Shopify to WooCommerce Migration Checklist: Everything You Need to Know

If you’ve ever felt boxed in by Shopify’s limitations and crave more freedom to customise, WooCommerce might be exactly what you need.

With 39% of the eCommerce market share, WooCommerce empowers you with complete control, endless flexibility, and powerful tools to grow your online business your way.

Let’s walk you through why switching makes sense— and how to migrate smoothly without losing your precious data.

Why Switch to WooCommerce?

Here are a few clear advantages of shifting your online business platform from Shopify to Woocommerce migration:

• It offers you full control of your website
• It costs fairly less when you consider long-term investment
• WooCommerce offers you a great library of plugins and themes to customise your store as you like.
• It allows you to work effortlessly with SEO tools to improve your search rankings

For example, imagine you have a business that sells handmade products. Now, you wish to arrange your products by materials and sizes on your website. WooCommerce makes filtering easier and gives you more control over the user interface than Shopify.

Steps for Shopify to WooCommerce Migration

Here is a friendly guide that can help you easily shift e-commerce platforms and also ensure that your data remains safe:

1.  Plan and Prepare Your Migration

• Be Clear with Your Goals: Have clarity on the reasons why you decided to migrate, and look for the required features and customisations on the WooCommerce platform.
• Evaluate Resources: If you are not familiar with WordPress, it is advisable to seek technical expertise from a developer.
• Back Up Your Shopify Store: Before attempting anything, you must back up your data on Shopify. For example, back up your crucial customer data, product details, and order history.

2.  Set Up Your WooCommerce Store

• Choosing a Hosting Provider: When you switch to WooCommerce, you will require an independent hosting provider. There are various reliable hosting providers specialised in WooCommerce challenges, such as SiteGround or Bluehost.
• Install WordPress and WooCommerce: Read your host’s installation guide and set up both platforms.
• Select a theme: Choose any theme that goes well with your brand and that is WooCommerce compatible.

3.  Export Data from Shopify

• Open your Shopify dashboard and go to the Shopify admin panel. Navigate to “Apps” or “Settings”.
• Export all your data, for example, products, customers, and order history, in CSV format.
• Choose a secure location for storing your files, as you’ll need to import them later.

Make sure to organise and clean up your data before exporting. This will help you avoid any unnecessary clutter or confusion during migration.

4.  Import Data into WooCommerce

• You can skip doom-scrolling in a sea of free plugins and just use “WooCommerce Importer” plugin that is free. For automated migration, you can opt for easy-to-use tools like Cart2Cart, as the name suggests, to move your cart to a new one.
• You need to start filling your WooCommerce store by uploading the exported CSV files from your Shopify account.
• Do give special attention to mapping Shopify fields to WooCommerce fields, as it ensures your data is transferred without any disasters.

Here’s what to import:

• You need to import products with their titles, descriptions, prices, categories, and images.
• Your customer data would include names, emails, and all the purchase history from the Shopify platform.
• An inventory of all your order IDs, product details, and statuses.

5.  Recreate Your Website Design

• Customise your Themes: WooCommerce offers a variety of themes, and you can select any theme that goes best with your brand value and visual identity.
• Add page builders: You can always use tools like Elementor or WPBakery to further strengthen your website’s visual appeal and functionality.
• Install plugins: You can make your website efficient and easy to use by installing necessary plugins like Yoast SEO or WooCommerce payments for easy transactions.

6. Set Up Payment Gateways and Shipping

• Payment Gateways: Choose the best and most secure payment options for your precious customers that are also compatible with WooCommerce, like PayPal, Stripe, or Razorpay.
• Shipping Zones: Sort out shipping methods and zones based on your target audience and logistics.
• Tax Settings: Configure taxes to make sure you comply with all local laws and international sales.

7.   Test Your New WooCommerce Store

• Make sure to review all your imported data in order to ensure accuracy.
• Test all critical pages that are crucial for customer experience, like product pages, shopping cart functions, and checkout processes.
• Also, make sure your shipping methods and payment gateways are working correctly.

8.    Redirect Shopify URLs to WooCommerce

• Create 301 redirects from your old Shopify URLs to your new WooCommerce site in order to maintain SEO rankings.
• Always use plugins like “Redirection” to simplify this process

Wrapping Up

Shopify to WooCommerce migration is not just about safely transferring your data to a new platform. This is a huge opportunity for you to try out new functions, visual language for your brand, flexibility options, and more control in the new platform.

This helps shape a valuable customer experience that can help you create a strong brand identity online.

Ready to switch? At Crazy Domains, we make launching and growing your WooCommerce store easy with reliable hosting, expert support, and WooCommerce-optimised solutions tailored for your business. 

Head over to our site for further details!