eCommerce & Digital Solutions
eCommerce & Digital Solutions
WooCommerce to Shopify migration, step by step: planning, moving products, customers and orders, 301 redirects to keep rankings, testing and launch.
A WooCommerce to Shopify migration is one of the most common platform moves in ecommerce, and one of the most commonly botched. The products usually arrive. What gets lost is search rankings, order history, and the customer accounts that took years to build.
This guide walks through the migration in the order it should happen, from the decision to the launch checklist, with the mistakes to avoid at each stage.
WooCommerce is flexible and cheap to start. It also runs on WordPress, which means you are responsible for hosting, updates, security, backups and the plugin conflicts that come with all of them. As a store grows, that maintenance turns into real time and real risk.
Shopify takes the hosting, security and checkout off your hands, and the admin is built for selling rather than publishing. The trade is less control and a monthly fee. For most stores past a certain size, that trade is worth making. If you are unsure, our guide to custom websites vs Shopify themes covers the wider decision.
Start with an inventory of what the current store contains and what needs to come across:
Export a full list of URLs from your sitemap and from Google Search Console. This list is the basis of your redirects later, and it is the thing most migrations forget until it is too late.
Shopify's own importer and third-party migration tools handle the product export from WooCommerce. What they do not handle is cleaning.
Before importing, tidy the WooCommerce data: remove discontinued products, fix inconsistent variant names, and make sure every product has a proper title and description. Migrating a mess just gives you a mess on a new platform.
After importing, spot-check products across categories: images attached, variants correct, prices right, inventory matching. Check a handful in detail rather than assuming the tool got everything.
Customer accounts can be imported, but passwords cannot, because they are stored differently on each platform. Customers will need to reset their password on the new store. Plan an email telling them so, sent after launch, not before.
Order history is worth bringing across so that customer service has context and customers can see past purchases. Most migration tools support it. Check that order numbers, totals and statuses came through correctly, because those records matter for accounting and returns.
This is the step that separates a migration that keeps its traffic from one that loses it.
WooCommerce and Shopify structure URLs differently. A product at /product/blue-linen-shirt/ will live at /products/blue-linen-shirt on Shopify, and categories become /collections/. Every old URL that search engines know about needs a 301 redirect to its new equivalent.
Do not try to recreate the WooCommerce site exactly. Choose a Shopify theme that suits the products, customise it, and rebuild the navigation around Shopify collections.
For every WooCommerce plugin, decide whether Shopify does the job natively, whether an app is needed, or whether the feature can be dropped. Fewer apps means a faster store and lower monthly costs. Payments, shipping and tax need to be set up fresh: Shopify Payments where available, shipping zones and rates, and VAT or sales tax settings for the UK or US.
Before launch, on a password-protected Shopify store:
A small store with clean data can be migrated by its owner with care and a free weekend. Larger catalogues, long order histories and stores with real search traffic are where a mistake costs more than the help. If you would rather hand it to a Shopify migration agency UK and US owners can reach during their working day, our Shopify migration services cover the URL mapping, data move, redirects, theme and testing, with a written plan and fixed price before anything moves.
