Migrating to Shopify: What Actually Happens, How Long It Takes, and What Can Go Wrong

Most of the content you'll find about Shopify migrations reads like it was written by someone who has never actually done one. It talks about "seamless transitions" and "simple data transfers" as if moving a live ecommerce store from one platform to another is roughly as complicated as forwarding your emails.

It isn't.

We've migrated stores from WooCommerce, Magento, BigCommerce, Squarespace, PrestaShop, and fully custom-built platforms. Every single one had something unexpected in it. The question is never whether something will come up — it's whether you have a process robust enough to handle it without your store going dark, your SEO tanking, or your order history disappearing.

This is what a Shopify migration actually looks like from our end: what we do, in what order, how long it takes, and where things go wrong when they do.

The honest answer on timeline: 4 to 12 weeks, depending on complexity.

A straightforward WooCommerce store with a clean product catalogue, under 500 products, and no custom integrations? Four to six weeks. A Magento store with 5,000 SKUs, complex B2B pricing rules, custom checkout logic, and years of order history? Ten to twelve weeks minimum. Anyone quoting you two weeks for a complex migration is either very optimistic or not planning to do it properly.

Phase 1: Discovery and Data Audit (Week 1-2)

Before we touch a single product record, we spend time understanding what you actually have. This sounds obvious but it's the phase most agencies skip, and it's why migrations fail.

A data audit covers:

• Products and variants: how many, how they're structured, whether variant data is clean or messy, whether images are stored locally or via a CDN
• Customer records: volume, data format, whether passwords can be migrated (they usually can't, which needs a plan)
• Order history: how many years back, whether it needs to be fully searchable or just archived
• URL structure: every existing URL that has SEO value needs a redirect mapped before launch
• Custom functionality: anything your current platform does that Shopify doesn't do out of the box — subscriptions, trade pricing, complex shipping rules, custom product configurators
• Third-party integrations: your ERP, your 3PL, your email platform, your reviews app

That last point catches people out regularly. You might have a reviews app with three years of verified customer reviews. If it doesn't have a Shopify equivalent, or if the data export format doesn't map cleanly, those reviews can be lost. We've seen it happen with stores that didn't audit properly before starting.

"Futur were fantastic to work with, offering clear ideas, honest guidance, and flexibility throughout the project. Their support made the entire process smooth and stress-free." — Aled Davies, MD, Cobra Workwear

Phase 2: Build and Data Migration (Weeks 2-8)

This is where the actual work happens, and it runs in parallel rather than sequentially. While the development team is building your new Shopify theme, the data migration work is happening separately in a staging environment.

Data migration: what moves and how

Products, collections, customer records, and order history are migrated using a combination of Shopify's native import tools, custom scripts, and in some cases direct API work. The approach depends entirely on your source platform.

WooCommerce exports relatively cleanly. Magento is more complex because of how it handles configurable products and attribute sets. Custom platforms are the hardest, because there's no standard export format — we're often extracting directly from a database.

What migrates well:

• Products, variants, images, descriptions
• Customer email addresses and account data
• Order history (as records, not as live orders)
• Collections and product organisation
• Meta titles and descriptions (with mapping work)

What needs careful handling:

• Customer passwords (Shopify can't import hashed passwords from most platforms; customers will need to reset)
• Reviews and UGC (platform-dependent, often requires a specialist app)
• Subscription data (needs a compatible Shopify app like Recharge)
• Custom pricing rules and trade accounts

The SEO piece most agencies miss

Every URL on your current store that has any backlinks, rankings, or traffic needs a 301 redirect to its new Shopify equivalent. This is not optional. It is also not something you can do in an afternoon.

For a store with 2,000 product pages, 50 collection pages, and a blog with 80 posts, that's a redirect map with over 2,000 rows. Each one needs to be correct. A missed redirect on a high-traffic collection page can cost you weeks of recovery time.

We build the redirect map during the audit phase and test every single redirect before launch. It's one of the most time-consuming parts of the project, and it's also one of the most important.

For a detailed walkthrough of the SEO side, our Shopify SEO migration guide covers it in full.

