Your online store is stagnant. Conversion rates are flat, maintenance costs are rising, and every new feature becomes a project. Faced with this situation, two paths are open to you: revamp your current site by adding CRO optimizations, or migrate to Shopify to start on a more solid foundation. These are not the same decision. They do not involve the same budget. And above all, they do not carry the same level of risk.
Yet, this is a question our clients at Stellar Projects ask us several times a month. And honestly, there's no universal answer. But there is a rigorous reasoning process that can help make the decision. That's what we're going to give you here, without mincing words.
Table of Contents
Redesign or migration: understanding what's really at stake
Confusion often comes from a poorly phrased question. "Should I rebuild my site?" is not the right question. The right question is: is my current CMS capable of supporting the growth I'm aiming for?
A redesign consists of re-thinking the user experience, design, content, and sometimes the architecture of an existing store, without changing platforms. It often comes with a CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) approach to maximize ROI. It's a surgical operation on the existing system.
A migration, on the other hand, is about changing foundations. You leave your current CMS (PrestaShop, WooCommerce, Magento, Wix, or other) for Shopify. You're not just redecorating; you're changing the building entirely. It's more committing, riskier in the short term for SEO, but often more profitable in the medium term if your original platform is structurally limiting.
These two options are not interchangeable. Confusing them means either spending money to optimize a doomed system, or embarking on a major project when a simple CRO audit would have sufficed.
Diagnosing your current platform
Before any decision, an honest diagnosis is needed. Not a feeling, not a fleeting frustration: data. Here are the four dimensions to evaluate.
Technical performance
Test your site on Google's PageSpeed Insights. A Core Web Vitals score below 60 on mobile is a serious warning sign. According to Google data (2024), 53% of mobile users abandon a site that takes more than 3 seconds to load. If your score is poor and your current CMS doesn't allow you to structurally improve it, that's a strong argument for migration.
Functional scalability
List the 5 features you want to add in the next 18 months. For each, ask your current developer for an estimate. If the total response amounts to more than €20,000 for specific development of features native to Shopify (subscriptions, B2B, multi-currency, extensible checkout, etc.), migration becomes more economically attractive.
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
Calculate your annual TCO on your current CMS: hosting, preventive maintenance, security updates, modules, corrective developments. For PrestaShop and WooCommerce, in particular, this figure is often underestimated. A moderately complex PrestaShop store costs between €3,000 and €8,000/year in maintenance. Shopify, as a SaaS platform, includes hosting, security, and updates in its monthly subscription (starting from €36/month for the Basic plan).
CRO capability of your current theme
Some themes or CMS make conversion optimization structurally complicated. If you can't freely modify the product page, checkout, cross-sells, or if every A/B test requires ad hoc development, you're working against yourself. Shopify, through its Checkout Extensibility and certified app ecosystem, is now the most open platform for CRO without heavy development.
When a redesign with CRO is the right decision
Redesigning your site on your current CMS is the right option when the platform is not the problem. Here are the concrete signs that point in this direction.
You are already on Shopify
If your store runs on Shopify and performance is disappointing, migration doesn't make sense. The problem lies elsewhere: unsuitable theme, lack of CRO, poor catalog architecture, neglected SEO. A redesign of your Shopify store focused on UX and conversion can yield quick results, often within 6 to 10 weeks.
Your CMS is technically sound
If your PageSpeed scores are good, if your team masters the platform, if maintenance costs are reasonable... then changing CMS would be creating unnecessary problems. Focus investment on optimizing the conversion funnel: product pages, checkout, transactional emails, upsells.
The budget is constrained
A targeted redesign of an existing store generally costs between €5,000 and €15,000 depending on the scope. A CRO audit followed by targeted optimizations can start from €2,000 to €3,000 and generate a quick ROI (often 3 to 6 months). If your cash flow doesn't allow for a 3 to 5-month migration project, progressive redesign is a sensible strategy.
Your current SEO is strong
If you rank well for your strategic keywords, any migration carries a risk of temporary SEO regression, even if well prepared. It's better to consolidate the existing rather than take this risk unnecessarily. Exception: if your CMS is structurally detrimental to SEO (Wix, some very heavy Magento versions), migration can ultimately improve natural referencing.
When migrating to Shopify is essential
Migration is the right decision when your current CMS has become a glass ceiling for your growth. Here are the six situations where it is clearly necessary.
Your CMS is end-of-life or structurally limited
PrestaShop 1.6, Magento 1, certain versions of WooCommerce with an aging plugin ecosystem: these platforms accumulate technical debt that only increases. Every update becomes a risk. Every new development costs more than it should. Migrating to Shopify means liquidating this debt all at once.
You experience regular bugs and outages
Production errors, incompatibilities between modules, outages during peak load periods (sales, Black Friday)... These symptoms indicate a fragile architecture. Shopify, as a SaaS platform with a distributed infrastructure, guarantees 99.99% availability and handles traffic spikes without additional configuration.
You want to accelerate omnichannel and international expansion
Shopify Markets allows managing multiple countries, currencies, and languages from a single interface, without multiplying stores. If your ambition is international, this native feature alone can justify migration. The equivalent configuration on PrestaShop or WooCommerce is significantly more complex and costly.
Your team wastes time on administrative tasks
If your e-commerce manager spends several hours a week dealing with bugs, waiting for developers for minor changes, or juggling a dozen poorly integrated modules, calculate the cost of this loss of productivity over a year. It's often more than the cost of migration.
