How to Migrate Your Shopify Store to WordPress (WooCommerce) in 2024: A Complete Guide

E-commerce businesses often start with Shopify due to its user-friendly platform and quick setup, making it ideal for new store owners. However, as your business grows, Shopify’s limitations in terms of customization, scalability, and cost may prompt you to look for more flexible and powerful alternatives like WordPress combined with WooCommerce.
WordPress, when paired with WooCommerce, is a leading eCommerce solution offering unmatched flexibility, ownership, and SEO benefits. If you’re ready to unlock more control over your online store, it’s time to migrate from Shopify to WordPress (WooCommerce).
At Dellos, we specialize in CMS migration services, including Shopify to WordPress and other platforms like Webflow to WordPress and Squarespace to WordPress, making the migration process smooth and efficient. In this article, we’ll guide you through the process of migrating your Shopify store to WordPress with WooCommerce in 2024.
1. Why Migrate from Shopify to WordPress with WooCommerce?
Before jumping into the technical aspects of the migration, it’s essential to understand why so many eCommerce businesses are switching from Shopify to WordPress (WooCommerce):
a. Customization and Flexibility
Shopify has a set of predefined templates and limited customization options unless you’re willing to pay for third-party apps or hire a Shopify developer. WordPress, paired with WooCommerce, offers nearly unlimited customization options. You can choose from thousands of themes, plugins, and extensions, allowing you to create a store that reflects your brand and vision without any restrictions.
b. SEO Control
While Shopify does offer basic SEO features, WordPress offers much more granular control over your site’s search engine optimization. Plugins like Yoast SEO make it easier to optimize every aspect of your website, from meta descriptions to canonical tags, helping you rank higher in search engine results.
c. Ownership of Data and Platform
One of the significant drawbacks of Shopify is that you don’t own the platform—Shopify controls your hosting, terms, and how you interact with the platform. With WordPress, you have full ownership of your data and control over where you host your site, how you scale it, and what additional features you use.
d. Cost-Effectiveness
Shopify has a tiered pricing system that can become expensive as your business grows, especially if you need additional apps for features like abandoned cart recovery or advanced analytics. WordPress and WooCommerce, being open-source, provide a more cost-effective solution as you only pay for hosting, domain, and any premium plugins you might need.
2. Planning Your Shopify to WordPress Migration
Migrating from Shopify to WordPress with WooCommerce involves several steps, and careful planning is essential to avoid losing any valuable data, SEO rankings, or eCommerce functionality.
a. Evaluate Your Store Data
Before starting the migration, take inventory of everything on your Shopify store, including product listings, categories, customer data, order history, and SEO metadata. You’ll need to ensure that all this data transfers correctly during the migration.
b. Choose a Hosting Provider for WordPress
Unlike Shopify, which comes with built-in hosting, you’ll need to select a reliable hosting provider for your WordPress site. Choose a hosting plan that offers sufficient bandwidth, storage, and performance for an eCommerce website. Popular options include SiteGround, Bluehost, and WP Engine.
c. Install WordPress and WooCommerce
Once your hosting is set up, the next step is to install WordPress and the WooCommerce plugin. Most hosting providers offer one-click WordPress installation, making the process simple. After WordPress is installed, navigate to the Plugins section and search for WooCommerce, then install and activate it.
3. Migrating Products and Categories
After setting up WordPress and WooCommerce, you can begin migrating your Shopify store’s data.
a. Manually Exporting Shopify Products
Shopify offers an export feature that allows you to download your product data in CSV format. To do this, go to your Shopify admin dashboard, navigate to Products, and select Export. You can then download your product data, including titles, descriptions, pricing, and images.
b. Using Automated Migration Tools
For larger stores with hundreds or thousands of products, manual migration can be time-consuming and error-prone. Automated migration tools, such as Cart2Cart, LitExtension, and FG Shopify to WooCommerce, make the process more manageable. These tools help you migrate product data, categories, customer information, and even order history directly to WooCommerce.
c. Uploading Products to WooCommerce
Once your product data is exported from Shopify, you can import it into WooCommerce using its built-in CSV import tool. Navigate to WooCommerce > Products > Import, upload your CSV file, and map the fields accordingly. WooCommerce will then process the import, adding all your products to your new store.
4. Migrating Customer and Order Data
Migrating customer and order data is a critical part of your Shopify to WordPress migration, ensuring that your business continues to run smoothly without disruption.
a. Export Customer Data from Shopify
In your Shopify dashboard, navigate to Customers and click Export. Shopify allows you to download customer data in CSV format, including customer names, emails, addresses, and purchase history.
b. Import Customer Data to WooCommerce
Once you have the customer data CSV, use a plugin like “Customer / Order CSV Import Suite” to import your customer data into WooCommerce. This plugin maps the Shopify data fields to WooCommerce, ensuring that all customer records are properly transferred.
c. Migrating Order History
To migrate your Shopify order history, you’ll need to use a migration tool such as Cart2Cart or the “WooCommerce Order Export” plugin. These tools can help you import and export orders, ensuring that your eCommerce store maintains complete records after migration.