Phase 3: UAT, Testing and Pre-Launch (Weeks 6-10)

Once the build is done and data is loaded into staging, we go through a structured testing phase before anything goes live. This is longer than most clients expect and shorter than it should be if corners get cut.

What we test before launch

Area

What we check

Data integrity

Product counts, variant accuracy, image quality, pricing

Redirects

Every mapped URL returns a 301, not a 404

Checkout

Full purchase flow on desktop and mobile, all payment methods

Customer accounts

Login, order history display, password reset flow

Integrations

Email platform, analytics, reviews app, fulfilment

Speed

Core Web Vitals baseline before and after

SEO

Meta data, canonical tags, sitemap, robots.txt

The checkout test is non-negotiable and often catches things. Payment gateway configuration on Shopify is not identical to other platforms. Shipping zones, tax rules, and discount logic all need verifying against your existing setup.

The launch window matters. We schedule go-lives on Tuesday or Wednesday mornings, outside of peak trading hours, with the full team available. Launching on a Friday afternoon before a bank holiday weekend is how stores end up with unresolved issues and no one available to fix them.

When we migrated Campervan Coffee Co from WooCommerce to Shopify, we moved over 3,000 orders of history with zero data loss and kept their active subscription customers on Recharge without disruption. That kind of result comes from the testing phase, not luck.

Where Shopify Migrations Go Wrong

These are the actual failure modes we see, not theoretical ones.

1. Underestimating data complexity

The client says "we have about 300 products." The actual product catalogue has 300 base products, 4,200 variants, inconsistent naming conventions, duplicate SKUs, and images stored in three different locations. The migration scope doubles overnight.

Do a proper data export and count before scoping the project.

2. Ignoring custom functionality until it's too late

Your current platform has a feature your business depends on. A trade portal with tiered pricing. A product configurator. A custom subscription model. These need to be identified and scoped before the build starts, not discovered during UAT when the launch date is two weeks away.

3. Skipping the redirect audit

We've taken over migrations where the previous agency launched without a full redirect map. The client lost 40% of organic traffic in the first month. It takes months to recover, and some of it never comes back. If your agency isn't talking about redirects from day one, that's a problem.

4. Migrating during peak season

We've been asked to launch migrations in November. We decline. The risk of something going wrong during your highest-revenue period is not worth the few weeks saved. Plan your migration for a quieter trading period.

5. No post-launch monitoring plan

The work doesn't end at launch. The first two weeks after go-live need active monitoring: crawl errors, 404s, ranking changes, conversion rate vs baseline, checkout completion rate. Issues that surface in week one are fixable. Issues discovered six weeks later are much harder to attribute and fix.

Our Shopify migration checklist covers the full pre and post-launch process if you want the complete picture.

Which Platform Are You Migrating From?

The source platform shapes the entire project. Here's a quick read on the most common ones:

• WooCommerce to Shopify: The most common migration we handle. Data exports are reasonably clean, but subscription logic, custom checkout extensions, and plugin-dependent features need careful mapping.
• Magento to Shopify: The most complex. Magento's product attribute architecture doesn't map directly to Shopify. B2B functionality, complex pricing rules, and multi-store setups all need rebuilding rather than migrating.
• BigCommerce to Shopify: Structurally similar platforms, which makes the data migration cleaner. The main work is in custom theme rebuild and app stack remapping.
• Squarespace to Shopify: Often smaller stores, but Squarespace's ecommerce data export is limited. Product data usually needs manual work and image quality varies.
• Custom platforms: Every one is different. We extract directly from the database where possible. Timeline and complexity depend entirely on how the original platform was built.

If you're not sure which migration path applies to you, our Shopify migrations service page covers the full scope of what we handle.

Ready to Move to Shopify?

A well-executed migration sets you up with a faster, easier-to-manage store and a clean platform to grow from. A poorly executed one costs you traffic, revenue, and months of recovery work.

If you're seriously considering a move, start with a proper scoping conversation before committing to a timeline or budget. The details of your current setup matter more than anything else.

We offer a free discovery call where we'll look at your current platform, ask the right questions, and give you an honest read on what your migration involves. No generic quotes, no pressure.

Talk to us about your migration

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