Among us previous blog, we compared Shopify and WooCommerce in depth, talking about the pros and cons of each. As we found out, both platforms had some great offerings for users looking to up their e-commerce game. However, WooCommerce happens to be the most preferred platform for businesses in the world, commanding a whopping 30% of the market. This may motivate you to move your store from Shopify to WooCommerce, given the myriad benefits of WooCommerce.
Why should you move from Shopify to WooCommerce?
Below are some reasons why users prefer WooCommerce over Shopify.
- Value implications – WooCommerce is cheaper than Shopify, mainly because it is built on an open source platform like WordPress. A basic Shopify subscription will set you back $29, with subsequent offers going up to $299 per month. This does not include the cost of additional add-ons. In comparison, the WooCommerce plugin is free. You may have to pay some fees for domain name, hosting, security, etc., but even these are cheaper ($15 per month minimum). If you already have a WordPress site, this becomes cheaper.
- Flexibility and customizations – Both WordPress and WooCommerce are open source. essentially, anyone has the freedom to copy, modify, or modify the source code to have the store you want, something you can’t do with Shopify. In addition, the free WordPress plugin repository consists of more than 54,000 free options, made even better with the WooCommerce extension market, more than 300 plugins for online stores. Personalization without limits.
- Transaction Fees – Unlike Shopify, WooCommerce does not charge transaction fees on your sales made through other payment gateways. If you don’t use Shopify Payments, you’ll pay a surcharge to Shopify (which goes up to 2% for third-party payment gateways).
- Benefits of SEO – WooCommerce is built on top of WordPress, known for its strong SEO capabilities. As the successor to a powerful blogging platform, it’s built from the ground up with an optimized code base that’s great for on-page SEO. With WooCommerce, you have access to the wide range of SEO plugins and tools available through the WordPress ecosystem. The Yoast SEO plugin is probably the most popular, used by millions of websites worldwide
There are many other factors that make WooCommerce a more popular choice for eCommerce enthusiasts. Check out our previous blog to know all about them.
In today’s blog, we’ll break down the steps you can take to migrate from Shopify to WooCommerce using a variety of methods, all in ways you can actually do. Let’s dive deep.
What are all the data elements involved in a store migration from Shopify to WooCommerce?
Moving from WooCommerce to Shopify involves migrating the following items:
- User Accounts – their username, login details, email addresses and other data stored on Shopify
- Products – their description, prices, images, categories and other details
- Orders – History of past orders
- Subscriptions – History of Shopify recharges or bold subscriptions
- Coupons
- Pages and blogs
What are the prerequisites before migrating from Shopify to WooCommerce?
If you already have a functional WordPress site, or a WordPress site with WooCommerce added to it, then most of your task is already cut out. If you haven’t already done so, make sure you’ve done the following before moving on.
- Find a WordPress-friendly web hosting provider for your content management system (CMS) and choose a plan. There are many service providers for this. Find some here.
- Back up your Shopify store to prevent data loss during the transition. Shopify doesn’t offer a backup feature at all, so you can use tools from the Shopify app store, such as Rewind Data, or manually export the data as CSV files.
- The next step is obviously to install WordPress. Many hosting companies provide one-click installation of WordPress, so check that out. Alternatively, download and configure WordPress yourself which is actually quite simple.
- install it you need to install WooCommerce from WordPress plug-ins, and create your store. This will include choosing a theme and customizing your store, which you can do using WooCommerce theme forest.
Note: The WooCommerce Set-Up Wizard will guide you through the entire setup process. With it, you can do practically everything from setting tax charges and shipping preferences to payment methods and more. These are the basic settings and you can change them anytime you want. After the setup is complete, a WooCommerce tab appears in the navigation panel where you can make changes to various WooCommerce settings such as payments, customer preferences, products, and more.
After all, you might want to add additional plugins to extend the functionality of WooCommerce.
Install all this, you are all ready for the last step. migrate from Shopify to WooCommerce.
How to migrate from Shopify to WooCommerce?
There are generally 3 steps you can use to migrate your site from Shopify to WooCommerce
- Manually migrate from Shopify to WooCommerce
- Migrate store data from Shopify to WooCommerce using a tool/plugin
- Hiring an expert WooCommerce developer to migrate from Shopify to WooCommerce
We will look at each of these steps.
Manually migrate from Shopify to WooCommerce
Manual migration refers to the fact that the user, in this case you, literally exports all your data including products, orders, users, their payment information, etc. from your Shopify and imports it from your WooCommerce setup. WooCommerce has a default product CSV importer that makes importing your products pretty easy, provided all the data is correctly mapped across both platforms.
The process seems very simple, at least on paper.
- Export all your data from Shopify and download and save it as separate CSV files for Products, Orders, Users, and more.
- to go WooCommerce > Products.
- Choose: Import. This is native Importer of WooCommerce products.
- Select the file you exported from Shopify and want to import into WooCommerce and click Continue.
- Make sure all your data is mapped correctly according to the WooCommerce format. This part is the trickiest. WooCommerce tries to automatically map the fields in the CSV file to WooCommerce native ones, but you need to make a few changes Column mapping If required:
- Run the importer and finish the process.
- Now, similarly, move the CSVs of other items as well Orders:, Customer reports and more.
Note: WooCommerce does not import product images. it must be done manually. Also check that you don’t miss any important information. For missing data, run the importer again and insert the correct fields into WooCommerce. Although manual migration is cheap, it is not recommended for users who do not have deep background knowledge. Any omissions and commissions can seriously affect the performance of your site.
Migrate from Shopify to WooCommerce – Using Tools and Plugins
You’ll also find plenty of plugins and tools to help you migrate your content from Shopify to WooCommerce quite seamlessly.
Some of the most popular include:
- Cart2Cart Migration
- LitExtension:
- WP All Import Plugin
These tools have a default migration protocol that helps you transfer all your existing data – users, products, orders, etc. – from Shopify to WooCommerce. The main advantage of these tools is that even during the migration process, your existing store continues to operate with zero downtime.
The process is quite similar to moving your product manually;
- Install the plugins and set up a Connection Bridge between your old shop in Shopify and the new one in WooCommerce using the URL, API and password.
- Select all the data you want to move to the new site and map it to the appropriate WooCommerce fields
- Run the migration and wait for it to complete successfully
Note:: The downside here is that these tools are usually a one-size-fits-all solution without considering your site’s unique requirements. Most WooCommerce migration plugins have a standard migration process that is calculated based on the number of orders or products you may have. While this is a feasible solution for small stores, it can get expensive very quickly for larger e-stores with thousands of products and product variations.
Note: Moving WooCommerce subscriptions from Shopify involves another level of complexity. To get an idea about the same, refer to our in depth blog about migrating subscriptions from Shopify to WooCommerce.
Migrate from Shopify to WooCommerce – With the Experts!
Perhaps the most convenient method of moving from Shopify to WooCommerce is to use the expertise of WooCommerce experts. One of the easiest and safest options is considered official WooCommerce expert it is not only reliable, reliable and efficient, but also saves you a lot of time and effort for transitions.
While not the cheapest method out there, it is certainly the safest approach.
how trusted WooCommerce experts and official migration partners with over 3000+ projects under our belts, we WisdmLabs: we have always strived to deliver the best results for our clients, no matter what the challenges.
Feel free to contact us for a failed migration or if you need any assistance during the process.
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