Svet Paliem moved from Shoptet to Merzio. Sales grew 141%.

About the store

Svet Paliem sells frost-hardy palms, cycads, olive trees and exotic plants for gardens. The business is extremely seasonal — the decisive share of revenue is made from spring to summer, when plants get planted. For years the store ran on Shoptet.

Why they wanted a change

Seasonal selling means the e-shop has to stay alive: a different hero banner in March, another in June, different products up front depending on what’s in the planting window. On the old platform the homepage visuals were hard-coded — every change meant waiting on someone else. Every visitor could see the result: in the middle of winter the site still showed a banner for an offer that ended “by Oct 31.”

On top of that came the cost of features. Quality search, analytics and the other tools a seasonal store actually needs were available only as paid add-ons.

The migration

Svet Paliem became a Merzio client on 30 January 2026, with live operation from February — ahead of the main season. Products were imported with a tool built into Merzio that reads and decodes the Shoptet feed: importing all 121 products took about 10 minutes. The SEO side of the switch was handled by the migration tool: download the original sitemap and generate 301 redirects in a few clicks. The store kept its search-engine rankings even during the platform change. Shipping and payments only needed to be set up in the admin — no extra contracts, via native integrations.

Even months after the switch, visitors still arrive through old links — the redirects automatically take them to the right product. Without them, those would be lost orders.

What changed in the numbers — and why

Growth isn’t only about traffic. The same purchase funnel converts better at every step — thanks to search, categories and visible availability at the top, and a faster, clearer checkout at the bottom.

The average value per item purchased doubled to €76.74. The new site gives premium plants room to breathe — instead of drowning in a carousel, they get their own spotlight on the homepage.

The biggest difference: a store the owner runs himself

On the old platform the site’s visuals were hard-coded. Today the owner changes the hero banner, the homepage blocks and the featured products himself — by season, weather and stock. The site is never stuck in last season.

That is exactly the difference between “getting a nice website” and “getting control of your own store.”