While working at Perch, Finnegan Medical Supply needed their e-commerce platform redesigned and rebuilt in Shopify. As I had only messed around with Shopify a little bit, I was excited to build out a backend and pick up a new skill.
Their existing store was built using ExpressionEngine and CartThrob. Unfortunately, there was no easy migration method between CartThrob and Shopify, so everything was going to need to migrated without utilizing an existing method.
This ended up being way more complicated than intended. The way that product information was stored in the CartThrob database was very separated and completely different from the way that Shopify handled imports. This meant I had to get creative with my queries, and I was able to find ways to bring in all required information and export it as a CSV that we could import.
While Perch designed the site, the front-end was built out by a contractor to help with the quick turnaround time. This meant that I would have to take the provided HTML and CSS and connect it all in a way so that the site would function properly. I would also need to add in some custom JS to handle certain design features like cart interactions and menu views.
While it required learning Shopify and some Ruby as well as a LOT more ExpressionEngine than I had expected, it all came together and we were able to make the deadline. I’m happy with how it came out, and I’d possibly like to do more with Shopify in the future.
The one downside I noticed with Shopify is that customization can be pretty limited when it comes to carts and other features that are usually present on e-commerce platforms. While one could argue that this is better, that Shopify handles and tests all those flows for you, I tend to like more control. It’s just one thing that I would keep in the back of my mind when deciding which platform would be ideal for a future project.
