Are you wondering whether it is possible to migrate your ecommerce store from Magento to Shopify easily without losing any? Well, the answer is ‘yes’. You can perform Magento to Shopify migration. Before moving ahead, you should learn about many aspects to consider on your way towards successful ecommerce store migration.
Today, we are here with a complete guide for migrating Magento to Shopify. This post will help you do a smooth ecommerce website migration with no data loss. So, let’s move on.
Magento vs Shopify: Why Choose Shopify Over Magento?
As you are here, obviously you are planning to move your online store to Shopify. So, you are already near to the Shopify corner. But, let us tell you, the journey is still in constant mode. There is more that you need to know about Shopify.
Shopify, one of the best eCommerce platforms, comes fully-packed with a colorful spectrum of various useful features that permits us to craft distinct online stores holding required sizes and shapes. Now, let’s look into some more benefits of Shopify that you may reap. Let’s start then.
Easy To Use – Perfect For Merchandisers & Admin Use
When it comes to ease of use, Shopify wins. It doesn’t demand any technical proficiency to run. The back-end of Shopify is simple and clean, also for the admin users, it is the most-straightforward platform. It eases everything from visual merchandising to menu editing using Shopify flow, which is easy and intuitive. Moreover, when you start using its apps, you will find them crafted likewise following the suit.
On the contrary, users from non-technical backgrounds find Magento hard to operate. It’s a strong platform and tough to accomplish eCommerce objectives when you hold no coding skills.
Themes – Easy Customization Without Any Need For Code
Shopify comes with a wide range of themes. You will find it easy to customize Shopify themes with no code utilization. It will make it easy for you to pick a theme as per the needs of your brand.
When the theme is a matter of concern, Magento also comes with various ready-made themes. This means no-code customization is required. But, when we talk about the custom theme, it requires assistance from a professional developer.
Efficient Sales Tools Available At No Extra Cost
Well, sales tools and eCommerce platforms stay together. You need to have both, can’t have only one.
In the case of Shopify, sales just get enhanced with the features it offers, such as multi-channel selling, abandoned cart recovery, physical and digital product selling, and more.
When we turn to Magento, it too comes with such tools in the form of extensions, but you will need to buy them as per the requirements of your business.
Marketing Tools – Effective Built-In promotional Tools, Can Be Used Without Any Technical Skills
With the comprehensive access to robust marketing tools, businesses reach new customers.
Shopify assists you in scaling your store with its various built-in marketing tools.
On the opposite end, Magento depends on its marketplace for its numerous marketing tools. For example, you will need to install extensions to meet your email campaigning requirement. Moreover, only the technical skills will allow you to integrate such marketing tools.
Apps & Add-Ons – Perfectly Polished Plugins With No Coding Knowledge & No Installation Risk
Next, it’s important to append extra functionality to your online store, when you find the in-built features of your store are not enough to meet your eCommerce desires. However both, Shopify and Magento ease the installation of applications, extensions, and add-ons. But, here the main motive is to pick the best.
You will find Shopify App Market easy to use and at this spot, you will get excessively polished apps.
On the opposite side, Magento Marketplace doesn’t have more extensions and the coding knowledge is necessary to install them. Also, with the installation of a sub-par extension, you might run the risk as anyone is allowed to design such extensions.
Payment Processors – Comes With More Ways To Pay That Improves Conversions & Reduces Friction
Your stores accept online payments through payment processors. However, both Shopify and Magento ease the connection of the payment processor with your stores in just a few clicks. Again, we need to find which is offering better?
Shopify is already standing uniquely with a payment processor, namely Shopify Payments. Thankfully, it’s free (apart from regular credit card processing fees). Ahead, Shopify supports 100+ different payment gateways that are paid.
On turning to Magento, it supports more than 150 payment gateways. But, most of them are targeted at large businesses. For integrating other common payment processors, you need to install them from the Magento marketplace.
Reliable eCommerce Platform With 99.8 Uptime Rate
With an unlimited and free bandwidth usage, and 99.8 uptime rate, Shopify comes with the proficiency of handling increasing traffic loads. By offering constant platform maintenance support, this eCommerce platform lowers the downtime. This Shopify feature will ease you in making your business journey smooth.
With Magento Open Source, the charges of bandwidth usage rely on the hosting provider that you pick for your store.
Full-Fledged App Store – Holds Numerous Apps Suiting Various Needs
When you require integrating a plethora of additional features and functionalities, the Shopify App store helps you. You will find thousands of apps on it that you may install to kick start, grow, and even manage your eCommerce business.
