Migrating Your Point of Sale System to Shopify

Omnichannel is the future of retail. If your organization is to remain competitive, you must bridge the gap between your physical outlets and your online store. 

You must ensure that your customers have an exceptional, consistent experience across their entire journey, whether they visit a franchise location or shop online. 

Migrating to Shopify POS is an important step in doing so, but you'll arguably get the most out of it with a full migration to Shopify.  .  

Why Use Shopify POS? 

Shopify POS effortlessly blends in-person sales with eCommerce functionality, bringing all products, payments, and customers into a single place. 

Not only does this make it simpler than ever to manage customer relationships, it also makes things easier on your staff. Managers and floor workers alike can benefit from a customizable mobile POS app, deep analytics and reporting, and streamlined purchase processing. The platform also offers multiple smart inventory management features including demand forecasting, inventory analysis, and sale suggestions. 

And if you don't want to shift entirely away from brick-and-mortar, Shopify's plug-and-play hardware makes it easy to build a complete POS system that supports both in-store and D2C selling. 

Before You Begin

Plan Your D2C Strategy

First and foremost, you need to think about how you intend to promote and sell your products online. What channels, tactics, and tools will you leverage to engage with your audience online? How do you intend to use digital channels to drive physical sales, and what challenges do you expect to encounter in making your inventory available online? 

Create a Migration Roadmap

You must also consider the migration process itself. Will you migrate all your POS systems simultaneously or take a phased approach by region/market. What is your target timeframe for this migration — when you want to have everything up and running with Shopify POS? 

Typically, migration to Shopify POS takes anywhere from a few hours to a few days. If you're also migrating wholesale to Shopify's eCommerce platform, it may take longer. 

Determine What to Migrate

Before getting started with the actual migration process, we'd advise taking a moment to assess your existing data. Your best bet here is to catalog every data type on your current platform, and from there determine what needs to be brought over. Examples include: 

• Transaction history
• Unfulfilled orders
• Customers
• Products and product reviews
• Certificates
• Discount codes
• Pages
• Inbound marketing content
• Gift cards
• Mailing list segments  

Prior to migration, you'll also want to do the following, if relevant: 

• Remove protocols from your assets. 
• Configure redirects for existing pages. 
• Reach out to customers and invite them to activate their accounts on Shopify. 
• Set up a web domain. If you don't already have your own domain, you can purchase one through Shopify. 

Choose Your Hardware

How much of your POS system will you replace with Shopify's technology? At the minimum, you'll need to purchase card readers. However, there are several other hardware options, including barcode scanners and cash drawers. 

Step One: Initial Configuration

Once you've laid the initial groundwork for your migration, the next step is to get the backend of your new Shopify deployment up and running, which involves the following: 

1. Create a Shopify Account: Make sure to include all relevant details about your business. If you operate in more than one country, you'll need to make sure you have a multi currency business account. 
2. Add Staff to Your Store: Make sure each staff member you add is assigned only the permissions they need to do their job. 
3. Configure Shopify POS: This includes choosing a subscription plan, connecting your POS hardware, and setting up your POS app so it's able to accept payments. You may also consider enabling multiple payment methods so your customers have several options from which to choose. 
4. Configure Shipping, Payment, and Taxes: If you already have an existing eCommerce presence, this should be relatively simple — just a matter of speaking to your vendors and touching base with accounting. 

Step Two: Migration

Next, it's time to bring everything over to Shopify from your old POS and eCommerce platforms. You have a few options for this process: 

• Shopify's Store Importer: Primarily intended for migrations from Lightspeed, ShopKeep, or Square, the Store Importer is a free, secure app that allows you to quickly and seamlessly migrate products, customers, and inventory to Shopify. 
• Third-Party Apps: There are multiple migration apps available on Shopify's app store, all developed by Shopify Partners. Many of these apps are geared towards a specific eCommerce platform.
• Work With an Agency: For more complicated migrations or those that require personalized onboarding, you may want to work with an expert that's specialized in POS migrations.
• Manual Migration: Finally, you may choose to transfer data manually via a CSV file or through a built-in migration feature in an existing platform. 

If you choose to handle your migration manually, just remember that you need to import products first, followed by customers and historical orders — for the remaining data, order isn't as important. 

Finally, if you intend to redesign your site, we'd advise keeping it offline immediately following your migration. 

Step Three: Post-Migration Administration

Once you've finished migrating both your website and your POS, it's time for some housekeeping. 

1. Training: Make sure everyone knows how to use both the POS software and the Shopify store. Shopify provides multiple demo videos to streamline this process. 
2. Validate Data: Double check all your product details, including images, descriptions, variants, and metadata. Correct as necessary. 
3. Organize Inventory: Arrange your products into collections and categories. You might consider downloading an inventory management app from the Shopify Marketplace.  
4. Test Everything: Make sure both your POS system and your new website are in working order by making a few test orders. 

Step Four: Design

For many large retailers, their online shopping experience leaves much to be desired. You need to determine if you are among them. And even if you aren't, we strongly advise planning a redesign as part of your migration. 

Details you should consider include: 

• UI/UX
• Performance
• Product listings
• Appearance
• CRM integration
• Checkout

Once your redesign is done, all that's left is to launch. 

Choose the Right Partner to Future-Proof Your Business 

Migrating to Shopify can seem daunting, particularly if you're replacing your point of sale system with Shopify POS. It doesn't have to be, though. Simplify your migration and put together a stunning redesign with a direct-to-consumer eCommerce marketing agency and Shopify Partner like Parkfield Commerce.

‍Contact us today for a free assessment and we'll show you how to get the most out of Shopify POS.