How to Migrate from Magento to Shopify: The Ultimate Guide

Why Should I Migrate from Magento to Shopify?

Whether you migrate your store from Magento to Shopify yourself or take help from experts to get this job done for you, here are some reasons why migrating an online store from Magento to Shopify would be a good option for your online business.

• Migrating from Magento to Shopify will give you a lot of benefits to your online business as it will reduce all efforts to manage and maintain an online eCommerce store.
• Shopify was specially designed with a focus on helping business owners to create and manage their online stores. With new feature enhancements, it is now not only easier to manage and run an online store but to sell products online more effectively as compared to any other eCommerce platform.
• Shopify is well-known for the best and cost-effective eCommerce solutions for your online eCommerce store in comparison to any other platform available in the market.
• It also provides the highest security solutions for online eCommerce stores. Apart from that Shopify offers a wide range of add-ons, apps, and other fantastic features for your store.

Shopify provides a lot of features that let you sell online across the world more efficiently. Read the article below to know more about Shopify features and functionalities for your online store. 

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What Data Can Be Migrated From Magento to Shopify?

Products & Product Categories: When moving from Magento to Shopify, you can migrate all products and product categories, along with product name, description, size, price, URL, status, SKU, images, special price, manufacturer name, weight, variants, meta title, meta description, base image, and several items available in the stock.
Order Data: It covers the number of purchased items, list of goods purchased already, customer ID, customer name, billing & shipping address, order date, order status, payment details, product price, product quantity, shipping cost, discount price, tax price, total price, subtotal prices, customer name, order comments.
Images: It covers images of the main page and between content.
Static Page Content: It covers pages such as Home, About us, Blogs, Contact pages, Privacy page, and other CMS pages.
Products’ Visuals: It will migrate all product details, such as product color, size, and shape.
Integrations: It migrates customers’ essential information such as name, email, contact number, location, address, etc.
Benefits: It includes various offers, discounts, promo codes, coupons, etc.

Challenges you may face while migrating from Magento to Shopify

Now that you have planned for the migration from Magento to Shopify. Be prepared as you may have to face some challenges and you must be ready to overcome these challenges while migrating from Magento to Shopify. Because migrating an online store from Magento to Shopify is not that simple, it requires being skilled enough with technical expertise as we told you already.

Try to identify how your store is running currently and what are the most important things that you think are really important, check them carefully and after that, you can start the migration process. Also, think about any critical or technical issues if they come up, then Shopify is ready to help around the clock.

But please make sure that the whole website data is migrated successfully without any loss of single data. Keep a note that there should be no data loss during the migration if it happens it may affect your store.

Steps to Migrate from Magento to Shopify

Let’s get started with the migration process using the steps below:

1. Make Your Store Ready with Shopify

First of all, you need to prepare your Shopify store with the Shopify installation for your store without requiring any add-on modules or further changes. To get started with Shopify, you will get a 14-days trial to build, manage and run your Shopify store.

You will get to learn about the various features, functionalities, and their uses during the trial version. Once you get used to it or are familiar with the Shopify platform, you can upgrade to a paid version for more features.

Shopify comes with hundreds of free and paid themes that you can use for your store depending on your business needs and further you can customize the theme to meet your specific needs of customers. But before you go with the customization, make sure the migration has been completed successfully.

2. Take a Backup of Your Magento Store

Before you start with the migration, make sure you have generated a backup of your Magento store, so in case any problem comes up during Magento to Shopify migration, you have the backup ready. So, it’s very very important to take a backup to ensure all the data is safe and secure.

To create a backup, follow the steps below:

1. Login to the admin panel, go to System>Tools>Backups
2. Click on the button at the upper right corner and choose a type of backup you want to create

System Backup: It includes a full backup including all the data and file systems on your store. This backup also covers the backup of the Media folder.
Database and Media Backup: It includes the backup of certain media folders and the database.
Database Backup: It covers a backup of the database only.

3. Download the app for Import

Shopify provides various fantastic applications for importing the data but what works best matters most. Seeing my experience, I would recommend Store Importer as the best option for migrating data to Shopify.

