WooCommerce to Shopify is the migration I handle most often, and the worry is always the same three things: will the products come across properly, will we lose our Google rankings, and will something break on launch day. None of those need to be a problem. All three become problems when a migration is treated as an export and an import rather than a project.
Here’s how it actually runs.
Before you move anything: the audit
Nothing gets exported until I know what’s there. That means a full inventory of products and variants, the collection and category structure, every custom field and attribute you rely on, your top-performing URLs from Search Console, the plugins doing real work, and how orders currently flow into whatever you use for accounting and fulfilment.
This stage is where migrations are won. Most of the disasters I’ve been called in to fix were caused by something nobody catalogued: a plugin quietly handling VAT rules, a set of landing pages with backlinks, a custom field driving the shipping logic.
What moves cleanly, and what doesn’t
| Data | Migrates | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Products & variants | Yes | Shopify caps you at three options per product. Woo setups with more need restructuring |
| Images | Yes | Alt text is frequently dropped by automated tools. Check it |
| Customers | Yes | Passwords never transfer. Customers reset on first login, on any platform |
| Orders | Mostly | Historical orders import as records. They will not be fully re-processable |
| Blog posts & pages | Yes | Formatting usually needs a pass by hand |
| Reviews | Depends | Tied to whichever plugin held them. Export early, before you switch anything off |
| Subscriptions | No | These get rebuilt on a Shopify app. Plan for it separately |
| URLs | No | Shopify enforces its own structure. This is what the redirect map is for |
The step-by-step
1. Build on a development store
As a Shopify Partner I build every migration on a development store, which comes with an unlimited free trial. You pay Shopify nothing until the finished store goes live, which takes the time pressure out of the whole exercise. That’s different from signing up directly, where the trial is a few days: I’ve explained the difference in my guide to the Shopify free trial.
2. Export from WooCommerce
Products, customers, orders and content, as CSV. Export reviews separately while the plugin is still active. Take a full site backup at the same time and keep it for six months.
3. Restructure before importing
Woo categories and tags don’t map one-to-one onto Shopify collections. This is the moment to fix an architecture you’ve outgrown rather than faithfully recreating a mess. Decide which collections are manual and which are automated, and how navigation should work, before anything goes in.
4. Import and check by hand
Automated migration tools do the bulk of this well. What they get wrong, reliably: variant pricing on complex products, image ordering, alt text, and anything that lived in a custom field. Spot-check your twenty best sellers properly. Every migration I’ve done has turned up something in that check.
5. Build the redirect map
This is the most important part of the whole project. Every old URL needs to point at its new equivalent: products, categories, blog posts, and any landing page that has ever earned a link. Woo’s /product/ and /product-category/ paths become Shopify’s /products/ and /collections/, so essentially nothing survives unchanged.
Redirects go in before launch, not after. A week of 404s on your best pages is a real cost, and it’s entirely self-inflicted.
The redirect map is the difference between a migration nobody notices and one you’re still explaining to your accountant in six months.
6. Rebuild the design
A migration is the natural moment to fix the store rather than reproduce it. Whether that’s a customised theme or a bespoke build depends on the same things it always does, and I’ve compared the two routes in detail elsewhere on the blog.
7. Replace plugins with the smallest possible app stack
A Woo store with twenty plugins does not need twenty Shopify apps. Shopify handles hosting, security, checkout and payments natively, which removes whole categories of plugin at a stroke. Much of the rest belongs in the theme.
8. Configure payments, shipping and tax
Shopify Payments for almost every UK store: no extra Shopify transaction fee on top of card processing. Rebuild shipping zones deliberately rather than approximating the old ones, and test VAT on a real order.
9. Test properly
Place real orders through every path: guest checkout, logged-in, discount code, each shipping method, a refund. Check the confirmation emails. Check what lands in your accounting system.
10. Launch, then watch
Point the domain, verify redirects are firing, submit the new sitemap in Search Console, and keep an eye on coverage and 404s daily for the first fortnight. Some ranking movement in the first few weeks is normal. A sustained drop means a redirect is missing, and it’s fixable.
The mistakes that actually cost money
- Launching without redirects. The single most expensive error, and the most common.
- Cancelling Woo hosting immediately. Keep it running for a couple of months. You will want to check something.
- Recreating the old structure exactly. You’re paying for a migration anyway. Fix the architecture while everything is in motion.
- Forgetting the operational tail. Accounting integrations, packing slips, review requests, the spreadsheet someone in the warehouse relies on.
- Migrating during peak trading. Not in the run-up to Christmas. Ever.
How long it takes and what it costs
A straightforward migration with a customised theme is typically four to five weeks. A larger catalogue with a bespoke build runs six to eight. Cost tracks the design route rather than the migration itself: from £2,500 for a theme-based build, from £6,000 for bespoke, with migration work on top depending on catalogue size and how much restructuring is involved.
If you’re weighing it up
Plenty of businesses move for reasons that have nothing to do with features: they’re tired of maintenance, updates that break things, and being one plugin away from a bad morning. If that’s you, send me your current store URL through the contact page and I’ll tell you what the migration involves and where the risks sit for your specific setup. There’s more on how I handle migrations on my Shopify page, and if it turns out staying on WordPress is the better answer, I’ll say so: WordPress development is the other half of what I do.
Frequently asked questions
Will I lose my Google rankings moving from WooCommerce to Shopify?
Not if every old URL is redirected to its new equivalent before launch and your metadata carries over. Expect some movement in the first few weeks while Google recrawls. A sustained drop almost always means a missing redirect rather than the platform change itself.
Can I keep my domain name?
Yes. Your domain points at Shopify instead of your old host. Nothing about the domain itself changes, and customers see the same address.
What happens to my existing customer accounts?
Customer records transfer, but passwords never do on any platform migration. Customers set a new password the first time they log in, which is worth mentioning in your launch email.
How long does a WooCommerce to Shopify migration take?
Four to five weeks for a straightforward catalogue on a customised theme, six to eight for a larger store with a bespoke build. The catalogue size and how much restructuring you want matter far more than the data transfer itself.
