WooCommerce is the most popular online store plugins for WordPress users. Though it is easy to setup and use, you maybe possibly thinking of taking things to the next level. Perhaps, your customer base has increased, and you need extra functionalities to beat more sales online. Whatever the reason could be worth the idea, and here is how to go about such a decision. Shopify is the best option to migrate your WooCommerce outside of WordPress. Follow this guide to successfully migrate your WordPress WooCommerce store to Shopify platform.
Migrating a WordPress WooCommerce Store to Shopify
Though WooCommerce is a good option for WordPress, it will slow down your WordPress site. You will also find the admin area is very slow with too many unwanted menu items. You will get confused with free base plugin and additional premium add-ons needed for optimizing your store. Unlike WooCommerce, Shopify is a dedicated premium ecommerce platform which will help you to focus on selling items. It could be a Shopify’s Basic, Plus or Advanced plan depending on which matches your need and here are how to go about their setup.
1. Create a Shopify Store Account
If you do not want to purchase a plan, you can try 14 days free trial from Shopify. Visit the Shopify official website and click on the “Start free trial” button. Enter your email, password, and store name as the subdomain of myshopify.com. You can change this subdomain later by replacing it with a domain name. Then, click the “Create your store” button. A page pops up requesting personal details to create a Shopify ID. Fill in your necessary information and click the “Create Shopify ID” button.
Remember, the first password you entered is for the store, while this one is that of your account. Wait till your store creation is completed and go ahead to enter other details they are requesting from you. And finally, click on the “Enter my store” button on filling in all your information. Your store dashboard would appear, verify your email address, and keep other details updated.
2. Migration Options for Moving Content from WordPress WooCommerce to Shopify
Data from this former store is essential for your new online store, and it includes products, customer transaction records, articles, etc. Evaluate all that you shall need in your Shopify store and know that there are four available migrations options as listed below:
- Copy content or data from the former site to the new site.
- Hire a Shopify partner to or create an Admin API
- Use the default store Importer App (for XML files)
- Use the Shopify Store Migrations Apps (for CSV files)
As efficient as these methods seem, they can’t supplement for moving all data types, though the use of the Shopify Store Migration Apps (for CSV files) and Admin API (involves cost and extra time) goes beyond. The Copy and paste method are only applicable when dealing with a small amount of data transfer. And the XML files can only work for products and customers’ data with the Importer APP.
3. Export Store Content from WordPress WooCommerce
There are two methods to this, and one must seem more efficient to you depending on the categories of data you shall be migrating.
3.1. Use of WordPress Export Tool
It is suitable for use if the Importer App is the tool for the file transfer to Shopify, while the data is for that of products, orders, etc. and not including customers. Log in to your WordPress Dashboard, tap the “Tool” menu, then the “Export” sub-menu, select the content or data you want to export, and preferably that should be “All Content”. Finally, click the “Download Export File” to have the XML file of your whole online store on your local computer.
3.2. Use of WooCommerce Menu and Plugin
Much preferable to get CSV files of products, customers, orders and others, then use Migration Apps for data transfer. First, install and activate the “Order Export & Order Import for WooCommerce” from “Plugins > Add New” section in your WordPress dashboard. Now, click on the “WebToffee Import Export (Basic)” menu that appears after installation.
By default, the highlight is on the “Export” submenu, so select the post type of export as “Order” and tap the “Step 2: Select an export method” button. Then, choose either the “Quick export” option and click the “Export” button, or use the filter data with the “Advanced export” option and click the “Advanced options/Batch export” button.
Follow through with the next buttons when using the advanced filter option till you receive the message “Export file processing completed”. Then, click the “Download file” button in that message. And the order export file is now available as CSV in your local computer. Hence proceed to select the “Customers” sub-menu through the “WooCommerce” menu in your WordPress Dashboard.
And click the “Download” icon there to have your customers’ data as a CSV file on your local computer. In the same way, locate and select the “All Products” submenu through the “Products” menu on your dashboard. Select all the products you wish to transfer by ticking the checkboxes beside them and now click the “Export” button. Scroll down and examine the options you are seeing to ensure that’s what you prefer, and finally click the “Generate CSV” button to download your Products’ data.
Note: apart from getting the orders, products, customers’ data as explained here, you can also use plugins like “Export any WordPress data to XML/CSV” to get more data files like shipping, tax, coupons or others you need and is easy to follow through once you can do the same with this guide.
4. Import Store Content to Shopify
Remember, the option you are to use here depends on the export method with the respective file types you used in getting your former site content. So, using the WordPress Export tools for XML files, you would have to import those files using the Importer App. While the use of the WooCommerce Menu & Plugin for the CSV Files (Products, Customers, Orders, and others) must be with the Migration APPs.
4.1. With the Importer App
Login into your Shopify online store account – our illustration has it as defaultonlinestore.myshopify.com/admin. From the dashboard, you can see the “Home” menu has a submenu “Import store”, and now click on the “Import Store” button. Scroll down to see the Upload files title, then click on the “Add File” button to drop the site content file (XML format only) you downloaded.
Once the upload is through with all details complete, click the “Import” button to finalize the setup (successfully imported is the message you receive). Hence, they would present you with some information you need to review and fix if & that’s all to make the data appear in different menus on your Shopify store dashboard.
4.2. With Migration Apps
Even if your data are products, customers, historical records, gift cards, certificates, store credits, blog posts, pages or product reviews, these Apps can handle them. Nevertheless, the order of importing data matters as it should be products first, followed by customers, historical records (orders) and then others. Notably, these apps reduce the workload in moving your current online store contents to Shopify.
Head to the Apps section, and in the search box there, enter the query or keyword “migration” and hit enter key. There are about 210 results of paid and free third-party applications with their descriptions. Select the one that meets your need (here we are using Matrixify), click on the “Add App” button, and it will require you to log in. Then, from the dashboard you are currently viewing, scroll down and click the “Install” app button.
Then, approve their terms and conditions after reading through them. Scroll down a bit to click the “Add file” button, select in the proper order the CSV files relating to your former site content from your local computer and click the “Open” button. Then, see through the App options for the data transfer, make the selections you prefer, and click the “Import” button. You can download import results once finished, and if there is an error, it will direct you on what to fix and reupload, or else your data appears in the respective menus for products, customers, orders, and others.
Wrap Up with Migrating WordPress WooCommerce to Shopify
The move of the online store from WordPress WooCommerce to Shopify should be without hassle if you duly follow instructions through the automatic method using Apps. Perhaps the manual way of copy and paste can serve if you are starting newly with few products to move. You can also hire someone to do it when you have budget to spare for such services.
Always put into practice the need to backup before embarking on website migration, so you can fall back to default when things go wrong. Then, test after migration and see everything is working fine before completing other setups, like adding a theme, custom domain name, payment provider, and pages/posts. Finally, make sure to setup 301 redirections from your WooCommerce pages to Shopify pages so that you will not lose the SEO factors. If you are permanently closing WordPress site, then you can setup redirection from the server side to handle this.
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