Migrating to Shopify from WooCommerce or Magento: the plan
How to move a store to Shopify without losing rankings, customers or order history, in six stages.
The short answer
Moving a store from WooCommerce or Magento to Shopify moves five things: the catalogue with its variants, images and metadata; customers and their consents; order history for records and support; content such as pages and blog posts; and the search equity built up over years, which travels only through complete, correct redirects. Each has its own risks and its own rehearsal. Customer passwords cannot move and need a planned reset. The migration is run first on a development store, reconciled with counts, then cut over in a quiet window with a way back. Rushed migrations skip the rehearsal and discover the gaps in front of customers.
The five things and their risks
| What | How it moves | Risk | Check |
|---|---|---|---|
| Catalogue | Export, transform to Shopify’s model, import; images re-hosted | Variants mismapped; missing weights, dimensions, metafields; image quality | Counts per product and variant; sample checks; weights present |
| Customers | Export, import with tags and consents | Passwords cannot move; consent status lost | Counts; consent mapped; reset communication planned |
| Order history | Import for records | Not for re-processing; totals must match | Counts and revenue totals per period |
| Content | Pages and posts recreated or imported | Formatting; internal links; images | Every page checked; links updated |
| Search equity | Permanent redirects from every old address to its new equivalent | Incomplete maps; redirects to the homepage; thinner pages | Crawl the old address list; every one redirects to the right place |
The six stages
- Inventory: crawl the old store; export catalogue, customers, orders, content; list integrations, apps and customisations; pull the addresses that receive search traffic.
- Plan: map data to the platform’s model; decide what is archived rather than migrated; design the new address structure; build the redirect map; plan integrations and their replacements.
- Build: the new store, theme, apps or custom apps, integrations, payment and shipping setup per market, tax configuration.
- Rehearse: run the full data migration into a development store; reconcile counts and totals; test redirects against the map; walk the checkout per market.
- Cut over: freeze the old store; final data sync; switch DNS; enable redirects; verify; send the customer password communication.
- Watch: crawl errors, redirects, rankings, conversion and support contact for the following weeks; fix what surfaces.
What to leave behind
Customisations that existed to work around the old platform’s limits. Apps and plugins whose job the new platform does natively. Old orders beyond the retention need, archived rather than imported. Duplicate and dead products. Content nobody visited. A migration is the moment to carry forward what earns its place and to archive the rest, which shrinks the work and produces a cleaner store.
What this means for you
Plan the migration around the five things and rehearse it on a development store until the counts reconcile and every traffic-bearing address redirects to its equivalent. Prepare the password reset message. Cut over in a quiet window with a way back, and watch the following weeks. A store migration done this way is uneventful for customers and neutral or positive for rankings; done in a hurry, it is the week the store lost its history.
Frequently asked questions
Will we lose search rankings when we move?
Not if redirects are complete and correct: every old product, collection, page and blog address permanently redirected to its new equivalent, not to the homepage, with the new pages carrying equivalent content, titles and structured data. Expect some fluctuation for a few weeks. Rankings are lost by incomplete redirects and by new pages that are thinner than the old ones.
Can customers keep their accounts and passwords?
Accounts and their details migrate; passwords cannot, because they are stored in a form that cannot be transferred between platforms. Plan a clear message: your account has moved, set a new password with one click. Some stores use the move to introduce passwordless login, which removes the issue.
How long does a migration take?
Weeks to a few months depending on catalogue size, customisations and integrations: a couple of weeks to inventory and plan, several to build the new store and integrations, one or two to rehearse and reconcile, a day to cut over. Rushed migrations skip the rehearsal and discover the problems in front of customers.
Sources
- Shopify Help Center: Migrating to Shopify (accessed 2026-09-12)