Amazon to Shopify Integration Made Simple

It can be intimidating to think about moving everything from Amazon to Shopify – products, payments, domains, order fulfillment, ALL THE THINGS! But selling on both platforms is a great idea because:

+ you don’t go out of business if Amazon shuts down your account, and + it will help you make more sales since you’ll have your products in two places instead of just one.

Basic setup can be completed in just a few minutes, and you can have your store up and running in an afternoon if you’ve got all your ducks in a row.

Step 1: Sign Up for Shopify

Go to Shopify, enter your email and click on the Get Started button. Fill in your desired password and store name, then click Create your store. Shopify will then ask you a few questions about your business. Here you can tell Shopify that you currently sell on Amazon if you like, although it’s not necessary. Once you enter all your info, click on the Enter My Store button and get ready to create an entire website the quick and easy way. Shopify will automatically start you out on their 14-day free trial, but in order to complete all the steps in this article, you’ll need to choose a paid plan. To do that, click on Settings in the menu on the left side of the dashboard (at the very bottom), then Account. In the Account overview section, you’ll see a link to Compare plans. Click it and then select which plan you’d like. The basic plan is $29/month and will work fine for our purposes.

Step 2a: Import Your Products the Hard Way

If you told Shopify during the setup process that you currently sell on Amazon, you’ll see on your dashboard that you can use a CSV file to import your products. This is NOT what you want to do. Shopify won’t get high-resolution images for your products, parent-child product relationships don’t always translate well, and your product info has to be PERFECT in your CSV file before you import it. Otherwise, you’ll be stuck editing and formatting tons of product data. We’ve been there and it sucks.

Step 2b: Import Your Products the Easy Way

Instead of all that mess, we’re going to use the ByteStand app to import our products automatically. It will pull in high resolution images and import all the details and information in the right format, saving you a buttload of time. In the menu on the left side of your dashboard, click on Apps. This is where you can find the list of apps added to your store (once you get some added), as well as a button that will take you to the Shopify app store. You can navigate to ByteStand from there or just follow this link. On the app page, click the big green Get button, then Install, then Let’s Get Started. From there, choose what plan you need based on how many products you have at Amazon. Don’t worry if you don’t know exactly how many products you have. You can always upgrade or downgrade later. Plus, there’s a 7-day free trial so you can try it out and see how it works. The app will walk you through how to connect your Amazon account to your Shopify store (here’s a video showing how it’s done), then it will start pulling all your products over. Let it do the heavy lifting while you finish setting up your store.

Step 3: Setup Your Payment Provider Settings

If you want to get paid, you need to setup your payment system. Most people accept payments using Shopify Payments since it comes fully integrated with your store. To set it up, click on Settings in the menu, then Payment Providers. In the Accept payments section, click Complete account setup. Enter all your details and banking information, then click Complete account setup.

Step 4: Setup Your Checkout Settings

Here you’ll choose whether or not you want to allow customer accounts and how to process customer orders (save yourself some time and choose the automatic option). You’ll also want to setup your policies for returns, privacy and terms of service. You can generate samples right in Shopify or look at Amazon’s policies to see examples of what language to use and how to structure your policies.

Step 5: Setup Your Shipping Settings

You’ll need to setup a couple of things to get Amazon to automatically fulfill your Shopify orders. First, you need to enable carrier calculated shipping rates. What this means is that when the customer enters their address during checkout on Shopify, Amazon will calculate the shipping rates and pass them through to the shipping section of the checkout. So you don’t have to worry about guessing how much to charge for shipping. To enable carrier calculated shipping rates, you have to call Shopify. 100% of the time they will tell you that you have to upgrade to an advanced account, which is $299/month. You DO NOT have to do that. It’s free if you paid for your Shopify account for an entire year or you can add it a la carte for $20/month. Tell them you just want to add it a la carte and they will do it. Here are the Shopify contact numbers:

