Migrating from Webflow Ecommerce to Shopify without Leaving Webflow

Are you finding Webflow’s ecommerce features too limiting as your business grows, but love the creative freedom it offers for website design? Many Webflow users face this exact challenge: they want to stick with Webflow’s intuitive, no-code environment, but need a more powerful ecommerce platform that can handle larger inventories, advanced payment options and better customer management.

Imagine having the best of both worlds: Shopify's ecommerce powerhouse driving your sales and Webflow’s flexibility allowing you to create stunning, customer experience without needing to learn any new coding languages.

In this post, we’ll walk you through the solution that Shopyflow offers to the Webflow ecommerce users for unlocking the Shopify's ecommerce features in their Webflow site.

How Webflow eCommerce compares to Shopify?

Webflow is an amazing tool, especially for those who love to create visually stunning, highly customized websites without touching a line of code. When it comes to design, Webflow is a dream. But what about ecommerce?

While Webflow’s ecommerce tools are great for small stores and simple setups, they fall short as your business grows and requires more advanced functionality. Here are a few of the common challenges Webflow ecommerce users face:

Limited scalability: Managing larger product catalogs and complex inventories are limited comparing to Shopify.‍

Limited core ecommerce features: Webflow falls behind Shopify when it comes to advanced shipping options, payment gateways, promotions, discounts and a few more to count.

Limited extensibility: Shopify’s app store offers a vast array of apps tailored specifically for ecommerce needs, while Webflow’s ecommerce capabilities are more restricted, limiting your store’s potential growth.

Shopify: A World-Class Ecommerce Platform

Why is Shopify considered one of the best ecommerce platforms out there? Simple: Shopify is built for ecommerce. It’s designed to handle everything from small shops to global businesses and it scales effortlessly with your growth. Here’s why it stands out:

• Robust Inventory Management: Shopify excels at handling product variants, inventory tracking and restocking.
• Seamless Payment Integration: With Shopify, you can manage payments from multiple gateways and currencies with ease.
• Shipping & Fulfillment: You can set up flexible shipping options, including integration with carriers for automated rates.
• Discounts & Promotions: Run dynamic promotions and automate discounts to keep customers coming back.
• Extensive App Ecosystem: Shopify’s app store offers tons of options to extend your store’s functionality.

Shopyflow set out to combine the best of both platforms. So that you can keep building and managing in Webflow and leverage Shopify’s powerful ecommerce backend - all without needing to code or start from scratch.

Shopyflow: The Best of Both Worlds

So, what is Shopyflow exactly? It’s a powerful integration between Webflow and Shopify. With Shopyflow, you can keep designing your website in Webflow while Shopify handles the backend of your store. It’s like having the best of both worlds:

• No Code: Build complex Shopify stores in Webflow without the need for code. 
• Design freedom: You don’t need to give up the creative control you love in Webflow.
• Ecommerce scalability: You’ll have Shopify’s powerful backend handling inventory, checkout and payments, ensuring you can scale your store without limitations.

Let’s break down how Shopyflow makes this connection possible and what each platform controls.

What is Managed in Shopify?

Shopify stays as the single source of truth for your ecommerce operations. When using Shopyflow, the following ecommerce functionalities are managed in Shopify:

• Product Inventory: Shopify handles all aspects of product inventory, including product listings, stock levels, variant management and taxonomies used for product organization. Any changes made in Shopify are automatically synced to Webflow through Shopyflow.
• Order Management: Shopify processes orders, manages transactions, shipping, taxes and more..
• Payments and Discounts: Payment gateways, discounts and promotional campaigns are still available in Shopify.
• Shipping and Automations: All shipping settings, zones and automation rules are defined and managed directly in Shopify.

What is Controlled in Webflow?