All such apps are designed to meet distinct purposes and are perfect for resolving various other issues of businesses. The best part is, the Shopify App store assists you in exploring the extensions depending on your industry needs. Moreover, you may pick the themes as per your taste to offer your store a better look and feel.
Again, Magento holds a mix of free and paid apps, but if you are not among the Magento developers, then you don’t have that wide scope to append functionality with no coding knowledge.
Cross-Channel Selling – Allows Multi-Channel Selling With No Need For Extension Installation
Furthermore, you can sell across different channels and platforms with Shopify. For example- using the Shopify Facebook App via Facebook. Also, it permits sales on other platforms, such as Twitter, Pinterest, and more.
Magento also permits multi-channel selling options but asks for extensions installation to integrate your store with Instagram, Facebook, etc.
Dedicated Support Team
Shopify has a support team dedicated to their trusted clients. You may catch them on the phone, live chat, and email around-the-clock and every single day. Shopify experts hold proficiency in troubleshooting issues easily and emerge with the best solution ever. They also have various tutorials and resources on their help center to help you from the starting phase to selling products on store.
Magento offers no dedicated support, we will need to get access to its help and support team. Its user guides are extremely difficult and are aimed at the professional web developers only. You need to have technical skills to implement them perfectly.
Transparent Fee Structure – Low-Cost Monthly Plans with No Hidden Charges
When it’s about Shopify pricing plans, the platform is open and transparent. Unknowingly, you will never be billed or receive any miscellaneous charge. With the low-cost monthly plans, Shopify comes with no long-term commitment.
Magento is also free to use, but various other larger expenses may hit you, so you are required to check before choosing it. “Magento lives and dies by its extensions only.” So, after you pick it, you will be going to find a lot of missing features that you were using with Shopify.
Secure Hosting & Transactions – Holds Level 1 PCI DSS Certification
Shopify is a well-trusted eCommerce platform when security is the main concern regarding your account information and hosting. Shopify has invested a lot of time and money to offer its clientele a secure and safe trip towards the success of their stores. Their Level 1 PCI Certification proves this. Apart from securing your shopping cart, it entails hosting also.
SEO Friendly – Drive Enhanced Organic Traffic
Shopify also provides robust SEO features. On migrating, the URLs of your page would also change. The best part is, your search engine rankings will not be affected. If you are well-prepared, with Shopify you can craft page redirects, monitor duplicate content if any, lower down on-page changes, and keep up your page performance.
Still, many retailers are unaware of the fact that migrating ecommerce platforms may enhance SEO rankings. This could be a great chance to incorporate high-performing keywords, a simpler directory, and shorter URL strings.
When it comes to SEO, Magento is not fully-optimized, so will stand up with a need for help from a Magento Expert. It demands more manual SEO.
Scalability – Cheaper & Easier With No Need To Deal With Hosting Solutions Or Build An Architecture
By using Shopify, you will save on manpower and IT support. All this highlights that with Shopify you can scale your site very effectively. This permits you to expand your eStore with business and marketing strategies. Also, with your growth, you can rely on Shopify as it holds the caliber to handle any sort of extra technical pressure.
In the case of Magento, scalability seems to be a little tough. As Magento is free, you will need to host your website. This states that here, scaling depends on the architecture. The approaching peak traffic will require you to switch hosts to move your store over to another server. To resolve this, hiring a scalability specialist would be the only option you have.
Performance – High Performing Websites That Leads To Enhanced Sales
The first-ever hosted eCommerce platform, Shopify includes a CDN (Content Delivery Network). It’s an edge cloud platform that accelerates dynamic assets and cache the changing content, and resultantly increases web and mobile delivery. Moreover, serving the images swiftly, can lower-down traffic and enhance the performance of your website.
The standard conversion rate of Magento lies between 0.2% and 3.0%, which’s much less than Shopify’s rate which lies between 0.4% and 3.6%. So, the performance data would help you to come up with a final decision.
Who Should Prefer Shopify For An eCommerce Store?
Because of its multi-purpose nature, Shopify is a perfect choice for the following:
- Non-Techies: As it’s intuitive to set up and handle Shopify, even non-technical masters will find it comfortable to work-on.
- Small Businesses: As Shopify is reasonably priced, small businesses usually get magnetized towards it to kick-start at minimum cost.
- Brick and Mortar Stores: You can integrate offline software that Shopify offers with the already set operation. So, is best for brick-and-mortar store owners.
- Growing Business: If you need to expand your store, Shopify would be the better choice for you.
What Data Can You Migrate From Magento To Shopify?
