How to Migrate Your eCommerce Website to Shopify

Migrating your website to shopify is a big task that involves a lot of moving parts. It’s not as simple as importing products and changing URLs. You need to migrate your site’s design, product data (including variants), customer orders and order histories, shipping rules, voucher codes, payments, and much more. With careful planning and the help of a technical migration partner, you can ensure your transition is seamless and efficient.

Whether you’re coming from a self-hosted ecommerce platform like WordPress/WooCommerce or a SaaS platform like Wix, Squarespace, or Weebly, the process of migrating your website to shopify is largely the same. You’ll need to backup your current website and create a new one on shopify. This will give you a fresh start on the new platform and make it easier to manage moving forward.

You’ll need to choose the best method of migrating your website. It will depend on the amount of work involved and how fast you want to get your store up and running. For example, if you’re launching a new product in a limited timeframe and have limited budget, a straightforward migration with a limited design might be the best option for you. This will keep your investment low and allow you to scale up quickly.

In general, the most important steps are to create a backup of your existing website and download all your data. Then, you can upload the files to your new shopify site. The best way to do this is through an app that will simplify the process and save you time. There are a variety of different apps available, and they vary in price and complexity.

Some of the most common ones are BigCommerce, WooCommerce/WordPress, and Wix. These apps usually provide a comprehensive list of the data that you need to move and offer a step-by-step guide to getting your store up and running. They also offer support and guidance if you run into any problems.

Once your new shopify site is live, you’ll need to set up some 301 redirects from any pages on your old website to their equivalent page on your new store. This will help to preserve your search engine optimization and prevent any lost traffic from being diverted away from your new site.

The last thing to do is disable your old website. You don’t want to have two sites live at once because that can damage SEO and confuse your customers.

It’s also a good idea to keep your old site up for a few months, in case you need to retrieve any media assets or to remember how to design an element. This will save you a lot of time in the long run! It’s a great idea to hire a Shopify developer that has experience with your previous platform to help with the migration. They’ll be able to examine your data, execute any integrations, and put together a flawless strategy for you to follow.

If you have existing eCommerce website and are looking to make the switch to Shopify, contact E-dreamz today. We'll help guide you through the migration process.