If your website is run on Magento 1, you are likely looking into options for migrating off of the platform before support is discontinued next year in June 2020. Many of our clients have chosen to migrate to Shopify over Magento 2. Shopify is an easier to use, lower maintenance platform which makes it a great option for many small and medium sized businesses.

In the past our clients have struggled to keep Magento updated or patched on a regular basis. In addition they have encountered a number of issues which required a backend developer to be available for troubleshooting. Shopify, on the other hand, is built to be a plug and play platform, and because it is a SaaS platform it requires far less developer time.

Before you make the decision to migrate, it’s important to assess if your new platform can do everything you need it to. By making sure that you have covered all elements of your migration ahead of time you can avoid common pitfalls and delays in the migration process.

First, let’s look at reasons why Shopify might be a good fit for your business.

1. You are not using Magento’s multi-site / multi-storefront capabilities.
2. You are not using site-wide translations or separate currencies.
3. You process orders in a standard nature, with no additional processes before an order is completed.
4. You do not have a full-time developer on staff nor the resources to hire an agency for your maintenance & support needs.
5. You make frequent changes to your homepage and other call to action areas on your website.
6. You use a blog or have a large content library which you frequently update.
7. You are interested in a POS system for your brick and mortar stores.

Assuming all of these items ring true for your website then you are probably a great fit for the Shopify platform! Next, let’s take a look at the migration process and how to map out everything you need to do to get from Magento to Shopify.

Migration Questionnaire for moving from Magento to Shopify

When a new client comes to us who is interested in migrating platforms we ask them a series of questions to help understand their business and what their requirements are. To help everyone with this process we’ve shared this migration questionnaire as a Google Doc so that you can copy or download it and fill it out yourself.

Migration Questionnaire for Magento to Shopify

As the person leading the migration to this new platform it’s important to not only consider just what you see on the frontend of the website, but how everyone and all other systems, interact with Magento right now. If you are not familiar with the processes that your customer service, warehouse, accounting, or marketing team use on a daily basis, sit down with them and make a list of the things they are doing. This document is now your Internal Process Guide.

With the Questionnaire and Internal Process Guide complete you are now ready for the next step, mapping out the migration!

Magento to Shopify Data Migration Map

Creating a migration map is the best way to ensure your migration does not encounter any unexpected pitfalls. There are plenty of ways to go about doing this: word docs, spread sheets, you might even hire an agency, like us, to create and implement the map for you. When we develop a migration map for a client we first audit their existing system and then create a guide for how each component will be translated to the new system.

Let’s take a basic example that every web-store has, a product entity, and make an example mapping. Our first step is mapping out all of the components of the product. In Magento this is somewhat straightforward thanks to the attribute system. However, there are other parts of products which may not be stored as an attribute. These would be factors such as whether the product is configurable, what product reviews it has, related products, maybe a subscription component, etc. This is why it is helpful to view your products from both the backend and frontend of the website.

Here is a list of things that our example product includes in Magento:

Frontend:

• Name
• Price
• Tax class
• Description
• Recommendation For Use
• Cleaning Instructions
• Images
• Reviews
• Related products
• A custom note for a customer to enter additional details

Backend:

• Inventory
• Backorder status
• Shopping feed data
• Weight
• Category

Based on this information we can now create a mapping to Shopify. Most of this information will translate without issue to Shopify, but not all. In this case you’ll find a few pieces of information which require additional solutions:

Frontend:

• Name
• Price
• Tax class
• Description
• Recommendation For Use = Shopify only supports one description; this information will need to be added to a metafields plugin. 
• Cleaning Instructions = Shopify only supports one description; this information will need to be added to a metafields plugin. 
• Images
• Reviews = Requires installation of the Shopify reviews plugin.
• Related products = Requires a compatible theme or a developer to enable – more information here. 
• A custom note for a customer to enter additional details = Requires a metafields plugin and additional theme customization by a developer. 

Backend:

• Inventory
• Backorder status
• Shopping feed data = Requires a plugin.
• Weight
• Category = Categories become collections and tags in Shopify, however depending on your configuration you may also need a metafields plugin.

Using this information you can now create a list of additional plugins or development customizations that you will need to complete on the site in order to correctly migrate all of your data. You should have a data migration map for any entity that you wish to migrate, such as: customers, orders, products, categories, reviews, etc.

Next you will want to refer back to your Internal Process Guide. Are you able to run through all of your processes or do you need additional plugins to help you accomplish the tasks that your customer service and other teams are completing in the admin? If you haven’t already this is a great time to setup a free Shopify demo store. This way you can run through test orders and ensure all of your internal processes can be mapped to Shopify.

Popular Plugins for Replacing Magento

We often find that our clients moving from Magento to Shopify need some similar plugins. Here is a list of the most common plugins we see during the migration process:

• Metafields Manager 
• Product Reviews
• Amazon Integration
• Google Shopping Feed
• Quickbooks Integration
• RMAs / Returns
• GDPR Compliance

 

We hope you found this quick guide to migrating your store helpful! Let us know if you have any questions in the comments.