While Shopify powers the backend, Webflow controls the design and frontend experience. Here’s what you’ll manage in Webflow when using Shopyflow:

• Design and Layouts: All pages, including product pages, cart, product listing, user account pages, collections and other site elements, are designed and styled within Webflow. You have complete freedom to create unique layouts and branded experiences. Nothing is embedded or hard-coded.
• Buying experiences: You can design UI elements such as add to cart buttons, product galleries and checkout pages in Webflow. Shopyflow connects these elements to Shopify’s ecommerce logic with simple HTML attributes. Shopyflow also offers a set of handy features like sub-products to create buying experiences that allow multiple purchases at once.
  This opens the doors to creating configurable products, bundles and cross-sells without writing code. It also comes with handfulof js methods to further extend the functionality of your front-end.

Shopyflow Developer Experience

Shopyflow connects Shopify and Webflow by syncing real-time ecommerce data from Shopify to Webflow and allowing designers to assign Shopify functionality to Webflow elements within the designer with the help of Shopyflow Webflow App. Here's how it works:

Data Sync

In Shopyflow, the real-time sync between Shopify and Webflow creates several key CMS collections within Webflow, allowing developers to manage and display Shopify data dynamically. The following CMS collections are created:

• Products: This collection contains individual product data, including product titles, descriptions, prices and SKUs. It serves as the primary source for populating product pages.
• Product Options: Each product’s variant options (such as size, color, or other customization options) are stored in this collection, enabling users to build custom variant option selectors.

• Collections: Shopify collections (groups of products) are synced as CMS collections, allowing products to be categorized and displayed in groups for easier navigation and filtering.
• Vendors: The vendor data from Shopify is synced, which is useful for stores that sell products from multiple brands or suppliers.
• Tags: Product tags from Shopify are also synced, allowing for easy filtering and organization of products on the front-end.
• Product Types: This CMS collection helps organize products based on their types or categories (e.g., clothing, electronics).

Shopyflow Webflow App

Shopyflow provides you with ready-to-use HTML attributes that can be assigned to Webflow elements to display Shopify data, or assign ecommerce UI functionality to them. For instance, you can assign the sf-add-to-cart attribute to a button to make it function as an add-to-cart button, or you can assign the sf-show-price attribute to a text block element to display the product price.

The Shopyflow Webflow App simplifies the development process by offering pre-configured ecommerce components. In the designer you get access to countless components like, Buy Module, Cart Module, User Accounts Module, Product Listing and the sub-components that make these components. These components are fully customizable native Webflow elements that are dynamically configured with HTML attributes using your Shopify data.

How Effortless is The Transition from Webflow Ecommerce to Shopyflow?

The transition from Webflow ecommerce to Shopyflow is quite seamless and straightforward, involving just two key steps to convert your Webflow ecommerce site into a Shopify-powered store integrated with Shopyflow and Webflow.

Shopify Setup

‍The first step is to set up your Shopify store. This includes adding your products and configuring all your ecommerce settings. You will be able to use Shopify’s full suite of ecommerce features, such as inventory management, shipping, customer management, discounts and automations, without any limitations.

Webflow Build

Your non-ecommerce pages (like the home, blog, about and contact pages) can remain unchanged and continue functioning as they currently do. However, for product pages, cart and user account pages, you will need a rebuild using Shopyflow components.

Shopyflow makes this process easy with its Webflow app, allowing you to convert your existing Webflow elements into Shopyflow components visually. Alternatively, you can use pre-configured components and simply apply your existing classes to customize the design.

Try Shopyflow for Free

In conclusion, transitioning from Webflow ecommerce to Shopyflow offers a smooth and powerful way to upgrade your online store without sacrificing the creative freedom that Webflow provides. By combining Shopify’s robust ecommerce capabilities with Webflow’s design flexibility, you can unlock advanced features like inventory management, seamless payment integrations and dynamic product displays - all while maintaining control of your site’s frontend. Ready to supercharge your store? Join our vibrant Discord community for tips, support and insider discussions, or sign up for free today to experience the best of both worlds with Shopyflow!