Business Case Study - Shopify to Without Code
In early 2017 I was presented with the opportunity to partner with Rosemary Pahl, a very smart and successful woman who created an Estate Planning Workbook. Originally designed as a gift for her family and friends, she received so much interest in the workbook just through word of mouth that she decided to offer it for sale to the public (read more about how the Workbook was developed over 12 years here).
Rosemary and I originally met many years ago when I was a teenager. At that time, I was offering computer support services on a freelance basis (I was still in high school) and she was one of my first clients. Fast forward almost two decades later, and we reconnected to discuss the idea of bringing her workbook online. We quickly came to a partnership agreement and hit the ground running.
Your Departing Details
The estate planning workbook was originally called The Doomsday Book; however, we were concerned the name sounded too negative for an already heavy subject. Our first order of business was to rebrand the workbook prior to designing an ecommerce website. After much debate and feedback, we officially decided on The Departing Details Workbook (or DDW for short).
We also purchased the domain EstateWorkbook.com – we felt this keyword focused domain name could result in higher search rankings, and it could be easily taken over and utilized by another company in the event of an acquisition.
Tip: Choose your domain very carefully. Despite popular advice, branded domains aren’t always the best option. The shorter the better, and if it can contain potential search terms for your business, bonus! Think about where the company might go in the future, and make sure the domain will still be applicable in the event of a major change.
Drag the slider above to see both versions of the Departing Details website!
Enter Shopify
The first version of the Departing Details website was built on Shopify.com. Our team had many years of Shopify experience (our MuseThemes business was built on Shopify) and we felt it offered the best functionality for both digital downloads and physical sales. Shopify has since become the world leader in ecommerce site creation.
When it came time to design the site, we mocked it up first in Photoshop and had our developer do most of the heavy lifting. This was the weak spot in Shopify's platform – it was very difficult to design a pixel-perfect site if you didn't have coding skills. Any update beyond simple text changes usually required our developer to get involved.
It was clear the time had come for a platform change, and (for obvious reasons) our preferred visual website creation tool was our own system, Without Code.
Tip: Websites should be easy to update. You need to be constantly iterating and testing new ideas – moving too slowly can kill an online business before it even starts. If you can’t make a simple update to your site in a few minutes, you might need to explore other platforms.
A Marriage Made in Heaven
We had a couple of options when it came to the site rebuild:
1. Create the entire site in Without Code using our built-in ecommerce (powered by Ecwid). This would mean cancelling our Shopify account, and losing easy access to our order history, download systems, etc. Not ideal.
2. Create a new site in Without Code, and simply embed the purchase buttons Shopify provides. This would allow us to retain the Shopify checkout and it’s download functionality, but power all the non-checkout pages through Without Code. We would have the best in design flexibility / quick updates, combined with our existing ecommerce system. Bingo!
We kicked off the redesign of the Departing Details site and the process was smooth sailing. It only took a few days to build the entire site in Without Code, and once the design was approved, we simply needed to embed our Shopify buy buttons and launch. Embedding the buttons only took a few minutes, and they blended seamlessly into our design.
Note: Our development team has been working on a powerful Shopify widget
built into the Without Code editor, however for this project it seemed like overkill.
Check out the video below for a full breakdown of how we embedded the Shopify purchase buttons.
SEO Considerations
When you transition a website to a new platform, you need to be aware of the impact this will have on existing links and search rankings.
If the old page URL’s don’t match up with the new site you could experience reduced traffic, or worse, Google could penalize you for having broken links and drop your ranking. In order to reduce this impact we matched up our page URLs exactly between the old Shopify site and the new WOCode site. This is easily achieved using the flexible Page URL options in our builder – we were able to match up every single page so that Google would never see a missing page.
Next up we copied the page titles and meta descriptions over from our old site to the new. This isn’t necessarily essential, however we wanted to minimize the “shock” Google might feel when it indexed the new site. Once the new site has been live for a while, we’ll likely improve our page titles and descriptions since they are so essential for SEO.
Lastly, I’m dying to see the impact that transitioning to WOCode will have on our rankings. The Shopify site wasn’t a rockstar-performer for our ideal keywords, and I suspect we’ll see a big bump in rankings by moving platforms. Based on our own experience and customer testimonials, WOCode sites generally rank very well due to their load speeds and code optimization.
Check out the video below for an explanation of how we matched URLs and setup page redirects
Conclusion and Next Steps
We launched this new site during an interesting time. Departing Details was recently featured in the Costco magazine
(10M+ readers) so we’ve had a surge in sales. While I was apprehensive to transition the site during a boom, I recognized it would also be nice to quickly validate that the checkout flow was working properly, and purchases could be made successfully.
Within a few hours of our relaunch, the site made a successful sale (and several since). Customers are now browsing a beautiful Without Code-powered website that we can update quickly and easily, without developer involvement. And Shopify is doing its job on the backend, processing our orders, delivering digital downloads and calculating shipping rates.
I see a long future ahead for our happy couple.
Thanks!
~ Steve Harris
P.S.
Departing Details
was designed to guide you through the process of gathering and organizing the details of your life, as well as motivating you to think about your legacy. It’s a compliment to your Will (not a replacement), and it should be completed by any adult, who is currently alive, and living on earth. This is a hard subject to face, but it’s much easier to do while you’re still young and healthy.
*The links to Shopify
in this blog post are our affiliate links. We’re certainly not trying to discourage you from using our built-in ecommerce, however it’s important to use the right tool for the job. Shopify is a great platform and worth adding to your arsenal of web design tools.
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