Case Study: How We Migrated Neural DSP From WooCommerce to Shopify Plus in 1 Week

Brand overview

On a mission to “empower musicians’ creativity to expand alongside technology”, Neural DSP Technologies create cutting-edge sound processing software and hardware that delivers truly uncompromising audio results. This Helsinki-based brand sits firmly at the forefront of audio algorithm development thanks to their unique, machine-learning-led modelling methods and innovative approach to user experience design.

Neural DSP products, which include state-of-the-art plugins and a recently-launched AI-driven floor unit, are available to purchase via the brand’s D2C ecommerce site.

The challenge

Neural DSP’s highly-anticipated product launches can attract hundreds of thousands of visitors to their website over a short period of time. 

Their WooCommerce site struggled with these traffic peaks, often collapsing under the pressure of each product drop. It constantly crashed, creating a poor on-site experience for customers and leaving a dent in user trust, not to mention costing the company hundreds of thousands of pounds a month in lost sales. The site simply wasn’t fit for purpose.

With a huge product launch only days away, the Neural DSP team knew they couldn’t afford to watch WooCommerce buckle under the pressure yet again. They stood to lose a significant amount of money if their site couldn’t handle the big traffic numbers expected after the drop of their new plugin.

With this in mind, they made the decision to make the switch to Shopify Plus, a platform famous for its innate capacity to handle extreme traffic peaks. They reached out directly to Shopify Plus, who subsequently recommended Swanky as the best team for the job thanks to our extensive migration experience.

How Swanky helped: Migration from WooCommerce to Shopify Plus

The countdown was on for the release of Neural’s latest plugin. The looming launch was attracting significant attention across the brand’s social channels, with customers and fans eagerly anticipating the new product. We had to act fast.

An Instagram post in the build-up to the new product launch. (Image source: Neural DSP on Instagram)

Talking through the initial stages of this lightning-speed project, Dan McIvor, Swanky’s Founder & Director, said:

“After familiarising ourselves with Neural DSP, their products and their customers, we quickly gathered requirements about the site’s appearance and functionality. Prioritising our time appropriately, we decided we’d migrate the site to a pre-existing Shopify Plus theme with significant customisations, customising their visuals to align with their old site as much as possible.”

Within 24 hours of Swanky being recommended, the migration was underway as part of the Shopify Plus Accelerated Launch Program!

Whilst we concentrated our efforts on visuals, content and storefront functionality, migrating things like products, blog posts and emails, the Neural team used Swanky-favourite Excelify to transfer their data from WooCommerce to Shopify Plus.

“Neural had a lot of very detailed, extended product pages with specific layouts that we helped to reproduce within the Shopify theme”, explains Dan.

A snippet of one of Neural DSP’s detailed product pages. (Image source: Neural DSP)

“The site also had a lot of specific functionality that we needed to get right, including their trial sign-up process with particular conditions that need to be in place for Klaviyo email sequences to be triggered. Also, as a business selling digital products, it was important we understood how serial keys are sent to users upon purchase.”

Having previously worked with similar audio production business Time+Space, we were well placed to advise Neural on how Shopify Plus handles the purchase of digital products.

After only four working days, we had successfully replatformed the site’s content and structure. Whilst Neural migrated the remaining data, we refined and polished the site ready for launch.

So that they could immediately begin tracking ad clicks following the launch of their Shopify Plus store, we set up Facebook and Google Ads Conversion Tracking.

A few days later, Neural DSP’s Shopify Plus store went live!

Neural DSP’s new homepage.

Summarising this rapid replatforming project from an agency perspective, Swanky’s Dan said:

“This is a brilliant example of Swanky’s multi-talented team pulling together, drawing on years of combined experience, and the unrivalled flexibility-at-pace of Shopify Plus. Huge credit to the team for this record-breaking migration.”

A successful product launch

The day after their new Shopify Plus site went live, it was time for Neural to release their highly-anticipated new plugin.

“Little did we know when we started working with Neural that they were launching a product associated with one of Swanky’s favourite artists – Cory Wong of Vulfpeck fame,” says Swanky’s Creative Director, Matt Giles.

Neural DSP’s homepage, promoting the new Cory Wong plugin. (Image source: Neural DSP)

Supported by a robust and reliable ecommerce platform built to handle large numbers of site visitors, they were able to approach the product launch without any of the ‘WooCommerce woes’ that plagued previous plugin drops. 

They launched their new Cory Wong plugin with 600+ concurrent visitors on the site and 25+ concurrent checkouts before the ads even started running. 

Sure enough, Shopify Plus didn’t flinch.

What’s next for Neural DSP?

Now that Neural DSP is live and kicking on Shopify Plus, we’re excited for Swanky’s Growth Accelerator team to work their magic on the store, helping to further refine and optimise the customer experience. Watch this space!

Start your Shopify Plus journey with Swanky

Is your ecommerce store forever faltering during flash sales or consistently cracking under the pressure of product launches? Site downtime during peak traffic periods will frustrate your customers, damage your reputation and ultimately cost you valuable revenue. 

Enter, Shopify Plus. As the platform behind one of the biggest product drops in ecommerce history, it’s no surprise that some of the largest and fastest-growing brands in the world are thriving on Shopify Plus.

To find out more about migrating to Shopify Plus and how Swanky could guide you through a smooth, stress-free transition, take a look at our handy migration resources. There’s a migration ebook complete with checklist and expert opinions, plus an exclusive webinar recording with Shopify Plus – perfect preparation for a successful platform migration!

You can also get in touch with our team today to discuss your migration options.