Things to Consider Before Migrating to Shopify [2024]

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Shopify,

With the advancement of technology, store owners require to keep up to date with the platform capabilities. Over the time, your ecommerce platform may require a switch to the new platform if the site perfomance is slow, it’s lacking some of the essential features, it provides limited functionality and requires high level of customization, security issues, hosting issues, etc. In order to overcome all the limitations and improve the user experience, you require to migrate to the new ecommerce platform having greater features, functionality, performance, better security, marketing capabilities and follow best seo shopify migration strategies to save your organic progress. Also one feature called Shopify sidekick machine learning algorithm that ask any questions or command specific actions related to your Shopify store, and it will do it deftly.

Ecommerce migration process is crucial when the store owners decide to scale-up their businesses. From a long list of ecommerce platforms available, considering migration to Shopify would be the best decisions for the below reasons:

  • Shopify is an easy to use platform
  • No technical knowledge required to manage the store
  • The store maintainance require minimal efforts and time
  • 24×7 customer support available
  • Plenty of Mobile-Responsive Themes to choose from
  • Extensive Range of Shopify Apps availability
  • Shopify provides better security
  • Cost effective platform with low maintenance cost

Shopify is one of the widely used eCommerce platforms in the market and is best suited for businesses of almost any size. So, if you are planning to migrate to Shopify, let’s discuss some of the important things to consider before migrating to Shopify!

Also have a look at checklist for Magento to Shopify migration, incase if you are migrating from Magento.

Table of Contents:

Things to Consider Before Migrating to Shopify

There are certain points to consider before migrating to Shopify which are mentioned below:

Back-end Integrations

Back-end integrations play a vital role for any eCommerce store. It is crucial to determine that the apps, theme, any third party integrations which enhances your marketing, sales, communication, support you are are using in the current system is already available and supported by Shopify to avoid the performance loss. And if in case you are using some custom functionality, you may require to avail Shopify app development services to get the custom functionality developed.

Before replatforming to Shopify, you must audit the tools, plugins and check their compatibility with Shopify. It is a bit complex process and require deep knowledge of both the platforms, so, if you are not a tech savvy, it’s better to hire Shopify developer or seek Shopify Store Development Services to get your integrations done smoothly without any data loss.

Blog Posts and Articles

While migrating to Shopify, one of the most common problems faced by an eCommerce store is with their published blog posts and articles. This can be done easily by using tools in the Shopify store or hosting media files externally via Shopify app from the store. When moving blog posts and articles to the new platform, care must be taken such that it does not impact the SEO ranking.

Before migrating, you can even make a copy of your blogs so that you can test and modify the changes required. It is advisable to use a test site on a different domain so that you can easily compare the new website with your existing platform before launching it. As migrating to Shopify will change your store’s URL and so change domain name without hurting SEO progress you have achieved earlier.

Customer Passwords

The data structure and password encryption technique may vary from platform to platform. The customers passwords are no longer valid while making a switch to new platform. As a result, it may lead customer inconvenience and hinder the user experience.

Migrating customer passwords to Shopify is impossible as they are encrypted. Only customer records can be migrated with the help of the Bulk Account Inviter feature in the Shopify Plus plan. As a result, it sends an account activation email to the customers reminding them to set their new passwords of the accounts on the newly migrated Shopify store.

Shopify Plugins

Ensure using Shopify plugins that make it easy to aid in migrating data from your existing platform to the new Shopify platform. The eCommerce platform offers plenty of plugins that best satisfies all your migration needs. Using such feature-rich plugins, all the product and customer data can be migrated effectively in no time.

Shopify apps such as Matrixify App, Cart2Shop Store Migration App etc, can aid in the migration process from your existing platform just with a single click. These Shopify plugins are easy-to-use and simplifies the migration.

Pricing

Generally, Shopify has four main pricing plans on a monthly basis. They are the Basic Shopify model, Shopify model, Advanced Shopify model and Shopify Plus model. The features of the Shopify plan may vary depending on the charges of the Shopify plan. The basic plan starts at $29, $79, $299 and so on.

Apart from the actual cost of Shopify plans, there is additional costs to consider such as migration process cost, down-time during the transfer to Shopify, maintenance cost, training staff, and many others. You must project the total costs involved and compare it with the current platform.

Protocol-Independent Assets

The store assets such as theme files, stylesheets or images from the existing platform must be easily accessible when importing them to your newly Shopify store. Such images or files need to be protocol-independent and that can be done by removing protocols such as http: and https: from the URLs.

