Move to Shopify without
losing your rankings
Migrations fail on the redirect map, not the design. Here is exactly what we carry across, what gets rebuilt, and how we make sure the search traffic you spent years earning arrives on the other side.
You are not worried about
the design.
Nobody delays a migration because they are unsure about a theme. They delay because they have spent years earning Google rankings, and a bad migration burns them in a weekend. That risk is real — and it is entirely avoidable with a redirect map built before anything moves.
What comes across,
and what does not.
Products, variants and collections
Titles, descriptions, SKUs, pricing, inventory, images, variant options and category structure. WooCommerce attribute logic does not map one-to-one onto Shopify options, so this is the part that needs a human rather than an import plugin.
Customers and order history
Customer records, addresses and historical orders come across so your reporting does not restart at zero. Passwords cannot migrate — no platform allows it — so returning customers set a new one on first login, and we script that email so it does not read as a security scare.
Blog content and pages
Posts, pages, images and internal links. If you have been publishing for years, this content is often carrying more of your search traffic than your product pages are, and it is the part most migrations quietly drop.
Meta titles, descriptions and image alt text
Carried across rather than regenerated. If you have optimised a product title over three years, it moves with the product.
Reviews
Depends where they live. Reviews held in a WooCommerce plugin usually export cleanly into a Shopify reviews app. Reviews rendered from a third-party service often just need the service reconnected. We check before quoting, not after.
What does not come across
Your WordPress theme, your plugins, and any custom PHP. Shopify is a different platform, not a skin — anything built as a WooCommerce customisation gets rebuilt as a Shopify one. We list these explicitly in the quote so there are no surprises at go-live.
The redirect map
is the whole job.
WooCommerce and Shopify structure URLs differently. A WooCommerce product might sit at /shop/product-name/; on Shopify it lands at /products/product-name. Every one of those old addresses is a link Google has indexed, a link another site points at, or a link sitting in someone’s bookmarks. Leave them unmapped and every one becomes a 404.
1. Crawl the existing store first
Before anything moves, we crawl every indexed URL and pull your Search Console data, so we know which pages are actually earning traffic and which are dead weight not worth carrying.
2. Map old to new, one line at a time
Products, collections, blog posts, pages and paginated category URLs each get a destination. Where a page has no equivalent, it points at the closest useful thing — never at the homepage, which tells Google the page is gone rather than moved.
3. Load the redirects before go-live
Redirects are in place the moment DNS switches, not the week after. This is the difference between a ranking dip that recovers in days and one that does not recover at all.
4. Watch it for 30 days
New sitemap submitted, Search Console monitored for crawl errors and coverage drops, and anything that slipped through gets a redirect added. A migration is not finished at launch, it is finished when the graphs settle.
The local pieces
that have to be rewired.
Payment gateway
Your WooCommerce gateway plugin does not carry over. Yoco, PayFast, Peach Payments and Ozow all connect to Shopify, but they differ on transaction fees, settlement timing and payout terms. A migration is the natural moment to reassess which one suits your order values — most brands are on the one they picked when they were smaller.
Couriers and shipping rates
Bob Go, The Courier Guy and Pargo pickup points each need reconnecting and re-rating. Regional rate rules, free-shipping thresholds and pickup-point selection at checkout are rebuilt rather than imported.
VAT and pricing display
Shopify handles tax-inclusive pricing differently from WooCommerce. Getting this wrong shows customers a different number at checkout than on the product page, which is one of the fastest ways to lose a sale.
Email and marketing flows
Abandoned cart, order confirmation and post-purchase sequences are rebuilt on the Shopify side and tested with real orders before launch, so the first customer through is not the one who finds the broken one.
We also migrate from BigCommerce, Magento, Wix and Squarespace — and if you are running WooCommerce and it is working well, we will happily maintain and optimise it rather than sell you a move you do not need. What it costs: migrations are quoted per store, because catalogue size and integration count drive the number. Our published price bands are here — migration work typically places a store in the Growth band or above.
Get a Migration Quote →Common Questions,
Straight Answers.
Will I lose my Google rankings when I migrate to Shopify?
Not if the redirect map is built before the move. Every indexed URL gets a 301 to its new destination, meta titles and descriptions carry over, and Search Console is monitored for 30 days after launch. A short dip while Google recrawls is normal; a permanent loss is a sign the redirects were never done.
Can I keep my order history and customer accounts?
Yes. Customer records, addresses and historical orders migrate across so your reporting is continuous. Passwords cannot be migrated on any platform, so returning customers reset on first login — we write that email so it reads as a normal upgrade rather than a security alert.
How long does a WooCommerce to Shopify migration take?
Typically four to eight weeks depending on catalogue size, how many integrations need rewiring, and how clean the existing data is. Messy product data is the single biggest cause of a migration running long.
Will my store go offline during the migration?
No. The Shopify store is built, populated and tested in full while your existing store keeps trading. The switch is a DNS change at the end, with redirects already loaded.
Do my WooCommerce plugins work on Shopify?
No. Shopify has its own app ecosystem, so anything a plugin was doing gets replaced by a Shopify app or built natively. We audit your active plugins up front and tell you which have direct equivalents, which need a workaround, and which you will not miss.
Should I move off WooCommerce at all?
Not always. If your store is stable, your team knows WordPress and your hosting is solid, staying can be the right call. Migration usually pays for itself when you are spending more time maintaining the platform than selling on it, or when plugin conflicts and hosting issues are costing you orders. We will tell you if we think you should stay.
Do you migrate from platforms other than WooCommerce?
Yes — BigCommerce, Magento, Wix, Squarespace and custom builds, for clients in South Africa and internationally. The redirect-map discipline described above is identical regardless of what you are moving from. We also work in the other direction: if your WooCommerce or BigCommerce store is healthy, we will maintain and optimise it rather than push a migration.
Thinking about
making the move?
Send us your current store URL. We will crawl it, tell you honestly whether migrating is worth it for your situation, and quote the work if it is.