Whilst both Magento 2 and Shopify are designed for eCommerce growth, you might find that the flexibility of a Shopify site is something that you benefit from at this stage of your business. Making the decision to move your website to a different platform is a whole process, but there are tools you can use to make this as easy as possible.
We’re here to help you navigate through the Magento to Shopify migration and understand the process involved just that little bit better.
Why make the move?
If you’ve read our previous blog post on Magento 2 vs. Shopify, you’ll be familiar with all of the facts and features of each platform. Let’s give you the TL:DR again here:
- Simplicity - Shopify is designed for ease of use and doesn’t require as much technical knowledge to maintain.
- Scalability - Shopify gives you the ability to upgrade your site and expand based on your own growth.
- Security - Unlike Magento (where you’ll need to do this manually), Shopify offers a built-in SSL certificate as well as being PCI compliant.
How to make the move?
Exporting Data
First step is to carefully export all of that precious data from your existing Magento site. Getting all the data from your Magento 2 site to your Shopify, including products, customers and orders is vital for the integrity of your site. You’ll want to include:
- Products
- Categories
- Media
- Pricing Data
- Customers*
- Orders
- Redirects
And more! We always use matrixify for our importing as it pretty much handles everything you need, however it’s worth taking those extra steps to make sure none of your hard work is left behind.
*Ensure you follow GDPR guidelines and migrate customer data within data rules.
SEO Considerations
It goes without saying that protecting your SEO is so important when it comes to moving from Magento to Shopify. Creating a logical URL structure that is similar to your current site will help, as well as setting up 301 redirects and copying over all the relevant metadata.
Manual Page Migration
Whilst the majority of your content can be transferred over in bulk in a Magento to Shopify migration, some pages will require manual transfers with some apps not supporting page migration. Making sure that each page is set up correctly on your new platform
Key Features and Extensions (Apps)
More often than not, your Magento site will have some customisation that you just cannot live without. From social login extensions to abandoned cart automatic emails, your eCommerce site has been built to your specifications and you’ll want to preserve (and maybe even add to this) when you switch to Shopify. Luckily Shopify has around 4,000 plugins (referred to as Apps) available for your new site which you can customise to fit your needs, meaning that you’re likely to find an equivalent to use. Even if there isn’t an equivalent, our specialist developers can build them in-house, like custom CRM integrations or inventory management for example.
In Conclusion
There are a few more elements that go into a move from Magento to Shopify that we haven’t gone into today - like we said at the start, it’s a whole process!
However, whilst moving from Magento 2 to Shopify might seem daunting, if you plan each stage and ensure you conduct some rigorous testing before and after launch, the transition should be pretty smooth sailing.
Get in touch with our friendly Shopify specialists to see how we can help you with your site migration today :)
