Growth & Strategy
Personas
Ecommerce
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
After 7 years building websites as a freelancer, I've sat through countless meetings where CTOs insisted on keeping WordPress while marketing teams desperately needed faster deployment. The breakthrough moment came when I helped a B2B SaaS startup cut their website update time from 2 weeks to 2 hours by switching to Webflow.
But here's the thing - when it comes to ecommerce, the stakes are different. Your choice of hosted solution doesn't just affect your launch timeline; it determines whether your marketing team can adapt quickly to market changes or gets stuck waiting for developer resources every time they want to test a new promotion.
Over the years, I've migrated dozens of company websites across different platforms. I started as a WordPress evangelist, experimented with headless setups thinking I could get the "best of both worlds," and eventually learned some uncomfortable truths about what actually works in practice.
Here's what you'll learn from my platform migration experiments:
Why beautiful, custom ecommerce sites often become maintenance nightmares
The hidden costs of "flexible" platforms that require constant developer intervention
How I discovered that Shopify isn't just an ecommerce platform - it's a commerce ecosystem
When custom flexibility actually hurts your business growth
The framework I now use to choose between platforms for different client needs
Platform Reality
What the migration consultants won't tell you
When you search for "best hosted ecommerce solution," you'll find the same recycled advice everywhere. Every comparison chart lists features, pricing tiers, and technical capabilities. They'll tell you about design flexibility, customization options, and how many plugins are available.
The industry consensus usually goes like this:
Design flexibility matters most - Choose platforms that let you create unique, branded experiences
More features = better value - Look for platforms with extensive plugin ecosystems
Custom solutions show professionalism - Avoid "template-looking" sites that scream "small business"
Technical control is essential - You need access to code and server settings
Lower monthly costs save money - Cheaper hosting means better margins
This advice exists because it comes from developers and agencies who make money from complexity. The more custom work required, the more billable hours. The more technical problems to solve, the more indispensable they become.
But here's what happens in practice: You launch with a beautifully custom solution, then spend the next two years fighting with maintenance issues, plugin conflicts, and the inability to make simple changes without calling your developer. Your marketing team gets frustrated. Your growth stagnates. And you start questioning why something that was supposed to make selling easier has become so complicated.
The conventional wisdom treats ecommerce platforms like website builders, when they should be treated like business infrastructure. The question isn't "what looks best?" - it's "what helps you sell more with less friction?"
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
Let me walk you through exactly what happened during my platform migration journey, because the lessons I learned changed how I think about ecommerce entirely.
The Webflow Ecommerce Experiment
When I first started working with ecommerce clients, Webflow Ecommerce was my go-to platform. As a designer, it felt like paradise - I could build the exact page design and structure I envisioned without compromise. Every pixel was under my control.
I remember working with a handmade goods client who wanted something that "didn't look like everyone else's store." Webflow delivered on that promise. Their site was stunning, completely custom, and exactly what they'd envisioned.
But here's what I learned the hard way: a beautiful store that's impossible to manage is a failed store. While I was celebrating perfect layouts, my clients were struggling with basic operations. Yes, Webflow had the essentials - orders, shipping, inventory - but the admin experience was clearly not built with business owners in mind.
The maintenance burden became unsustainable. Clients were hesitant to make updates themselves, always needing my help for simple changes. What started as "design freedom" became "design dependency."
The Headless Shopify Experiment
Thinking I could solve this problem, I tried mixing custom frontends with Shopify's backend logic through headless commerce. On paper, it was perfect - keep the design flexibility while leveraging Shopify's superior admin panel.
The reality? My clients loved the admin experience. Everything felt like a proper commerce platform should. But the technical complexity created a new problem: fragility. The setup worked, but every month or two, something would break. I'd wake up to urgent emails from clients about checkout issues or inventory sync problems.
What I'd built wasn't a sustainable solution - it was a maintenance trap. The flexibility came at the cost of reliability, and reliability is what actually matters when you're trying to run a business.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
After these experiments, I made a decision that changed everything: I migrated all my ecommerce projects to native Shopify. Here's the exact process I developed and why it worked.
The Mindset Shift That Changed Everything
The breakthrough came when I stopped thinking about Shopify as "just another ecommerce platform" and started understanding what it actually is: a commerce platform that treats your website as one sales channel among many.
This mindset shift is powerful. You're not just building a good-looking website; you're plugging into an entire ecosystem designed for selling across multiple touchpoints. Your store becomes part of a larger commerce infrastructure, not an isolated website that you have to manually connect to everything else.
The Migration Framework I Developed
Here's the step-by-step process I now use for every ecommerce migration:
Phase 1: Business Requirements Audit
Before touching any code, I map out what the business actually needs to function:
How often does the marketing team need to make changes?