5. Migrating SEO Settings and URLs
Preserving your SEO rankings during a migration is crucial to ensure that your Shopify store’s search engine visibility carries over to your new WordPress store.
a. Exporting SEO Metadata from Shopify
Shopify doesn’t offer a built-in way to export SEO metadata, such as meta titles and descriptions. However, you can manually copy these settings from your Shopify product pages, blog posts, and category pages.
b. Using SEO Plugins in WordPress
Once your product and content data is transferred to WordPress, you can use SEO plugins like Yoast SEO or Rank Math to manage and optimize your meta titles, descriptions, and other important SEO settings. These plugins will help you recreate your Shopify SEO structure in WordPress.
c. Setting Up 301 Redirects
Your new WordPress site will have different URLs from your old Shopify store, so setting up 301 redirects is essential to avoid broken links and maintain your SEO rankings. Use the “Redirection” plugin or manually edit your .htaccess
file to ensure that all old Shopify URLs are redirected to their corresponding WordPress pages.
6. Rebuilding Your Store Design on WordPress
Recreating your Shopify store’s design in WordPress will require choosing the right theme and customizing it to reflect your brand.
a. Choose a WordPress Theme
WooCommerce works with a variety of WordPress themes, many of which are designed specifically for eCommerce stores. Choose a responsive, WooCommerce-compatible theme from the WordPress repository or from premium theme providers like ThemeForest or StudioPress.
b. Using Page Builders for Custom Design
For more advanced design control, you can use page builders like Elementor or Beaver Builder. These drag-and-drop builders allow you to recreate complex page layouts without needing coding knowledge.
c. Customizing Product Pages
WooCommerce allows you to customize product pages by adding shortcodes, widgets, and custom fields. Use tools like Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) to add more dynamic content to your product pages, creating a unique shopping experience for your customers.
7. Optimizing Website Performance and Speed
Migrating to WordPress offers greater control over site performance, but it’s essential to implement optimizations to ensure your eCommerce site loads quickly and efficiently.
a. Choose a Reliable Hosting Provider
Your hosting provider plays a significant role in your site’s speed. Consider using managed WordPress hosting providers like WP Engine or Kinsta, which are optimized for speed, security, and reliability.
b. Use a Caching Plugin
Install a caching plugin like WP Rocket or W3 Total Cache to improve your site’s load times by caching static files. These plugins can significantly reduce the time it takes for your site to load, improving the user experience and SEO.
c. Optimize Images and Media Files
Large images can slow down your site, so it’s important to optimize them. Use image compression plugins like Smush or ShortPixel to reduce the file size of your images without losing quality. Also, consider serving images in modern formats like WebP for faster load times.
8. Migrating Shopify Blog Content
If your Shopify store includes a blog, you’ll want to ensure that all blog posts, comments, and media files are transferred to your new WordPress site.
a. Export Blog Posts from Shopify
Shopify offers a built-in export tool to download your blog posts in CSV format. You can also manually copy the blog content and paste it into WordPress posts.
b. Import Blog Posts to WordPress
Use the WordPress Importer tool to upload your Shopify blog posts to your new WordPress site. Ensure that you categorize and tag the posts as needed to maintain the same structure and organization.
9. Final Testing and Launch
After migrating your store’s data, design, and SEO settings, it’s time for final testing before launching your new WordPress store.
a. Check for Broken Links
Use a tool like Broken Link Checker to identify any broken links on your new site. Ensure that all internal and external links are working correctly.
b. Test Payment Gateways and Forms
Ensure that your payment gateways (such as PayPal, Stripe, or Authorize.net) are correctly set up and working. Also, test any forms on your site to ensure they function as expected.
c. Monitor Site Performance
Once your new WordPress store is live, use tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to monitor traffic, performance, and SEO rankings.
Conclusion
Migrating from Shopify to WordPress with WooCommerce is a transformative process that offers numerous benefits, including greater control, customization, and scalability. While the migration process may seem daunting, following a structured approach and using the right tools will help you make the transition smoothly.
At Dellos, we offer comprehensive CMS migration services, helping businesses like yours seamlessly migrate from platforms like Shopify to WordPress, Webflow to WordPress, and Squarespace to WordPress. By leveraging our expertise, you can focus on growing your business while we handle the technical aspects of your migration.