Well, you can transfer the following data while migrating from Magneto to Shopify:
- Products & Product Categories: The entire products related data, such as name, SKU, full description, images in description, status, manufacturer, price, special price, URL, meta title, meta description, weight, variants, base image, and a number indicating goods in stock.
- Products’ Visuals: The details of the product, its shape, size, and color.
- Data of Orders: purchased goods list, amount of purchase, payment details, customer data ID , order date, order status, order products, product price, quantity, subtotal price, discount price, tax price, shipping price, total price, order comments, customer name, billing address & shipping address.
- Static Page Content: About us, Contact pages, Blogs & other CMS pages
- Images: main pages and between content.
- Integrations: All the customer-related information, such as name, phone number, email addresses, location, and more.
- Benefits: Discount, coupons, etc.
What Else to Consider While Moving From Magento To Shopify?
Be it’s migration or other, many processes hold crucial control points that should be included to perform efficiently without affecting business. When it comes to migration, besides data, some more aspects need the transfer in the absence of which you can lose conversions, traffic, and customer loyalty. Let’s check them out.
SEO – 301 Redirects Set Up Is Important
Today, SEO brings organic traffic to you. So, if you want to make your search results and traffic stay untouched while migrating, you should focus on the new structure of your site and set up 301 redirects from your old pages to the new pages.
Graphic Content – Be Sure To Move Images & Replace Links
The graphic content from categories, blogs, product descriptions, and other pages that are not stored in the database, doesn’t stay on the surface. We usually have links to such images in the content. We need to move such images to a decided platform and replace the links with the accurate code.
Old Content – Should Look Good In New
From the previous platform, your content holds the tags and amidst migration, they also get moved. But, it will exhibit a good look on the platform you choose is not necessary always. So, you need to pre-plan how to fix this before you launch your store with a new look.
Static Source Collection – To Avoid Manual Transfer
In Shopify, static source collections are transferred to automatic collections. You should remember to reap the benefit of this robust directory management tool. If you fail to do so, you will need to handle the directory manually.
Integrations & Automation – Reduces Operational Costs
The operational costs of your business get reduced through integrations and automation. You need to incorporate these while migration as this may result in tough processing orders, handling balances, or building marketing campaigns.
How To Migrate Magento To Shopify: 3 Methods
Now, let’s check out three methods of migration from Magento to Shopify. You can choose any that you want for conducting your migration process.
1. Using Store App For Automated Migration
This way of Shopify migration is quite easy. Moreover, post-migration if you find yourself not satisfied with the data you migrated using the app, you can delete it and start again.
But, let you take on its conclusion. Shopify notifies about the risk that may emerge like some of your products may fail to migrate. If you caught up with the same, later, you will need to conduct the process manually, and obviously, it will suck your time.
A few such apps are:
2. Manual Migration
One more way to migrate your data is manually. It may sound simple as you will be required just to copy from the Source store and paste onto the Target store. This mode may be tolerable till hundreds of data.
But, when your data count will increase, this may appear to be hectic and time-consuming. Furthermore, if you get caught with any unexpected errors, being a non-technical person, it will become tough to resolve such issues.
3. Hire Technical Assistance
The last one, and the most relaxing way to migrate is to hire a Shopify expert. A Shopify professional holds all the technical skills and expertise that you need to migrate your store from Magento to Shopify. In fact, by handing your job to the expert, you are going to save your time for other crucial tasks.
Steps To Migrate Magento To Shopify Successfully
Let’s dive deeper into Magento to Shopify migration process to let you know what should be done exactly to migrate smoothly. After finalizing the method of migration we will move onto the next stage.
It’s mostly recommended to allow a technical migration partner for performing migration. He will hold the potential to analyze the data you need to move, perform customizations and integrations, and prepare a perfect migration plan by picking the right tools.
Step 1. Prepare Your Magento Store
Take Backup Of Your Magento Store
As we have read above, during the switch from your Magento store to Shopify store, any associated risks may emerge. So, to avoid this and make sure that your data is secure, you need to backup your data first.
To create a backup in Magento 2 follow these steps:
- Go to the the Admin panel, click System. In the Tools section, select Backups.
- See in the upper-right corner, tap the button for selecting the type of backup you want to create
Magento offers three backup options:
- System Backup: This helps you create a full backup of the database and the file system. You can also include the Media folder in this backup.
- Database and Media Backup: Creates specific backup of database and the media folder.