North America:: 1-888-746-7439 United Kingdom:: 0800-808-5233 Australia:: 03-8400-4750 New Zealand:: 07-788-6026 Singapore:: 800-181-1121

Next, you’ll install the FBA Shipping app to automatically send Shopify orders to Amazon for fulfillment. You can find the app here. Click the big green Get button, then Install app. The app will walk you through how to connect your Amazon account, then let you decide which Amazon shipping rates to enable (Standard, Expedited, etc.). Just enable each rate and click save. If you want to charge more or less than Amazon’s rates or offer free shipping, you can also do that on the same screen. Finally, if you’re in the US you’ll need to do one more thing. Go into your Shipping settings and scroll all the way to the bottom. In the dropshipping and fulfillment services section, click add dropshipping service. Then find fulfillment by Amazon in the list and click Activate. Booyah, shipping rates are done!

Step 6: Setup Your Pages

It’s a good idea for most stores to have these three pages: About Us, Contact Us, and Store Policies or FAQ. To create a new page, click on Online Store in the menu, then click Pages. Click Add page to be taken to a new page editor. Enter your page title and content, then click save. You can copy your store policies from what you entered in your checkout settings.

Step 7: Push Your Products Into Shopify

You’ve been letting the ByteStand app run in the background this whole time, and unless you have a ton of products, it should be finished now. If it is, you just need to “push” your products into your Shopify store. Click on Apps in the menu and choose the ByteStand app. Click on the menu button in the app and select Push all products. You can manually update your products any time you like (to keep inventory and other details in sync) by “pulling” and “pushing” again, or setup the automatic Scheduler to do it for you. You’ll find it in the menu.

Step 8: Customize Your Site

Now the fun part! Go back to the main dashboard, and select Customize theme. Scroll down to the bottom to find Shopify’s collection of both free and paid themes. Pick the one that’s best for your store. Once you’ve selected a theme, you’ll want to customize it. Pick your colors, upload your logo and get everything looking the way you want it.

Step 9: Organize Your Products

It’s a good idea to organize your products into collections so your customers can find what they want more easily. You can create collections based on item type, size, color, sale items and more. To create a new collection, click on Products in the menu, then Collections, then Create collection. Enter your collection title and description. Then choose a sales channel and whether products will be added to the collection manually or automatically. For manual collections, you will need to add each product to the collection manually (duh). For automatic collections, you’ll setup conditions products must meet to automatically be entered into that collection. Be sure to click save after making your selections.

Step 10: Update Your Menu

You need a menu to help your customers find things in your store. By default, the main menu links to the Home page and the Catalog page. The footer menu links to the Search page. To update these, click on Online Store in the menu, then Navigation. Select the menu you want to edit. To add a page to the menu, click Add menu item. Enter the name of the link you want to add (which will show up on your store’s menu), then select the page you want to link to in the space below. Click Add and then Save.

Step 11: Setup Your Domain

To make your site official, you’ll want to setup a domain. Go back to the Shopify dashboard and click on the spot that says Add a Domain. It will prompt you to either buy a domain or connect an existing one. Make your selection and it will walk you through the steps to set it up. You can then go to your new domain and see how your website will look to customers. Go through all the pages and make sure everything works and looks good.

Step 12: Launch!

When everything is setup the way you want, you can officially launch your store by removing the password. Click on Online Store in the menu, then Preferences. Scroll to the Password protection area at the bottom and uncheck Enable password. Once you click Save, your store is live!

Conclusion

Migrating from Amazon to Shopify may seem overwhelming, but if you follow these steps it can be done in just a few hours. This guide will help you get your store open for business, but you can take things a step further by browsing Shopify’s app store for add-ons and additional functionality. One app we recommend (because we made it) is FreshCredit, which allows you to give store credit to your customers. Pretty much any options you want to add can be found in the app store. If you need help at any point in the process, Shopify has great support. Plus, we’re happy to help you setup our apps. You can contact us here.