To download the app, go to the Shopify Admin Panel, select Apps, then Store Importer and follow the instructions.

4. Export Data from Magento

Well, now it’s time to move your home to a new place. To do so, follow the steps carefully to export the data without any hassle.

Login to the admin panel, then go to System>Data Transfer>Export
From the Export settings, choose the Entity Type to one of the following options:

• Products
• Customer Addresses
• Customer Main File

If you start the importing process via CSV or XML, you may have the file to be repeated for each of these entities if required.

1. Scroll down below and click on Continue ( ensure that Cron job is running)
2. By default, all exported data files are located at the path <Magento-root-directory>/var/export folder. If you choose the Remote Storage module, all exported files will be located at <remote-storage-root-directory>/import_export/export folder.

5. Import your Data to Shopify store

This is the step where all your data is imported into the Shopify store. All you need to do is a few more jobs and you are done.

• If you are using the Shopify Store Importer app, go to the admin page, then Apps, and then Import store.
• Select your platform option as Other as Magento is not listed by default.
• Click Add Files and choose the exported files under the tab Upload files.
• Now select the CSV file that you have exported from Magento
• Click on Continue Import> Import to complete

How to Import products individually

• Go to the Shopify admin, then Products > All products.
• Choose Import.
• Click Add File, then add CSV file (Make sure the CSV file should not be greater than 15MB).
• Click on the Upload file.

How to Import customers individually

• Go to the Shopify admin, choose Customers > Import customers.
• Click Add file, select the CSV file of your customer.
• Now click on Import Customers.

Please keep a note that the order of importing customer, product, and historical order data is very crucial.

If you consider orders, then migrated orders will be associated with their products and customers, and then you can navigate to the customer's complete transaction history. You must import the data using the order:

• Products
• Customers
• Historical orders

Please note that customers’ passwords will not be migrated to Shopify.

Customer Passwords: The customer passwords are stored encrypted and therefore they will not be moved. And you will be able to migrate customer records only, but not customer accounts.

6. Review Imported Data

After you are done with all the above steps, make sure you review the imported data carefully, to avoid if anything is missing. The same applies to data entry, so be sure to double-check each and everything to avoid any problems or something missing.

Shopify provides an easy way to review and update the data. Following are some common mistakes you will face when importing the data:

Failed to Import a few Products and Customers: Verify if your products and customer were imported successfully, if not then add them manually.
Data imported but has some minor changes: You can promptly check the import for missing data and edit it accordingly.
Products imported successfully but failed to publish: The products whose visibility is set to “Hidden” with Magento will be shown as unpublish in Shopify. To fix this problem, you can change the product visibility from hidden to show in Shopify.
Bundled products failed to import: You need to add bundled products manually or you can use product bundling apps using the Shopify store.
Failed to Import some Product Variants: If the product variations such as weight, size, color, etc, failed to import, then can you add them manually.
Added Tags in imported records: Tags are added to imported records in the given structure import__ by the app called Store Importer.
Imported Digital products successfully but failed to publish: If you are using digital products and want to sell them using Shopify, then you need to install a specific Shopify app to fix that issue for you.
Imported products but without dimensions: To fix this issue, you need to add dimensions to the product description.

7. Build Your Brand New Shopify Store

This is the final step where you need to design and build your Shopify store. With Shopify, it’s pretty easy to customize and design your Shopify store to meet your unique business needs. Shopify provides numerous pre-made themes and other visual suggestions that make it easier to build an aesthetically pleasing, retina-ready, and highly attractive design for your online store. So, with Shopify, you don’t need to worry about the look and feel of your online store.

Bottom Line

Thus, you need to take care of all the above steps when migrating from Magento to Shopify without any hassle. Hope you find the migration from Magento to Shopify easier after knowing all the guides to carry the Shopify migration seamlessly.

If you are still not sure about the migration from Magento to Shopify and want us to get this job done for you, don’t be shy to speak with our Shopify experts.