WooCommerce powers about 24% of UK eCommerce stores. Shopify powers about 23%. The numbers shifted in 2024. The migration wave from Woo → Shopify isn't theoretical — we've shipped 19 of them in the last 18 months.
This is the playbook. 27 steps, in execution order, with the things that go wrong called out at each stage.
Why brands leave WooCommerce.
The reasons are remarkably consistent across the 19 migrations we've shipped:
- Hosting falls over at peak. Black Friday 2024 took down four of our clients on managed WordPress before they came to us.
- Plugin maintenance is a job. 12 plugins, 12 update cycles, 12 ways to break the cart.
- PCI compliance ages badly. Self-hosted means self-compliant. Shopify is PCI-DSS Level 1 by default.
- The dev who built it left. Custom WooCommerce stores are bespoke by definition. When the original dev moves on, replacement risk is acute.
Pre-migration audit.
Before any code moves, document everything. The audit deliverable should be a one-page brief with these headings:
- 01
Active products + variants
WP-CLI export. Total SKUs, variant complexity, image counts.
- 02
Active customer accounts
Customer count, order history depth, store credit / loyalty balances.
- 03
Active orders + statuses
Last 24 months of orders. Statuses other than completed need mapping.
- 04
Indexed URL list
Search Console export — every URL that has earned an impression in the last 90 days.
- 05
Active plugins
Each plugin: what it does, what its Shopify equivalent is, monthly cost.
- 06
Active payment methods
Stripe, PayPal, custom — each needs a Shopify Payments / Stripe equivalent.
Catalog + variants.
WooCommerce variants are stored as separate posts with parent/child linkage. Shopify variants are stored on the product object. The mapping is straightforward but lossy in two places:
- Variation images — WC supports per-variation images natively; Shopify requires variant-image association via metafields or app.
- Variation pricing rules — WC tax rules per variation map to Shopify tax overrides.
- 100+ variant limit — Shopify caps at 100 variants per product. Configurable products with more need restructuring.
Customers + orders.
Customer migration is where data integrity matters most. Customers see broken history immediately if you get this wrong.
Approach: import last 24 months of orders as full Shopify Order objects (Plus only for high volumes). Older orders compress to JSON in customer metafields. Customer can still see them in their portal; analytics can still query them.
19
WOO MIGRATIONS
shipped 2022–2026
±2%
AVG SEO LOSS
60-day window
100%
CUSTOMER PORTAL
historic orders preserved
SEO + redirects.
This is where most migrations bleed traffic. Three rules that are non-negotiable:
- 1:1 redirects for every indexed URL. Not patterns — explicit URL → URL pairs. Generated from Search Console export, not theoretical sitemap.
- Structured data parity. Product schema, breadcrumbs, organisation. Match what was on WooCommerce or improve.
- Canonical pre/post diff. Run a screaming-frog crawl pre-migration and 7 days post. Diff. Investigate every changed canonical.
Payments + apps.
Stripe → Shopify Payments is the easy case. PayPal carries over directly. Custom payment gateways (rare on WooCommerce, occasionally seen on B2B) need Shopify Payments custom integration or external gateway.
Apps: most WooCommerce plugins have Shopify equivalents. The 80/20: subscriptions (WC Subs → Recharge), loyalty (WC Loyalty → LoyaltyLion), reviews (Yotpo, Judge.me), search (Searchanise). Document the cost delta in the audit — Shopify apps are pricier than WP plugins, so the OpEx changes.
Go-live checklist.
The final 48 hours have a specific order:
- T-48 hrs: Final data sync. Orders within the sync window flagged for manual reconciliation.
- T-24 hrs: Soft launch on temporary domain. Internal QA pass. Stakeholders walk through cart and checkout.
- T-2 hrs: DNS TTL lowered to 5 min, two days prior. Now we cut.
- T-0: DNS swap. Off-peak hour (typically 02:00 UK time).
- T+1 hr: Verify HTTPS, checkout test, redirect spot-checks, Search Console new sitemap submission.
- T+24 hrs: First daily monitoring report — error rates, conversion, search impressions.
- T+14 days: Monitoring window closes. Hot-fix capacity returned. Project closed.
That's it. Same script, every migration. Below is the full one-pager template — feel free to use it.
