Migrate to Shopify without losing what you've built.
Moving platforms is a good moment to redesign, but the data and the search rankings have to come with you. We plan moves to Shopify from WooCommerce, Magento, BigCommerce, Squarespace and Wix, and pair them with a custom store design so the new site is an upgrade on day one.
What moves, and how
Every migration is a list of things to bring over, and each one has its own method. Here is the honest version.
| Data | How it comes over | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Products | Shopify's Store Importer app or a cleaned-up product CSV | Variants, images and descriptions usually need tidying. We fix them during the move rather than after. |
| Customers | Store Importer or a customer CSV | Passwords can't be moved between platforms. Customers sign in again on Shopify, either with a one-time email code or by setting a new password from an invite, depending on which account type your store uses. |
| Order history | Store Importer, a migration app, or kept as an export | Past orders come in as historical records. Some stores don't need them in Shopify at all, so we decide this with you. |
| Pages and blog posts | Imported or rebuilt in the new design | A good time to cut pages nobody visits and rewrite the ones that matter. |
| Old URLs | Shopify's built-in URL redirects, uploaded in bulk from a CSV | The step most often skipped, and the one that protects your search traffic. |
Keeping your search rankings
Shopify uses a fixed URL pattern: products live under /products/, collections under /collections/, pages under /pages/ and blog posts under /blogs/. Your old platform almost certainly used different addresses, so every old URL that has traffic or links pointing to it needs a 301 redirect to its new home.
Before the move we pull the full list of URLs from your current site and from Google Search Console, map each one to its Shopify equivalent, and load the redirects in bulk. After launch we check that the redirects resolve and keep an eye on Search Console for errors. Page titles, meta descriptions and image alt text are carried over too, so the new store doesn't start from zero.
Moving and redesigning at once
Most stores that move to Shopify also want the store to look better, and doing both together saves you paying for a temporary design. We plan the custom design while the data is being prepared, build the theme on a development store, then run the import into the finished site. You review it with your real products in place before anything goes live.
The cutover
Launch day is planned so the store is never closed for long. We do a final sync of anything that changed on the old site, point the domain at Shopify, switch on the redirects and place test orders. Your old platform stays available in the background until you are sure nothing is missing.
Platforms we move from
On something else? Ask anyway. If it exports a CSV, there is usually a way.
Want to try Shopify first? Start a free trial. The store you set up can become the real one when we move your data in.
Before you decide
Questions to answer before a migration.
- Which apps or plugins does the current store rely on, and is there a Shopify equivalent?
- Do you need past orders inside Shopify, or just an archive?
- Which pages bring in search traffic today?
- Are there subscriptions, wholesale pricing or custom checkout steps to plan for?
We go through these with you before quoting. Abra's main migration page has more on the process: migrating to Shopify with Abra.
Thinking about the move?
Tell us where the store lives now and roughly how many products you have. We'll come back with a plan.