- Database Backup: Only creates a backup of the database
Magento Store Data Audit
Performing the store data audit will assist you in creating an accurate inventory of the complete Magento data you hold, like Product Name, Product Details, Customer Name, Passwords, and more. You need to check out what you should keep, delete, or rewrite.
Check Your Current Store Credentials
To form a strong connection between your source store and target store, you should find Magento store access details, such as URL, FTP/SSH etc. credentials.
Step 2. Prepare Your Shopify Store
Make Your Shopify Store Ready
Next, you should conduct your Shopify store installation with no extra modules or changes, and make it available online. The Shopify store comes with a free trial, you may start with that. For the trial version, you may migrate your store to the temporary domain. Using the Shopify platform during trial version will help you familiarize yourself with various functionalities. Once you feel comfortable you can choose one of these paid plans
Pick A Theme
Well, the most recommended Shopify theme is default. Also, avoid customization till the migration gets complete as it may disturb your process. Post-migration you can pick a Shopify theme as per your taste and need, and customize accordingly.
Install Required Features/Apps
Before you start, you should install the features or the app you need. For example – if you have product reviews on your Source store then you should go with installing the Product Reviews application.
Step 3. Download An App for Import
Well, Shopify App Store holds numerous apps, you can choose one that may help you in moving your data seamlessly. Here are a few app suggestions for importing data into your Shopify store:
Step 4. Export Data from Magento
Now, it’s time to be all set for your new home. For that, you need to pack your boxes and hand-over to the movers.
1. Go to the Admin sidebar, go to System > Data Transfer > Export
2. In the Export Settings section, set the Entity Type to one of the following options:
- Products
- Customers Main File
- Customer Addresses
The process of importing via CSV or XML file have to be repeated for each of these entities if needed.
3. Select the default Export File Format in CSV or choose XML if you are using an app like Transporter.
4. If you want to enclose any special character in the data as an escape sequence, select the Fields Enclosure checkbox.
5. Now scroll down & click on Continue (Also make sure the cron job is running)
6. By default, all the exported data files are located in
<Magento-root-directory>/var/export folder.
If the Remote storage module is enabled, all exported files are located in the
<remote-storage-root-directory>/import_export/export folder.
Step 5. Import Your Store Data to Shopify
Now, your data is all set to be imported into Shopify. You just need to follow a few steps and you are done.
1. If you are using the Import Store App of Shopify then visit the Shopify admin page then click Apps > Import Store.
2. Select your platform option as Other as Magento is not listed by default
3. Under the Upload files, click Add file and select your exported files.
4. Select the CSV file that you have exported from Magento store
5. To complete, click Continue import then Import.
To import products separately then
1. Go to Shopify admin, Click on Products > All products.
2. Click on Import.
3. Click Add File and add product CSV file (Your product CSV file should not exceed 15MB) You can learn more about using CSV file in Shopify here.
4. Click Upload file.
If you encounter any issues in importing product data to Shopify check out Common import issues.
To import customers separately then
1. In your Shopify admin, click Customers.
2. Click on Import customers.
3. Click Add file, and then select your customer CSV file.
4. Click Import customers.
Note: The order of importing product, customer, & historical order data is important.
If you follow order, then the migrated orders will be linked to their associated products, customers & you can access the customers’ complete transaction history.
You need to import the data in the following order:
- Products
- Customers
- Historical orders
Note: Customers Passwords Can’t Be Migrated To Shopify
Customer Passwords: The passwords are stored as encrypted therefore they can’t be migrated. So, you will be able to migrate only customer records instead of customer accounts.
Step 6. Review Imported Data
Reviewing your data imported will ensure no issues are left and the whole data is being transferred. Some of the common issues that you will notice on reviewing the imported data are:
1. Data imported succesful but with minor changes: Check import summary to find out missing data and then edit manually.
2. Some Products/Customers failed to import: Check if all of your products & customers imported successfully, if not then you can add them manually from the Products or Customers import option
3. Failed import of Bundled products: You can add these products manually or you can use product bundling apps from the shopify store.
4. Unpublished Products but imported successfully: The products in Magento with product visibility set to hidden will show as unpublished in Shopify as well. To rectify these change product avalability in Shopify.
5. Tags added to imported records: The Store Importer app adds tags to imported records in the following format import_<date>_<import_id>
You can keep these tags on your imported records for finding things you have imported, review them for errors, but this might also create issues if you use tags as a method of organizing your ecommerce store.
6. Sometimes the Product Variants failed to import: In case of missing a variant like size, color, weight, etc you would need to add those products manually.