What's the current time-to-market for new promotions?
How much developer dependency can the business actually afford?
What integrations are non-negotiable vs. nice-to-have?
Phase 2: The "Commerce Operations" Test
I created a simple test: Can someone on the marketing team launch a flash sale, update product descriptions, and analyze the results without developer help? If the answer is no, the platform fails the business requirements regardless of how pretty it looks.
Phase 3: Platform-Specific Implementation
For Shopify migrations, I focus on three core areas:
Theme Customization (Not Rebuilding)
Instead of fighting Shopify's structure, I work with it. Yes, there are design trade-offs. But the trade-off is between having a completely custom design that requires developer intervention for every change, versus having a professional-looking store that the business can actually manage.
App Ecosystem Integration
Rather than custom-coding every feature, I leverage Shopify's app ecosystem. This was initially hard for me to accept as a developer, but here's what I learned: using proven apps is often more reliable than custom solutions.
Marketing Team Empowerment
The final step is training the team to actually use the platform's capabilities. Most businesses only use about 30% of what Shopify offers because no one taught them how to access the other 70%.
The Results Framework
I measure migration success using three metrics:
Time-to-change: How long does it take to implement a new promotion?
Team autonomy: What percentage of changes require developer help?
System reliability: How often does something break that affects sales?
When these metrics improve, everything else follows - faster testing, better customer experience, and ultimately more revenue.
Design Flexibility
Shopify requires developer expertise for true customization, but most businesses overestimate how much custom design they actually need
Business Focus
Unlike design-first platforms, Shopify prioritizes commerce operations over aesthetic flexibility
Ecosystem Power
Access to thousands of tested apps vs. building everything from scratch
Maintenance Reality
Native solutions require less ongoing technical intervention than custom or headless setups
The transformation in my clients' businesses was dramatic, but not always in the ways I expected.
Immediate Operational Improvements
Within the first month of migration, every client experienced faster deployment of changes. What used to take weeks of back-and-forth with developers now happened in hours. Marketing teams regained control of their testing velocity.
But the bigger win was reliability. Those middle-of-the-night emergency calls about broken checkout processes virtually disappeared. When your commerce platform "just works," you can focus on growing instead of fixing.
The Unexpected Business Impact
The most surprising result wasn't technical - it was strategic. When businesses could launch new promotions, test different pricing strategies, and analyze results quickly, they started thinking differently about their market approach.
One client went from running quarterly sales to testing weekly promotions because the platform made it so easy. Another discovered new customer segments because they could quickly create landing pages for different audiences.
Platform Performance Reality
Yes, there are trade-offs. Creating a truly custom-designed ecommerce site on Shopify requires developer expertise to customize templates. You can't just drag and drop your way to a completely unique design like in Webflow.
But here's what I learned: most businesses dramatically overestimate how much design uniqueness they actually need. What they really need is a platform that helps them sell effectively and grow consistently.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
After dozens of platform migrations, here are the lessons that changed how I think about hosted ecommerce solutions:
1. Business Infrastructure Beats Design Freedom
Beautiful design that creates operational friction is bad design. The best ecommerce platform is the one that gets out of your way and lets you focus on customers and growth.
2. Team Autonomy Is Worth More Than Custom Features
The cost of developer dependency is higher than most businesses realize. When your marketing team can't make changes without calling a developer, you're not just paying for the developer time - you're paying in lost opportunities and slower market response.
3. Reliability Trumps Flexibility
A platform that works 99.9% of the time with limited customization is better than one that's infinitely customizable but breaks monthly.
4. Ecosystem Matters More Than Individual Features
Don't choose a platform based on its current feature set. Choose based on its ecosystem and how quickly you can add new capabilities as your business grows.
5. Migration Timing Is Critical
The best time to migrate is before you desperately need to. Waiting until your current platform is causing serious problems makes the migration more expensive and stressful.
6. "Best" Depends on Business Stage
What works for a startup testing product-market fit is different from what works for a growing business that needs reliability and speed. Your platform choice should match your business priorities, not your technical preferences.
7. The Hidden Cost of "Free" Flexibility
Platforms that give you unlimited customization often require unlimited maintenance. Factor in the total cost of ownership, not just the monthly subscription.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
Focus on speed-to-market over design uniqueness during early growth phases
Choose platforms that allow non-technical team members to make changes
Prioritize ecosystem integrations for CRM, analytics, and marketing tools
For your Ecommerce store
Evaluate platforms based on operational efficiency rather than design flexibility
Test your team's ability to manage promotions, inventory, and customer service independently
Consider total cost including maintenance, apps, and developer dependency