The basics of migrating from Shopify to Magento

There are many qualities desirable from an ecommerce platform. And every platform out there is offering a host of different services. But each ecommerce business have their own set of reasons to choose a particular platform.

There is a natural curiosity between Magento vs Shopify. But Magento is the reigning leader in the ecommerce development today and so there is a natural interest for Magento migration. Assuming that you have already made the decision to migrate from Shopify to Magento, here is a basic guide to run you through the process.

There are three ways for Shopify to Magento migration. You can choose any of these methods to migrate all your data and products from Shopify to Magento.

• Automated method

• Assisted method

• Manual method

Automated method

In the automated method one can use the APIs to carry out the migration. APIs are application programming interfaces, which are a set of programming code that facilitates data communication between two software products. Using these machine-readable APIs, Magento migration is carried out. An extension that is available in the Magento tool can establish direct connection to Shopify and carry out the migration.

There is a host of tools/services available to help with the Shopify migration. These commercially available tools or services come with a reasonable price. Furthermore, some of these tools/services offer a free demo migration to let the customer know what to expect. The automated method makes it convenient, seamless, and secure to move your data.

Assisted method

You can enlist the services of a web agency or a software developer to migrate from Shopify to Magneto. With their experience and knowledge there are zero chances of your data loss. The website contents migration will be handled smoothly too.

Sometimes, there may be instances of some technical incompatibility between the two platforms. In such scenarios, a developer team can come to the rescue handling these difficulties and your migration process to run smoothly. Also, if there is a huge volume of data to be migrated, then hiring a professional team will result in accurate execution.

Assisted method of migration surely comes with the price for there is no comparison to the knowledge and experience the professionals possess.

Manual method

Let’s put a warning right in the beginning – the manual migration is daunting and to be taken up only if you possess excellent programming skills and have the right knowledge to go about this. Without the aid of tools or a software developer, you may encounter many challenges.

But the manual method definitely gives the website owner more control on what components and contents are moved to the new platform.

Final note

After the successful migration, you may want to follow few more steps to get your website on the new platform up and running.

• Crawlable – determine if your website is crawlable. To rank your website organically and further assist in searches, you can generate a sitemap for your new store.

• Multiple devices compatibility – run your website on multiple devices and on different web browsers. Note if the load time is acceptable and all the images are compatible for various screen sizes.

• Website link structure – when there is a Shopify to Magento migration, there could be loss of website link structure. Set 301 redirects from old links to new links to fix this issue.

• Reconfigure the forms and confirmation emails – you may want to reconfigure the various forms required for your business according to the new website.

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