URL Redirects

Prior to migrating to the Shopify platform, you must crawl your current website to get your hands on the existing content. Also, you must automate the URL redirects so that none of your potential pages throws 404. Crawling data of the current website allows you to compare the URL structure of the migrated Shopify store and saves you from loosing SEO benefits. Make sure to check how Shopify handles URL redirects.

Customer Service and Support

Replatforming requires you to consider the support and customer service and Shopify provides 24×7 support through phone calls and emails. Also, you get the live chat option to solve urgent issues immediately.

Ways to Migrate to Shopify

Mainly, there are two ways to perform Shopify migration:

Carry Out a Shopify Migration Manually

Exporting data from the source store to CSV files and importing them to Shopify store seems easy enough. Isn’t it? It may sound simple but, it is too complicated process for the ones without any technical know-how. As simply, you might compare the database structures of both these structures and make necessary changes. But, before performing the manual migration process, you need to take care of two things:

Firstly, you need to check your existing data and ensure the type of data you want to migrate such as products, product categories, customers etc. On the other hand, you need to identify the type of data that you can export from your source store and whether the Shopify platform supports the CSV files imported.

With this option, you can only import customers and products via CSV files to Shopify. Whereas, for the unsupported data, it is only possible to copy and paste the items from your existing platform to the newly migrated store. As a result, it can be a time-consuming method and requires many manual efforts to get your data imported to the Shopify store. You may even end up causing several errors while importing data manually, and it can be challenging enough without having technical expertise.

Pros:

  • Advanced Security.

Cons: 

  • Time-consuming and requires manual effort.
  • Requires technical knowledge.
  • High risk of errors.
  • No support provided.

Migrate Data Using the Import Shopify App

The other solution is using the import Shopify app. Here, you need to export data from your existing store to CSV files and then use the Shopify app to import the data to the Shopify store. Ensure that your source store platform is included in the list that the app supports such as BigCommerce, WooCommerce, PrestaShop etc. Before getting your files imported, go through the list and make the necessary changes required.

To migrate the data using the Import Shopify App, you need to follow the steps described below:

  • Log in to the Shopify Importer tool.
  • Navigate to “Select Your Platform”. Then, choose the existing platform from which you will export the store data.
  • Click “Add file” and choose the CSV files that you have already downloaded.
  • Click on “Import”.
  • Go through the process once.

After importing the data once, if you are not satisfied enough with the migrated data, you can carry it out again. In case, if certain products are not imported up to the mark, you need to import it manually.

Pros:

  • Saves time and human effort.
  • No fees or charges.

Cons:

  • Supports only 6 major source carts.
  • Need to import one-by-one data to the Shopify store.
  • All the products cannot be imported completely, even needs to be imported manually.

What if you Don’t Have Time to Perform Shopify Migration by Yourself?

If you want to sit back and relax, focus on other tasks and want someone to perform your Shopify migration. The only solution is to hire a Shopify expert from Meetanshi that can carry out the migration process for you at ease and satisfy all your custom requirements. The prime goal is to perform the migration with ease, saving time and minimizing manual efforts, and help you grow your Shopify store.

Conclusion

If you are considering migrating to Shopify, there are a number of factors that you need to take care. In this article, we have prepared a list of considerations that will help decide which are best suited to meet your business requirements.

FAQs

1. Why you should migrate to Shopify?

Shopify is one of the most robust and reliable platforms in the industry with a huge range of functionalities and features. Additionally, the platform offers eye-catching themes and is also provided with several marketing tools. Thus, choosing Shopify for migration would definitely help grow your business and take it to the next level.

2. Which of the following is an important factor to be considered when migrating an existing commerce store to Shopify?

There are several factors that are to be considered when migrating an existing eCommerce store to Shopify such as back-end integrations, blog posts and articles, URL redirects, customer passwords, protocol-independent assets and so on.

Looking forward to migrating your eCommerce store to Shopify? Contact Us!

Here, is the list of popular platforms that customers ask for while migrating to Shopify:

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Things to Consider Before Migrating to Shopify [2024]Author Magento Badge

Sanjay Jethva

Sanjay is the co-founder and CTO of Meetanshi with hands-on expertise with Magento since 2011. He specializes in complex development, integrations, extensions, and customizations. Sanjay is one the top 50 contributor to the Magento community and is recognized by Adobe.

His passion for Magento 2 and Shopify solutions has made him a trusted source for businesses seeking to optimize their online stores. He loves sharing technical solutions related to Magento 2 & Shopify.

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