You need advanced native features
Shopify Plus (starting from €2,300/month) natively offers: B2B with dedicated catalog and pricing, extensible checkout, advanced automations (Flow), multi-store, and simplified ERP/OMS integrations. For brands exceeding €1M in e-commerce revenue, these features are game-changers. Consult the Shopify migration guide to understand the steps based on your original platform.
You cannot recruit or retain qualified developers for your stack
The shortage of PrestaShop and Magento developers is real in France. Shopify, with its relatively accessible Liquid language and its global ecosystem of certified apps, simplifies recruitment and maintenance. This is an HR argument often underestimated in the decision.
Costs, timelines, and risks: an honest comparison
Here are the real ranges we observe at Stellar Projects for our projects in 2025.
Redesign on existing CMS
- Graphic and UX redesign: €5,000 to €12,000 - timeline: 6 to 10 weeks
- Complete structural redesign: €10,000 to €20,000 - timeline: 8 to 16 weeks
- CRO audit + implementation: €2,000 to €8,000 - timeline: 4 to 8 weeks
- SEO risk: low to moderate (if URLs change)
Migration to Shopify
- Standard CMS migration (PrestaShop, WooCommerce) to Shopify: €5,000 to €15,000 - timeline: 6 to 14 weeks
- Migration to Shopify Plus (complex store): €15,000 to €50,000 - timeline: 3 to 6 months
- SEO risk: moderate, manageable with a rigorous 301 redirection plan
- Recurring Shopify cost: €36 to €2,300/month depending on the plan
The SEO risk deserves serious consideration. A well-conducted migration by a Shopify migration specialist agency preserves natural referencing through comprehensive 301 redirection mapping, meta tag recovery, structured data, and internal linking. At Stellar, we have never observed a lasting SEO decline on properly prepared migrations. Temporary drops (1 to 3 months) are inevitable; persistent regression is a sign of a botched migration.
"After migrating from Prestashop to Shopify, our company experienced 50% growth in 2023." - Noé F., Stellar Projects client
What Shopify concretely brings in 2025
Shopify is no longer just a platform for small businesses. In 2024, Shopify processed over $235 billion in GMV (gross merchandise volume) globally. Hermès, Kylie Cosmetics, Gymshark, Jacquemus: premium brands and significant volumes run on Shopify or Shopify Plus.
Here's what has truly changed in the last 24 months and strengthens the argument for Shopify in 2025.
Shopify Checkout: the best conversion rate on the market
Shopify claims a checkout conversion rate 15% higher on average than its competitors, according to its own data. Shop Pay, the accelerated payment option, shows even higher conversion rates. In France, the native integration of Klarna, Alma, and PayPal in one click measurably changes the mobile shopping experience.
Checkout Extensibility
Since 2023, the Shopify Plus checkout is fully customizable via extensions (without modifying the source code). You can add upsells, custom fields, loyalty programs directly into the purchase funnel, without risky development or loss of PCI DSS certification.
Shopify Markets and native internationalization
Multi-currency, multi-language, local domains, automatic taxes by country: Shopify Markets radically simplifies international expansion. Features that used to require months of development and multiple modules on PrestaShop are available in a few clicks.
AI integrated into the core of the platform
Shopify Magic (integrated generative AI) offers automated product descriptions, suggested customer service responses, and performance insights. In 2025, AI is no longer an additional module: it is native to the platform. For brands that want to boost their conversion rate without multiplying developments, this is a concrete advantage.
Common mistakes in this arbitration
After supporting more than 100 stores at Stellar Projects, here are the mistakes we see regularly.
Confusing dissatisfaction with the service provider and CMS limitations
Sometimes, the problem isn't PrestaShop or WooCommerce: it's the agency that developed the site. Poor integration work on Shopify yields results as bad as good work on a less powerful CMS. Before migrating, make sure your problem is indeed structural and not related to mediocre execution.
Migrating without a redirection plan
Migration without rigorous SEO mapping is the most costly mistake. Hundreds of product URLs change during a migration. Without correctly configured 301 redirects, you lose all the SEO juice accumulated on your pages. This is non-negotiable. Discover how to approach it in detail with our 8-step guide.
Underestimating the migration budget
The cost of a migration is not limited to new site development. It must include: data migration (products, customers, orders), third-party application configuration, team training, and any custom developments. Consult our detailed analysis on the budget to plan for a Shopify migration.
Redesigning without data
Redesigning a site without analyzing heatmaps, session recordings, and conversion funnels is like repainting an apartment without having identified where the moisture is coming from. An audit of the existing is essential before any decision. Tools like Hotjar or Microsoft Clarity (free) provide insights in a few days.
Thinking that Shopify solves all problems
Shopify is an excellent platform. It's not a magic wand. If your product catalog is poorly structured, if your product pages are weak, if your value proposition is unclear, migrating to Shopify will not fundamentally change your conversion rates. The platform facilitates execution; it does not replace strategy.
Conclusion: how to decide
The redesign versus Shopify migration decision can be resolved with a simple framework. If your current CMS meets these three criteria simultaneously, stay on it and optimize: good technical performance, controlled maintenance costs, ability to implement the features you need. In this case, a well-executed CRO audit will give you a better short-term ROI.
However, if your platform is structurally limiting, if technical debt is accumulating, if your teams waste time on issues that should be natively resolved by your tool... then migrating to Shopify is not an expense, it's an investment in your growth capacity.
The right decision is not the one that costs the least today. It's the one that allows you to go faster, further, and more serenely towards your growth objectives. These are two different horizons, and neither is inherently better than the other.
If you're facing this decision and want an objective opinion based on your specific situation, our team at Stellar Projects offers no-obligation consultations to help you decide - and, sometimes, to tell you that you don't need us.