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A Step-by-step Guide On Migrating From Magento To Shopify

April 02, 2020 | 05 min read

1. Quickread

Any good business continues to evolve — that’s more valid than ever when it comes to ecommerce. Magento has long been a go-to platform for online stores, but these days more and more vendors are bringing their company to Shopify.
If your shop is on Magento, there’s plenty of opportunities to consider moving to Shopify. The # 1 reason is obvious: it’s hosted for you. This means less concern about increases in traffic and slowing down on important shopping days such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It also means knowing your site is safe, making it easier to upgrade your store and inventory, and benefiting from top-notch customer support.
If you’re like other lifelong Magento customers, you might also notice that over the years the shop has become bogged down with tired, obsolete apps, workarounds and code-hacks, and additional features duct-taped together with third-party add-ons and plugins. The truth is, charging someone for keeping the store online, safe, well-organized and looking nice in 2019 can be time-consuming and costly.
Migrating from Magento is literally about starting fresh for a lot of store owners: taking what you have learnt about running your business, and implementing it effectively so you end up with a store that works for you, not against you. It means a fresh new look — although one that contains all your important data such as orders and consumer information.
When it comes to choosing a new platform, we recommend Shopify highly. It’s ease of use, welcoming interface, and incredible themes and applications platform have made it a great choice for over 600,000 businesses around the world. There are other options to explore (BigCommerce, Weebly, Big Cartel, Mozu (by Volusion), and TicTail), but Shopify’s success isn’t seen by these platforms.
There are many important steps in place to ensure a seamless transfer once you have decided to leave Magento. A strategic approach is needed to ensure you carry what’s important with you — and leave behind what isn’t. This isn’t a comprehensive roadmap but it will give you a good reference frame for the measures needed to successfully move your store.

2. Keep Your Business Running

It’ll take you time to move! Which means it’s important to keep your business running on your Magento platform until your new store is completely installed and configured.

3. Determine what you Want to Migrate

You’re going to want to move the items and customer information to your new Shopify shop, and you’ll also want to add the background and status details of the order as well. If you have long been running the web store on Magento, there may be obsolete knowledge you’d rather leave behind. We are always in favour of obtaining as much data as possible, but if you are continually weeding through piles of outdated, redundant data, it may be time to trim the weight. Luckily, there are some excellent tools that assist with this aspect of the migration.
Likewise, you may have advertisement information and other resources that you want to migrate — blog posts, for example, and static HTML pages — as well as other content that you would rather leave behind. Anything you want to add to your new site will need to be updated to fit the new look of your website. You can do that on your own, or partner with an organization specialized in migration.

4. Start an Account on Shopify

Shopify offers a free preview, helping you to get your feet wet until you make a commitment. Until you start doing business in your new store, you’ll want to get acquainted with Shopify’s features, menus, collections and website templates. Do not hesitate to focus on their excellent customer support team who throughout this cycle will be your best friends.

5. Back Up your Magento Store

This is vital! In case the transfer does not go as expected the first time, you’ll want to have your Magento store completely backed up. It’s important to make sure you store some unique data along with standard information, so take your time to do this. You can choose to use a partner to help with the transfer, but do not depend on a third party to get the perfect backup. Use one of the more comprehensive guides available to run your own backup.

6. Migrate Your Data

Then comes the heavy lifting. Tools such as Cart2Cart and Magento Importer Shopify are built to ease the conversion, or you can export and import the files manually. If you choose the latter alternative you can possibly export your Magento data as a CSV file. Online guides are accessible to upload this data to host sites, but if you’re not tech-savvy (and even if you are), your best bet may be to recruit a Magento migration developer to help you.Our Services department is specialized in transitioning businesses of all sizes, so get in touch with us if you want to save yourself the hassle and ensure a smooth relocation.

7. Perform Extensive Testing

Make sure everything in your new store is running. Pass through the checkout to pass those research orders. Make sure customer data is well structured and presented, and that you can control any element of your company as if it were a live store.

8. Redesign Your New Website

Your new store won’t look quite the same as your previous one. Whether you are using a premade style or creating something from scratch, the essence of moving platforms involves making front-end changes alongside back-end adjustments. With how quickly ecommerce has grown in recent years, it’s possible that your store is overdue for a new look. Now is a great time to uplift your company by offering it the style that it deserves. Now is a great time to uplift your company by offering it the theme that it deserves.You can choose from hundreds of awesome Shopify templates, or you can recruit an experienced team of designers and developers to build a custom ecommerce shop for you.
Once you’ve chosen your new theme, make sure the content blends in well and stays consistent from product to product, and page to website. It’s well worth the time to double-check everything on the web, as first impressions always count. When things look good, you should pick a suitable moment in time to make the switch (we recommend you find the quietest duration in your week). After this is finished, you’ll definitely have a few orders that came in after the final backup has been taken — you’ll need to line them up. Having a clear schedule is a good idea, and some help to make sure everything works as planned on both the front and back ends.
Migrating the store may seem like a near-impossible task, but the key to a successful move is to do it piece by piece. Once the process is over, and you’ve had a chance to catch your breath, you’ll be more than satisfied with your choice to migrate.

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