7. Imported products have no dimensions: You can resolve this by adding dimensions to the product descriptions.
8. Digital products imported successfully but are not published: In Shopify if you want to sell digital products then you need to install a specific Shopify app.
Step 7. Restyle Your New Shopify Store
Now, we will jump from data to design. As compared to Magento, Shopify provides a lot of customization options. Just style your Shopify storefront appealingly using a wide range of free and paid Shopify themes.
Find Out What Brands Have To Say About Migrating From Magento To Shopify
That was supposed to be a huge day for us but we let our customers down. It didn’t matter that it was Magento’s fault, it’s our brand and customers blamed us which really hurt.
Ben Francis Founder, Gymshark
Switching to Shopify Plus has been remarkable. We’re doing record sales since switching to Shopify Plus. This was unthinkable when we were on Magento.
Adriano Salemme Marketing Chief, Beard & Blade
From an infrastructure standpoint, Shopify Plus has our back. We feel incredibly comfortable that, as we continue to scale, our website’s going to be up and running. As an IT function, that allows us to really focus on the things that we do best.
Adam Weinstock CTO, Bombas
At a time when the savvy fashion shopper wants to be able to connect with a brand’s persona, understand the texture and structure of every bag, and envision how they’d feel wearing each piece in a collection, we’re excited to host video and 3D within our Shopify ecommerce site to bring shoppers that much closer to Rebecca Minkoff designs.
Uri Minkoff Co-founder and CEO, Rebecca Minkoff
The ability to customize with Shopify Plus really allows us to push it to the limit and create a custom checkout experience customers can trust and be confident in keeping their personal and payment information safe. It really makes customers feel like the site is going to take care of them.
John Hart Ecommerce Manager, Peepers
Shopify Plus works really well for product pages, and for curating sites in line with the aesthetic, design, and ethos of our brand.
Pablo Daniel Chief Digital Officer, Alessi
What Are Further Steps Post-Migration From Magento To Shopify?
Still, after your migration process is completed, you are required to move a long way before your store becomes “launch-ready”. Let’s check out the steps to follow.
Shopify Store Testing
After migration, conduct an audit to:
- Check possible issues.
- Ensure domain name is active.
- Navigation links are performing perfectly.
- Review front-end also.
- Perform a test purchase.
Now, you can be sure that everything is running properly.
Find The Required Apps With The Shopify Store
Shopify Marketplace has a plethora of apps as per your needs. So, you will find no difficulty while looking for extensions that you were facing with Magento.
Invite Customers To Reactivate Their Accounts
Now, it’s time to make your customer know about the new eCommerce platform and ask them to let you know about the glitches if any. This will pace up your store. Apart from that, it’s important to send an invitation to your customers to reactivate their accounts on Shopify.
Now if you want a cheat sheet for Magento to Shopify migration here is shorter version of this post
Magento To Shopify Migration Checklist
Steps Before Migration
- Start using Shopify trial to get familiar
- Analyse what features you have to implement from Magento to Shopify
Now Process While Migrating Magento To Shopify
- Configure Basic Administrative Settings
- Take Backup of Magento Store
- Install App To Import Data In Shopify
- Import Magento Store Data to Shopify
- Audit Imported Data
- Organize Products
- Redesign Your Website With Shopify Themes
- Set Up Domain (Buy/Add)
- Set Up Shipping Apps
- Configure Taxes
- Set Up a Payment Provider & Payment Processing Apps
- Set Up & Test Checkout Process
- Set Up Informational Pages like: Privacy Policy, About Us, Terms & Conditions)
- Configure Third Party Sites, API and Services Integration
- Test SEO Settings: Domain, URL, and Metadata
- Implement Social Media Content and Integration
- Set Up Data and Reporting Business Rules
After The Migration
- Place Some Dummy Orders to Test
- Check & Test Email Settings & Responses
- Shipping and Payment Gateway Information
- Manage URL’s & Create 301 Redirects
- Invite Existing & New Customers
Specific Things To Consider While Migrating
- Assets With Protocols (http, https)
- URL Redirects
- Customer Passwords (Encrypted: Can’t be Migrated)
- Blog Posts & Articles (Relative Path & Images Location)
Conclusion
Well, that’s it. Now, you have possibly everything you should know before migrating your store from Magento to Shopify. Following the steps above, you will make your journey easy, with no errors, and swift.
Now, it’s your turn to reap the benefits of Shopify and allow your ecommerce store to grow and expand smoothly. Well, another thought that might be striking your head is how will you conduct your migration process?
If you still find this whole migration process difficult then you take assistance from Shopify developers who are proficient & experienced.
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