Then now is the time for data migration Go to your Etsy Shop Dashboard, under Shop Settings, click Options.
5. Select the Download Data tab
6. Click Download CSV
7. There are 2 methods to go for importing the data on to Shopify
8. Get the EasyImport Etsy Importer from the Shopify App Store and upload your products
9. Upload the CSV on to the SHOPIFY PRODUCTS>IMPORT
10. Enter the products Manually
11. Next is assign the products to collections with tags or meta titles you wish to enter.
12. Preview your products all your product titles, descriptions, variants and prices should be correct.
13. Add your super fine images to make and impact on the buyer manually
14. Next step move to add your customers using Shopify customer csv
15. Then add the pages(about us, privacy policy, terms & conditions)Shopify has a set of templates for each
16. Set your payment gateways with more than 500+ gateways available on Shopify
17. Set your shipping as well as set up a taxes if any
18. Now is the time to customize the look and feel of your store ,goto the theme that you had selected on that theme try and add more of the essence of your store the things that you always wanted your store should have, maybe social feeds, pop up discounts, banners and many more add all of those!
19. Once you have added them you may also want to sell globally and reach out more areas for that you may enter language apps and currency converter apps as I did!
20. You may also consider transferring your beautiful blogs to Shopify’s amazing Blog CMS!
21. After all, this now is the time to transfer your domain on to your Shopify store from the Etsy store. Give it 24 hours and you are done with your beautiful, new store! Hurray!

I and my team made it a success through trying and testing stuff you might not want to do that so you may try our guide or some Shopify expert’s help to do it!

Let me also guide you through various aspects of Shopify as well as Etsy I went through in all these years:

Etsy is a global marketplace for unique and creative goods. It`s an active community of people connecting over trading special products. The platform allows sellers to do what they love and offer buyers a variety of authentic things. Shopify is an eCommerce solution for businesspeople and online retailers. It helps Merchants to set up their web store, organize products, customize the storefront, accept payments, etc. The key difference — Etsy is a marketplace, while Shopify was designed with all the nuances of online commerce in mind and nowadays it is the leader among the shopping carts. This was one of the reasons why I thought of migration if you worry about the challenges you may face while changing the platform, there are no reasons for it. You know the basic principles offer online retail, you only need a solution that will give you the advanced functionality to succeed, and Shopify works wonders here.

Etsy is focused on the realization of hand-made, vintage and unique products, and that is why initially I chose it fro selling my handcrafted wedding boxes but as time goes on tastes change as we ad your market expands you can't just sell a single handcrafted thing for long,so there are clear restrictions on what to trade. Shopify has no limits at all! I could sell boxes, personalized products, keychains, Tshirts, fashion goods and what not, I could sell anything that appealed to me and I thought would appeal to my customers.

Though Etsy gave my first sale, it was never my brand that took the first place it was always Etsy as being a market place obviously it will have that power, but in Shopify as my own store, I had the power of my own brand!

On the one hand, Etsy conveys the brand better if you`re a novice at maintaining a web store and have little experience, but it`s time to advance your business and here Shopify is good. In addition, there are no difficulties with Shopify even to eCommerce newbie. All is clear, simple and convenient with drag-and-drop interface, useful tools and easy theme editing. The polished and trendy admin panel is the best solution for representing individual style. I loved using their Dashboard!

You`ll be pleased with numerous Shopify templates. Choose the most suitable one and adjust it for the business. There are no limitations to pictures, text, and themes. Feel free to implement any creative idea that comes to your mind. As for Etsy, there`s a default store design. All you can do — pick up colors and sort products to a degree, but no customization features available. Everything is under Etsy`s control. But here I have full control and also the Code files where I used some of my google research and did some code changes if you are a techie you may work wonders or your tech team will do so many things that you could never imagine with Etsy!

Yes,I had thought that Shopify as will be expensive as it involves a monthly charge but when I went on to the actual figures Etsy came out to be more expensive as per its marketplace charges and cost were more per transaction than Shopify as a whole! So if cost-cutting is also in your mind Shopify is the best option for you!

Yes, Etsy has much more visitors, than your web store would, but that`s much less targeted traffic. Don`t forget about losing your products among the variety of other goods in the marketplace. On the contrary, Shopify is a web store and your customer is already on your site. They will notice the brand and come back to you again, while with the marketplace it doesn`t work. And this is what worked for me!

Not only these there are more benefits of moving from Etsy to Shopify

1. The freedom and flexibility of running a business on Shopify allows handmade businesses to scale, and automates a lot of the commerce processes, allowing makers to focus on what they do best
2. Bring your brand to new audiences. Shopify integrates with sales channels like Amazon and Houzz to help you reach niche audiences and sync sales.
3. Resell, wholesale, curate, manufacture! Grow your brand beyond the limitations of Etsy by bringing on other curated brands, adding wholesale login and pricing, or moving your production to a manufacturing facility.
4. Grow your content strategy with a blog. Blogs are the most important in present day SEO as they help you reach new customers via organic search by posting reviews and driving readers to your store.
5. Run email campaigns to drive sales and traffic. Communication with customers on Etsy is restricted to messages directly related to an order. Shopify’s integration with email apps allows you to communicate regularly with your customers and subscribers—blog posts, sales announcements, exclusive deals, and new products.
6. Tell your brand story, your way. Add multiple pages to tell your story. Maybe you have a dropdown menu under “About” that links visitors to “Meet the Team”, “Our Story”, “Our Philosophy”, etc. Your home page can also put your story first. Use apps like Snapppt to pull in your latest Instagram images. Use a lookbook app to share lifestyle photos that give customers insight into your style and inspiration. Not only this you may share Videos of your work on the product pages that how your brand gets a product made!

With Shopify, we were able to scale at a really good pace and time as well as we went ahead upgrading our plan!

I hope this guide and my story will inspire you too as well as help you migrate from Etsy to Shopify

So LET the STORE SHOPIFYGRATE!

Do leave your comments as well as reviews for me to know how this guide helped you!