Before making the decision to migrate your online store from Turbify to Shopify, there are a number of things to consider.
Cost
One of the first things merchants ask when considering migrating their Turbify store is how much the process will cost. There is no easy answer to this question, but unless you attempt to do this yourself (and after reading this section, hopefully it will become clear why that is probably not a good idea), a complete Turbify store migration is roughly akin to a full redesign/rebuild of your store - minus generating your content (catalog). For this reason, you can view this endeavor much like a redesign. So, the short and non-specific answer to this question is that it will not be cheap.Timeframe
Since migrating a store is very similar to a facelift or redesign, the time it takes to migrate is also on par with redesigning an existing store. Add to this the fact that migrating content (products, categories, files, orders, etc.) can be rather complex, and you'll see why you should plan for a timeframe of several months.Content Migration
As mentioned earlier, one of the major components of a store migration is getting your existing data from Turbify over to Shopify. This includes, but is most likely not limited to:- Product catalog
- Section pages (in Shopify these are called "collections")
- Static pages
- Static files (things stored in your Turbify store's "Files" area)
- Page redirects
- Existing orders
- Hosting (this is your site.[yourstoredomain].com area)
Design and Functionality
Here, there are typically two approaches: if your store has an old design, you can probably pick one of the thousands of readily available, customizable, and modern themes in the Shopify Theme Store and go with what the theme provides. If, however, your store is highly customized or you are happy with its current look and feel, then in addition to picking a customizable theme that's close to your current store design, you'll most likely also want to customize the selected theme beyond its built-in customization options.There is a third option as well: having a completely custom Shopify theme developed for you. In most cases, however, you don't need to choose this rather extreme route. Chances are, you'll be able to find an existing theme and have it customized to your liking. The themes you'll find in the Shopify Theme Store are modern, fast, highly customizable, and come with lots of features and functionality already baked in.
While theme customization (using the theme's built-in customization options) requires no coding experience, customizing everything is still a major undertaking that can add to the project's complexity and cost. Very often, content migration needs to consider how the theme structures data and make the necessary transformations during the export/import process.
Apps (Plug-Ins)
Unless your store is very basic, you'll need to consider apps to provide the same or similar functionality your current store has. The Shopify App Store has thousands of apps in many categories available to you. Even for the same task, you'll find dozens of different apps, and choosing the right one is no walk in the park. When choosing an app, besides its recurring monthly fee, you'll also want to consider how easy it is to apply the app's functionality to your existing products.Take, for example, an app that provides custom options on your product pages. If you have hundreds of products with custom options, you'll want an options app that allows some sort of bulk upload functionality so that you won't have to spend days entering options for all of your products.
Some of the things we take for granted on Turbify - such as setting up unlimited, different options for products or offering quantity price discounts - are not directly supported by Shopify. You'll need to use a custom app for such features. Because, with very few exceptions, the apps you find in the Shopify App Store are made by third-party developers or companies, they all have their own - usually recurring - fees based on store size (number of products) and volume (page views, sales, etc.).
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