Thinking about migrating your e-commerce store from Magento to Shopify? You are not alone. Many eCommerce store owners are doing this Magento to Shopify migration. But why is that? Both the eCommerce platforms Magento and Shopify are great platforms to open and run your stores.
But the preference of one over the other, or more precisely of Shopify over Magento, is due to the fact that Magento 2 is rather costly, and they have stopped providing support for Magento 1, forcing people to either migrate to Shopify or choose the costlier alternative of Magento 2.
But migrating your store to Shopify can be a time taking and tedious task. One which, when not done properly can lead to the loss of precious data.
This is why you need to be very meticulous in the migration process. You can get professional help from experts or do it yourself. Either way, your main goal is to make the process as smooth as possible with minimum impact on SEO and customers.
If you are someone who is wondering how to migrate Magento to Shopify, this post is for you. Here we’ll list the benefits of migrating to Shopify, a list of all kinds of data you can migrate, step-by-step migration, and some post-migration tips.
Read on as we answer all your questions regarding migrating to Shopify from Magento.
Character.com migrated from Magento to Shopify, and they were able to increase their conversions by 40%, But they are not alone. Several major eCommerce stores have made this shift.
What could be the underlying reason for that? There are several benefits of migrating from Magento to Shopify Plus.
Here are some of those:
Not every business is technically equipped to handle all the technical aspects of running an online ecommerce store. This is a bigger issue with small businesses where the employee is careless.
Shopify’s interactive user interface solves this problem. With Shopify, you get an efficient workflow whether you’re trying to manage the inventory or customize the store.
One of the major advantages of Shopify is the extensive apps it offers. You can find a suitable app for almost all of your requirements. The app ecosystem is a good enough reason for you to migrate from Magento to Shopify.
What this does is equip you with additional features. Features you won’t normally get with Magento and serves your specific requirements whether you want more analytics or third-party integration with other tools.
More people are increasingly using their phones to shop. In the US alone, the number of mobile commerce is double that of the pre-Covid era. This trend will likely continue with mobile usage growth and internet penetration.
Shopify is a mobile-optimized platform that allows you to cater to a larger audience and provides them with a great shopping experience. You can get themes on Shopify that will further enhance the mobile-friendliness of your store.
Search Engine Optimization is crucial for the success of any online store. Shopify has built-in marketing tools that allow you to market your products and drag them to the top of search engines.
You can also boost traffic and drive sales by increasing online visibility through the seamless integration option to Facebook and Google. Your Shopify migration experts will ensure that your SEO efforts are not in vain.
If you own a small online business, you can choose any platform, and it won’t be much of an issue. The challenge comes when your business starts growing, and you need to scale it accordingly.
Shopify can handle the increased traffic that comes with a growing business with ease. It can do all that is required of it when a business is growing without compromising on performance. As we can see, in the Magento vs Shopify debate, Shopify clearly comes out on top with these several benefits.
Most of your data can easily migrate from Magento to Shopify. Some of the data you can migrate are:
You can migrate all the information about your products, including the categories, descriptions, and images, from Magento to Shopify. You won’t lose any of the product data during the migration process from Magento to Shopify.
You don’t need to worry about losing all the information about your customers when migrating from Magento to Shopify. You can keep all the data about your customers, including their email addresses, phone numbers, mailing addresses, and all other data that they have shared with you. So, you won’t lose all the relationships you have made with your customer.
You can migrate all the data regarding past orders. So, even if you have pending orders in the pipeline and your store is migrating to Shopify, rest assured you won’t lose any of the data due to it. Everything from order number to order status will be preserved during the migration.
All your product images and images on your blogs will be safely migrated. You don’t have to worry about losing them. This is not just limited to just images but all types of media files, including thumbnails.
You spent a fair amount on blogs for content marketing and informing your audiences, and now that you are migrating, you are worried about losing all of that investment. Well, you don’t have to sweat about it. All your blog contents are safe during the migration.
As evident from the above list, as long as you do it responsibly or hire experienced migration services, you won’t lose any of your precious data.
Read Also: A Complete Guide to Hire the Best Shopify Development Company
In case it’s unclear, migration from Magento to Shopify can be an overwhelming task. To do this successfully, you need a clear strategy in place.
A checklist that will ensure you won’t miss out on any important data migration and help the smooth Magento to Shopify migration. Here’s what you should include in your checklist of Magento to Shopify migration solutions:
you need to define your objectives behind this migration. You need a clear understanding of your budget, time frame, and other constraints. This will help you plan the migration accordingly.
There are various costs associated with the migration process. In addition to paying for professional help, you need to pay for the hosting, security, themes, and any third-party integration. You need to have a clear view of the amount of money you are willing to spend on the migration.
The migration process is going to take some time, depending on the complexities involved. It can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. This will interrupt your business as there will be no revenue coming in as long as the migration is going on. You need to plan for this to minimize losses.
You can’t use the same payment Shopify method as you were using in Magento. You need to do prior research to find the best open for you.
The step-by-step migration of Magento to Shopify is a long and tedious task. You need to hire an expert to do it right. By picking the right partner, you will also be able to use the various features that Shopify provides.
In order to make the migration successful, you’ll have to follow the following steps:
First and foremost, you need to plan for the Shopify product migration. This is done by auditing the Magento store. This will give you an idea of all the data you need to migrate to convert Magento to Shopify.
You will also assess the theme customization and key functionalities of the store. Moreover, you need to define the migration goals and choose the migration method here.
