When you first start an online business, your needs are simple. You need a website that can display products and take payments. But as your business grows, so do your needs. The basic features that once seemed enough can start to feel like limitations. You begin to notice gaps in what your platform can do, and these gaps can directly affect your sales, efficiency, and ability to grow.
For many businesses using EKM, this realisation is a common turning point. They start looking at other platforms and discover a whole world of features they never knew they were missing. An EKM migration to Shopify often feels like stepping out of a small town and into a bustling city, full of new tools and opportunities.
This article explores eight powerful Shopify features that former EKM users consistently tell us they wish they had access to much sooner. These are the game-changing tools that unlock new levels of growth and professionalism for your online store.
1. Shopify POS Integration
For businesses that sell both online and in person—at a physical shop, a market, or a pop-up event—managing two separate systems can be a nightmare. You have one inventory for your website and another for your physical sales. This often leads to overselling or spending hours trying to reconcile your stock levels.
Shopify POS (Point of Sale) solves this problem completely. It’s an app that syncs your online store with your in-person sales in real-time. If you sell a product in your shop, the inventory on your website updates automatically. All your sales, stock, and customer data live in one place. For former EKM users, this seamless integration between online and offline commerce is a revelation, saving countless hours and preventing costly mistakes.
2. Unlimited Products & Variants
As your business expands, so does your product catalogue. Some platforms place limits on how many products you can have or charge you more as you add more items. EKM plans can come with restrictions on products or turnover, which can feel like a penalty for growth.
Shopify offers unlimited products on all its plans. You can have 10 products or 100,000, and your monthly fee won’t change because of it. More importantly, Shopify has a much more robust system for product variants. If you sell a t-shirt that comes in 5 sizes and 10 colours, Shopify handles these options with ease, allowing up to 100 combinations per product. This flexibility is crucial for businesses in fashion, beauty, or any industry with complex product options.
3. Segmented Customer Analytics
Understanding your customers is key to selling more. While most platforms tell you who bought what, Shopify’s analytics go much deeper. It allows you to create customer segments based on their behaviour. For example, you can easily create lists of:
- First-time customers.
- Repeat customers who have spent over £100.
- Customers who haven’t purchased in the last 6 months.
- Customers who live in a specific city.
Once you have these segments, you can use them for targeted marketing campaigns. Send a special discount to your VIP customers or a gentle reminder to those who haven’t visited in a while. This level of customer insight is a powerful tool that EKM users often lack.
4. Native Subscription Support
The subscription model is one of the fastest-growing trends in e-commerce. It allows customers to receive products on a regular basis, creating predictable, recurring revenue for your business. Think coffee, grooming products, or even a monthly box of treats for a pet.
Setting up subscriptions on EKM can be difficult and may require clunky third-party workarounds. Shopify has built-in subscription tools and a wide range of dedicated apps that make it incredibly simple to launch and manage a subscription service. You can offer weekly, monthly, or quarterly deliveries, and customers can manage their own subscriptions easily. This feature opens up an entirely new and profitable business model that is hard to access on older platforms.
5. Seamless International Selling
If you’ve ever had an enquiry from a customer in another country, you know the excitement and the challenge. How do you show prices in their currency? How do you handle international shipping and taxes?
Shopify Markets is a suite of tools designed to make selling globally as easy as selling locally. It allows you to:
- Automatically convert your prices into over 130 currencies.
- Translate your website into multiple languages.
- Collect the correct import duties and taxes at checkout so there are no surprises for the customer.
This removes the major barriers to international trade, opening your business up to a massive new audience. For businesses on EKM, an EKM migration is often the first step toward becoming a truly global brand.
6. App-Driven Automation
Imagine your store running on autopilot. When an order comes in, a shipping label is automatically printed. If a customer leaves a positive review, they are automatically sent a thank you discount. If an item is low in stock, you automatically get an alert.
This is the power of automation through the Shopify App Store. With apps like Shopify Flow, Zapier, and thousands of others, you can create workflows that handle repetitive, manual tasks for you. This saves an enormous amount of time and reduces human error. Former EKM users are often amazed at how much of their daily admin can be automated, freeing them up to focus on strategy and growth.
7. A Truly Flexible Checkout
The checkout is where the most important action happens. It needs to be fast, simple, and trustworthy. Any friction here can cause a customer to abandon their purchase.
Shopify’s checkout is one of the most tested and optimised in the world, trusted by millions of businesses. It includes features like Shop Pay, which allows returning customers to check out with a single click. Furthermore, with Shopify Plus, you gain the ability to fully customise your checkout process, adding custom branding, upsells, or unique fields. This level of control and optimisation is a significant step up from the more rigid checkout processes on other platforms.
8. Unmatched Theme Customisation
Your brand’s visual identity is what sets you apart. While EKM provides themes to get you started, many users find they quickly hit a wall when it comes to making their store look truly unique.
Shopify’s theme ecosystem is in another league. There is a huge marketplace of stunning, mobile-first themes to choose from. More importantly, Shopify’s Online Store 2.0 editor allows you to customise almost any part of your site with a drag-and-drop interface. You can add, remove, and rearrange sections on every page, not just the homepage. This gives you incredible creative freedom without needing to know how to code.
Real User Testimonials
“We were stuck on our old platform, spending hours each week just trying to manage inventory between our shop and the website. Moving to Shopify and using Shopify POS was a complete game-changer. I wish we’d done it years ago.” – A former EKM user, now a Media Mole client.
“The ability to add apps for everything has been incredible. We launched a loyalty program in a day, something we’d been wanting to do for ages but couldn’t figure out on EKM.” – Owner of a beauty brand after their Sellerdeck Migration.
How Media Mole Configures Shopify for Success
Moving to Shopify gives you access to these features, but you need to know how to use them effectively. At Media Mole, our migration service goes beyond just moving data. We act as your strategic partner. We take the time to understand your business and configure your new Shopify store to take full advantage of these powerful tools. We will recommend the right apps for automation, set up your customer analytics for success, and design a theme that reflects your brand perfectly.
Wrap-Up
If you feel like you are constantly running into roadblocks with your current platform, it’s not your fault. You’ve simply reached the limits of the tools you have. The features listed above are not just nice-to-haves; they are the engines of modern e-commerce, designed to help you sell more and work smarter.
An EKM migration to Shopify is an investment in giving your business the features it deserves. It’s about finally having the right tools for the job, allowing you to build the brand you’ve always envisioned.