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Migration guideWooCommerce to Shopify. Without losing sales.

A step-by-step plan for South African stores: what moves, what doesn’t, and how to keep your search rankings.

Moving platforms is mostly planning. The products are the easy part. The risks are lost search rankings, broken links, customers who can’t log in and payments that don’t work on launch day.

This is the order we follow when we move a store.

What moves
Products, customers, orders, pages and posts
What doesn’t
Passwords, plugins and your theme
Payments
A local gateway: Shopify Payments isn’t offered in South Africa
Biggest risk
Broken links and lost rankings

Step by stepEight steps.

  1. 01

    Take stock

    List products and variants, customers, orders, pages, blog posts, reviews, and every plugin and what it does. Save every URL from your sitemap: you will need them for redirects.

  2. 02

    Price the move

    Shopify bills its plan in dollars, adds a fee on each sale through a third-party gateway, and most stores need a few paid apps to replace plugins. Work it out before you commit.

  3. 03

    Move the data

    Export products from WooCommerce (Products, then Export) and bring them in with Shopify’s Store Importer app or a migration tool. Then check variants, images, SEO titles and descriptions by hand.

  4. 04

    Customers and passwords

    Customer accounts move, but passwords can’t. Plan an email inviting customers to activate their new account, with a reason to do it.

  5. 05

    Payments, delivery and VAT

    Set up a local gateway (PayFast, Yoco, Peach Payments, Paystack or Ozow), your couriers and rates, and VAT at 15%. Run a real test order with each payment method.

  6. 06

    Redirect every old URL

    WooCommerce links like /product/name/ become /products/name/ on Shopify, and categories become collections. Map every old URL to its new page and upload the list to Shopify’s URL redirects, so links and rankings carry over.

  7. 07

    Tracking and consent

    Reconnect GA4, the Meta pixel and your ad tags, with consent for marketing cookies. Check that a test purchase is recorded before launch.

  8. 08

    Launch and switch the domain

    Lower your DNS TTL a day before, point the domain to Shopify, and keep the old site until the new one is checked. Then submit the new sitemap in Google Search Console and watch for broken links for a few weeks.

Before you switchThe launch checklist.

  1. 01Products, prices, variants and stock checked against the old store.
  2. 02Every old URL redirected to its new page.
  3. 03A test order paid with each payment method, and refunded.
  4. 04Order, shipping and account emails in your brand.
  5. 05Legal pages: your business details as the ECT Act requires, returns, privacy and POPIA consent.
  6. 06Tracking records a test purchase in GA4 and your ad platforms.
  7. 07Google Search Console set up for the new sitemap.

QuestionsAsked often.

Something else? Contact us

  • Not if every old URL redirects to the right new page and the content stays close to what ranked. Expect some movement for a few weeks while Google catches up.

  • Yes. PayFast, Yoco, Peach Payments, Paystack and Ozow all connect to Shopify. Shopify adds its own fee on each sale through a third-party gateway, which our platform fee calculator includes.

  • Yes. Passwords can’t be moved, so customers activate their account on the new store. Send the invitation with a reason to open it.

  • It depends on how many products you have, your custom features and how many plugins need replacing. A simple store moves faster than one with custom checkout rules or integrations.

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