Shopify Migration: What Budget Should You Plan For?

For several years now, Shopify has been revolutionizing the world of e-commerce. The CMS indeed allows e-merchants to design and manage online stores very easily. The platform gains new clients every year. Some of them are creating their online store for the first time. Others already have a store managed on another platform but wish to migrate their website to take advantage of the benefits offered by the SaaS solution to sell their products. This operation can be free if the store manager handles it alone (thanks to their knowledge, a dedicated application, etc.). In cases where they call upon Shopify experts or a web marketing agency, they will nevertheless have to pay for the service rendered. What is the cost to expect for migrating a store to Shopify? We provide you with some answers. We can also help you co-construct your budget. Learn more about our Shopify offering.

Migrating your e-commerce store to another CMS: the benefits of the practice

Shopify is a CMS specialized in e-commerce creation. The platform boasts advanced features that allow store managers to easily develop their business.

Every year, many e-merchants choose to migrate their online store to Shopify. Specifically, they change their e-commerce CMS by transferring their site's content (products, blog, pages, etc.) from one platform to another.

This transformation can meet multiple needs. In some cases, certain online store owners find themselves limited by their CMS once they reach a certain number of customers. Others are looking for more modernity in the appearance of their online store. Finally, they may also be keen to expand internationally by taking advantage of the ability to create websites in different languages and currencies thanks to Shopify.

Generally, opting for website migration can allow you to:

• face fewer technical constraints and have easier management;
• improve the natural referencing of the store (SEO);
• give it a more modern look, thanks to an innovative theme.

What are the costs to expect when migrating an online store to Shopify?

The cost of migrating a store to Shopify varies depending on many factors. Everything depends on the method used and the skills of the Shopify experts engaged, if any.

The cost to expect for migrating your store to Shopify independently

With some technical knowledge, time, and good organization, the e-merchant can proceed with the migration of their website to Shopify independently.

If they are sufficiently proficient, they can operate alone by copying and pasting the pages and data they wish to migrate or by creating a CSV file. Alternatively, they can download a dedicated application that can facilitate the maneuver. Regardless of the method adopted, if the e-merchant carries out the migration of their store to Shopify without calling on experts, the operation is free and there will be no payment to anticipate.

The cost to expect for migrating your store to Shopify with experts

Performing a site migration is never a trivial operation. Indeed, it requires a minimum of knowledge in coding, web development, and IT. Moreover, it also requires time, because while the migration itself only takes a few minutes to a few hours, you need to be available beforehand to sort the data to be migrated and organize it. It is also necessary to take the time to carry out all the useful customizations.

For this reason, many e-commerce site owners are accompanied by Shopify experts who will handle the migration. In this case, they must nevertheless pay for the service rendered. The cost of migrating a store to Shopify by experts depends on many parameters. Very often, professionals charge according to the project requirements, their areas of expertise, or their location. Furthermore, the more experienced the expert, the higher their price.

Most professionals offer hourly rates or package deals. If the project is simple and the online store is small, the Shopify expert can charge between €50 and €150 per hour. The more substantial the workload, the more the prices also evolve. Thus, for a more complex project or an online store that offers many products and has multiple customers, the Shopify expert can charge between €300 and €1,000 per hour.

Solutions for a successful migration to Shopify: proceeding in steps and taking certain precautions

To successfully migrate to Shopify, it is necessary to define steps to follow and take a certain number of precautions. First, to avoid negatively impacting the online store's positioning in search engine results. Second, to avoid losing customers or data.

Steps to follow

To successfully migrate to Shopify, the key is to proceed step by step. First, start by sorting the information contained on the current store and remove duplicate pages, those that display 404 errors, or those that are no longer up to date. This will then allow you to migrate only useful data to the new platform. This step is also essential for the site's good SEO afterwards.

Then it is possible to export the store's content (product catalog, family pages, blog articles, etc.) to perform the migration from the old store (WordPress, WooCommerce, Wix, Prestashop, etc.) to Shopify. Once the site content has been transferred, the owner can perform various checks to ensure that all data has been migrated. All that remains is to customize the new online store with an attractive theme, personalized checkouts, and call-to-action buttons.

Precautions to take

Migrating a website is a rather complex operation. To make it a success, certain precautions must be taken.

Back up data

To avoid mishaps, the best thing to do is to back up all of the site's data even before proceeding with the migration. Indeed, during the process, the site administrator is not immune to an error that could be fatal. In case of clumsiness during the operation, they would then have the possibility to go back and recover the lost data.

Plan for a maintenance page

It is possible that the site may be unavailable during its migration. It is therefore important to configure a maintenance page to inform users that the site is getting a facelift and will soon be available again. Ideally, it is best to act in the middle of the night to avoid losing potential customers.

Redirect URLs to avoid losing traffic

Once the migration is complete, it is essential to set up redirection URLs to avoid losing traffic, then to deindex the pages present on the old platform. It is important to perform this redirection immediately after the migration and to carry out regular checks using Google Search Console to correct any detected errors. If the store has hundreds of products, it is possible to automate redirections.

As you will have understood, while migrating a site to Shopify offers many advantages, the operation is not without risk. Of course, proceeding alone allows you not to impact the company's budget. However, this is not recommended if the store owner does not have the necessary knowledge. In which case, it is better to call on experts, even if it means spending between €100 and €1,000 for the migration to be correctly performed.

We recommend you read these other pages:

• How to migrate a store to Shopify?
• When to migrate a store to Shopify?
• Why use a Shopify agency to migrate your e-commerce?