You can opt for manual migration, where you will migrate all the data manually, or choose an automation tool to simplify your task. Needless to say, opting for an automation tool is a more efficient way.
Shopify offers a free 14-day trial which you can avail to familiarize yourself with the platform. But since it will be a long-term association, you will need to buy one of its premium plans. Shopify offers three plans:
• Basic- $29/month
• Shopify- $79/month
• Advanced – $299/month
You will select a plan depending on your need. After that, you will have to set up your Shopify Plus store by choosing the theme and making the basic settings like address, store name, etc.
The theme will later be customized to suit your requirements. Also, you need to download applications according to your storage needs. Applications are one of the top features of Shopify and ensure you don’t miss out on it by downloading the right ones that suit your needs
As discussed earlier, importing data manually is an option, but it is a cumbersome approach and may not be effortless. Using an application to import data is an efficient way of migrating. There are several applications you can use to achieve this.
You can opt for Shopify Importer, which can be downloaded from the Shopify admin page. However, there are several other options available for migration. Some of those are:
Now that you have taken all the above steps, you are ready to import data. Your Magento developer can help you with this. Simply log in to the admin panel and export all the necessary data by going to system>data transfer>export.
From here, extract all the data, including customer address, products, files, etc. You’ll have to format the data according to Shopify’s data requirement, which usually is CSV or XML. You may have to repeat the process a few times to ensure you don’t miss any of the crucial data.
Now you have to import data to your Shopify store. You’ll have to use the in-built import tool or an application for this. Note that Magento is not listed by default, so you need to select ‘others’ when importing data to your Shopify store.
You can import products and customers separately if you think you might lose some data when importing the whole thing at once. You’ll have to log in to the Shopify admin panel and choose to import those data separately.
Remember that when importing data to your Shopify store, the right chronological order is products, customers, and orders. This will ensure that the migrated products are linked to their respective products and orders.
To ensure you didn’t miss out on anything important, you need to review all the data imported. In the first step, where you listed all the goals and objectives of the migration, that checklist would come in handy here.
Match that list to ensure you are not missing any crucial data. Bundled products and product variants are usually the ones where data import is not perfectly done. So, double-check them, and if that’s the issue, solve it by manually importing those data.
Data migration of your store is complete. But you still need to make your store presentable. Choose from the various free and paid themes offered by Shopify to design and decorate your store. All the themes are responsive to mobile devices, and setting a theme for the Shopify store is so easy it shouldn’t be an issue.
You can also go a step ahead and modify the theme further to reflect your brand identity. You can choose to change the fonts, colors, and layouts of the theme. Additionally, don’t forget to configure the navigation.
The design needs to be interactive, and as far as the theme is concerned, you can get one of the free Shopify themes available. You can also get the paid ones if you have the budget for it.
Your job doesn’t finish as soon as the migration ends. To ensure your store is operating efficiently, you need to make a checklist for the post-migration as well. Here is a list of things you need to check post-migration from Magento to Shopify.
Losing data could be a huge loss for your business, and even if you did everything right, it might happen. Before you begin work in your store, checking that you didn’t lose any data in the migration process is worthwhile.
Shopify offers several payment methods, including popular ones like Paypal, Stripe, Payoneer, Amazon Pay, etc. You need to find the best payment methods for your store.
In addition to the popular payment ethics, you must also add the traditional ones like credit and debit card payments. This will ensure that your customers don’t have any issues while paying for their purchase.
If you have invested in SEO and content marketing, you might already be aware of the benefits of being on top of search engine results. But, you may lose all of it due to migration if you don’t take the proper steps.
This is why transferring the domain is an important aspect of your Magento to Shopify migration service. One of these proper steps is transferring the domain. You need first to unlock your domain, then log in to the Shopify admin panel and pay the registration fee. This will transfer your domain.
Even after going through all of these steps, it would be excruciating if your customer is experiencing any glitches or issues. This is why testing before going online with your store is a great idea.
Test your product, payment, and everything in between to ensure the customers have a smooth time making a purchase from you. If you hire a company for Shopify development services, testing would be an easy task for them.
After setting up everything and testing, you need to send emails to your old customers. Let them know you have migrated to Shopify. They will have their existing accounts, but they will need to sign up with new passwords and ask them to do so.
After you have finished everything, check the performance of the store. This will help you ensure that everything is perfectly okay or not. If you hire a Shopify developer, they will help you check your store’s performance.
There are several benefits of migrating to Shopify from Magento. It might seem like a tedious task to undertake, but when done right, the benefits of migrating far outweigh the trouble of going through the possess. Our Shopify migration services can help you scale your store and take your business to the next level.
You can migrate product data, customer data, orders, and order history. You can also migrate images, including the thumbnails.
The time frame of the entire migration process can vary from case to case. This is due to the fact that it will depend on the complexities and volume of data involved. A simple store might take a few days, while a complex one can take two to three weeks to complete migration to Shopify.
Unless your customer has to make some changes on their part, it is not required to inform your customers about the migration. It is entirely your call. You can choose to do so or skip it altogether.
The cost of migration can vary depending on the complexity of the task, plan opted, customization, integration, additional services, etc. It can cost you anywhere from $50-$4000 depending on all these factors.
Yes, the migration can affect your overall SEO ranking. Still, if you hire a great partner, they can minimize this effect by setting up URL redirects and updating SEO metadata and meta descriptions.
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