Migrating from BigCommerce, Wix or WooCommerce to Shopify — the playbook

A botched replatform is a six-month revenue setback. A clean one is a relaunch that customers don’t even notice. Here’s the sequence we run for every migration to Shopify, regardless of what you’re coming from.

The 60-second framing

Replatforming is three problems:

1. Data — products, customers, orders, content move cleanly.
2. SEO — URLs change, redirects preserve rankings.
3. Operations — fulfilment, payments, accounting keep working from day one.

If you only solve two of three, you bleed.

Phase 1 — Inventory (week 0)

Before touching Shopify:

• Product audit. Export every product from your current platform. Note the count, the categories, the variant complexity, anything custom (downloadable products, subscriptions, configurations).
• URL audit. Crawl the entire site (Screaming Frog, Sitebulb). Save every indexed URL. This becomes your redirect map.
• App / integration audit. What’s running? Email (Klaviyo, Mailchimp), reviews, loyalty, subscriptions, ERP, accounting, fulfilment. Each needs a Shopify equivalent or a migration plan.
• Order export. Last 24 months of orders, customer data, transaction IDs.

Phase 2 — Build on Shopify (weeks 1–4)

In parallel with Phase 1:

• Pick a theme. Dawn or Horizon if Shopify-native is fine. Custom build if brand-led.
• Set up store admin. Shipping zones, tax registration, payment gateways, customer accounts, fulfilment locations.
• Customise the theme. Sections, product templates, cart, custom needs.
• Wire core integrations. Klaviyo, Google Analytics, reviews, fulfilment app.

This phase happens while the old store is still trading. Don’t disrupt the live site.

Phase 3 — Data migration (week 4)

Order matters:

1. Products first. Use Shopify’s CSV importer for simple catalogs, or Matrixify (paid app, worth it) for complex ones with metafields, variants, images.
2. Collections. Manual is faster than automated for most stores — collections are usually under 100, and the logic is curated anyway.
3. Customers. Email, name, default address, accepts marketing flag, customer notes. Don’t migrate passwords (you can’t anyway). Customers can request password reset post-launch — or just use New Accounts (passwordless) and the issue disappears.
4. Orders (historical). Read-only — for record-keeping. Matrixify handles this well. Don’t migrate cancelled or test orders.
5. Blog content. Surprisingly easy via CSV. Worth doing for SEO continuity.
6. Pages. Manual copy-paste is usually faster than scripting for under 50 pages.

Phase 4 — Redirects (week 5)

The single highest-stakes step in any migration. Every URL that has Google traffic must 301 to its Shopify equivalent.

• Products — old /p/123-product-slug → new /products/product-slug
• Categories — old /c/men-shoes → new /collections/mens-shoes
• Blog posts — old /blog/post-slug → new /blogs/news/post-slug
• Generic pages — old /about-us → new /pages/about

Build the redirect map as a CSV. Import via Shopify’s redirects feature (Online Store → Navigation → Redirects). Test 50 URLs manually after import.

Don’t skip this step. A botched redirect plan loses 30%+ of organic traffic for 3–6 months.

Phase 5 — Pre-launch QA (week 5)

Critical checks:

• Place a real order. End-to-end. Refund yourself.
• Test all payment methods — credit card, Shop Pay, PayPal, BNPL.
• Test all shipping options at multiple cart values and address combinations.
• Email flows — welcome, abandoned cart, order confirmation, shipping notification.
• Accessibility & mobile — quick pass with Lighthouse.
• Speed — Lighthouse on homepage, PDP, collection. Target 85+ mobile.

Phase 6 — Cutover (week 6)

The actual switch:

1. Lock the old platform. Stop accepting new orders. Set a maintenance message.
2. DNS swap. Point your domain at Shopify. TTL should already be lowered to 5 minutes a day prior.
3. Re-test live. Five test orders.
4. Submit new sitemap to Google Search Console.
5. Send the launch email. Tell customers anything they need to know — “you’ll get a code instead of a password” is the big one.

Phase 7 — Post-launch (weeks 6–10)

Daily for two weeks:

• Monitor 404s in Shopify analytics (or Search Console). Add redirects for any traffic-bearing URL you missed.
• Watch order-completion rate. If it dips vs. baseline, debug fast.
• Watch abandoned-cart rate. If it spikes, something at checkout broke.
• Check Search Console for crawl errors and impressions. Both should recover within 4 weeks if the redirect map is right.

Things that go wrong (so you can avoid them)

• Forgetting to migrate metafields. Most stores have product metafields that don’t show up in the admin UI obviously — sizing, ingredients, materials. Audit before exporting.
• Subscription customer migration. If you’re moving from one subscription app to another, don’t try to migrate active subscriptions automatically. Get customer consent and re-enrol.
• Tax setup. Don’t assume Shopify Tax just works. Validate registrations and rates per region before launch.
• Discount codes mid-launch. Pause active codes during cutover. Re-issue on Shopify post-launch.
• Loyalty point balances. Migrate via the loyalty app’s import feature. Don’t try to recreate manually.

How long this takes

A clean migration with a small catalog (< 500 products), no subscriptions, no custom integrations: 4 weeks. A medium-complexity store: 6–8 weeks. Plus / B2B / multi-region: 12–16 weeks with a dedicated team.

Most “this will take 2 weeks” replatforms blow up. Plan honestly, give yourself buffer, launch when it’s right — not when the deadline says.