BigCommerce to Shopify Migration: Your Complete Guide

What is BigCommerce to Shopify Migration?

BigCommerce to Shopify migration is the process of moving your entire eCommerce store — products BigCommerce to Shopify, orders BigCommerce to Shopify, customer data to Shopify, and content services, securely and with zero downtime store migration.

Shopify and BigCommerce are both top eCommerce platforms, each with their own features and benefits for different types of online businesses. Many online businesses migrate from BigCommerce to Shopify to take advantage of Shopify’s scalability and growth.

This means a professional, SEO-friendly migration with no data loss.

BigCommerce to Shopify Transfer in 3 Simple Steps

Switching your eCommerce platform can be smooth with the right approach. First, create and set up your Shopify account. Migrating between two platforms, BigCommerce as your source store and Shopify as your target cart, requires planning. Here’s how to do a fast and accurate BigCommerce to Shopify migration:

1. Set up your BigCommerce (source store) and Shopify (target cart) online stores by providing necessary credentials and store URLs. Log into your Shopify admin to complete initial setup.
2. Select the data you want to migrate, products, orders, customer data, etc., using the migration wizard. Make sure to choose Shopify as your target cart during this step.
3. Run a free demo migration as your first migration to test accuracy, then launch the full data migration for a glitch-free Shopify migration.

Setting Up Your Shopping Carts for Data Migration BigCommerce to Shopify

Follow the Migration Wizard to set up your shopping carts. For detailed instructions on each phase, see the steps for a Magento 1 to Magento 2 migration:

• Choose BigCommerce from the dropdown and enter your store URL, make sure it matches your BigCommerce URL structure for SEO purposes. Enter your Client ID, API Path and API Token from your BigCommerce dashboard, this is the source of your BigCommerce data.
• Select Shopify as your target platform, then install a free app from the Shopify app store to help with the migration and complete the login.

Note: Shopify’s shipping settings requires you to select the countries you plan to sell to. Make sure all locations from BigCommerce are added to Shopify to avoid missing orders during the migration process.

Migration Methods: Manual, Automated, and Assisted Approaches

When migrating from BigCommerce to Shopify, you need to choose the migration method that suits your business. Here are the migration methods explained point by point:

1. Manual Migration

• Export data from your BigCommerce store and import it manually into your new Shopify store.
• Gives you full control over the migration process.
• Can be time consuming and increases the risk of errors especially for larger stores with lots of product data and customer details.

2. Automated Migration

• Uses specialized tools or apps to transfer data efficiently and accurately.
• Minimizes manual effort and reduces the chance of data loss.
• Ideal for large data volume, products, orders and customer information.
• Minimal downtime during the migration.

3. Assisted Migration Services

• Engage professional migration experts to do the job.
• Best for store owners with limited technical skills or complex migration needs, like custom migration requests or unique data structure.
• The right method depends on your store size, your technical skills and your business goals.

So, choosing the right method will ensure a smooth and successful migration from BigCommerce to Shopify.

Choosing Data for Store Replat forming Solutions

Choose what to migrate:

• BigCommerce products (names, descriptions, images, prices, SEO metadata, everything)
• Product categories (converted to Shopify collections with tags)
• Manufacturers
• Customers (names, emails, billing and shipping addresses)
• Orders (IDs, statuses, prices, comments)
• Coupons and discounts
• Reviews and blog posts

You will also need to migrate images for products, categories and blog posts for a smooth transition. Other data like custom fields or extra product information will need to be migrated manually.

Additional Options for a Seamless Platform Transition

• Set up 301 redirects from your old BigCommerce URL to your new Shopify URL structure to preserve SEO and prevent broken links.
• Migrate SEO URLs to keep search engine rankings.
• For security reasons, we cannot migrate sensitive data like credit card information.
• Clear out data on the Shopify store before migration to avoid duplicates.

Handling Limitations and Specialized Migration Needs

• Shopify doesn’t support language or currency migration; however apps can support multi language store.
• Map order status to Shopify’s system.
• Customer accounts can’t be transferred directly; however bulk account migration Shopify supports sending account restore invitations.
• For businesses with special requirements only authorized experts can handle custom migration requests due to data access restrictions.

Demo Migration: Testing Before the Full Move

Before you do a full migration it’s a good idea to do a demo migration to your new Shopify store. This step is crucial as it allows you to test the migration process by transferring a small sample of data from your BigCommerce store. By doing so you can verify that your product data, customer details and order information is imported correctly and the data structure is as expected.

Benefits of doing a demo migration:

• Test the migration process with a small data sample.
• Verify product, customer and order data accuracy.
• Check data structure alignment.
• Find formatting or missing data issues early.
• Minimize data loss during full migration.
• Have a smooth and confident transition to Shopify.

Launching Your Automated Store Migration

• Start with a free demo migration to check data accuracy and completeness. After the demo migration, review the migrated data to make sure everything is correct and nothing is missing before proceeding.
• After validation, proceed to the full migration with professional migration support.
• If issues arise, request remigration services to ensure error-free Shopify migration.

How to Migrate Products, Orders, and Customer Data to Shopify

• Export data from BigCommerce by exporting product, customer and order data as a CSV file or Excel file using the export template.
• After exporting product data, review and clean the data in the Excel file to make sure it’s accurate before importing.
• Export order data similarly for BigCommerce to Shopify migration.
• When importing data into Shopify you can use the Matrixify template to ensure compatibility and accuracy during the import process. Importing data can be done via the Shopify admin interface.
• Use WebbyCrown Solutions’ automated migration tool to import these datasets seamlessly.

Theme and Design Migration: Bringing Your Brand to Shopify

When migrating from BigCommerce to Shopify, maintaining your brand’s identity is crucial. Here’s how you can do a seamless theme and design transition:

1. Shopify has a wide range of customizable themes so you can choose a design that matches your existing BigCommerce store or create a new look that reflects your brand’s evolution.
2. Use Shopify’s theme editor to adjust layouts, colors and fonts to make sure your new store matches your existing brand.
3. For a truly seamless transition, consider hiring a designer to create a custom Shopify theme that mirrors your previous site’s design or enhance it with new features.
4. Migrating your theme and design not only preserves your brand’s reputation but also gives your customers a familiar and engaging shopping experience as they browse your new Shopify store.

Payment and Shipping Options: Ensuring a Smooth Checkout Experience

1. Add Payment Gateways: Shopify has PayPal, Stripe and Authorize.net payment gateways so you can accept payments from customers worldwide.
2. Make Transactions Secure: Proper setup of these payment options in your new Shopify store means smooth and secure payment processing for your customers.
3. Configure Shipping Options: Shopify has flexible shipping options where you can set shipping rates, choose carriers and automate tasks like label printing and order tracking.
4. Reduce Cart Abandonment: By setting up payment and shipping options correctly you minimize the chances of customers abandoning their carts at checkout.
5. Happy Customers: A well setup checkout means customers have a hassle free shopping experience from start to finish.

POS Integration: Connecting Your In-Store and Online Sales

If you have an online and offline business, integrating your point-of-sale (POS) system with your Shopify store is a no-brainer. Here’s why:

1. Shopify has robust POS integrations that let you manage inventory, process transactions and customer data across all your sales channels from one place.
2. By connecting your POS to your Shopify store you can sync stock levels, streamline order management and give your customers a unified experience whether they shop online or in person.
3. This simplifies your operations and helps you build stronger relationships with your customers by keeping their data and purchase history consistent across every touchpoint.

Selling While Migrating: Keeping Your Business Running

One of the biggest benefits of the BigCommerce to Shopify migration is that you can keep your business running without interruption. Here are the key points to consider:

1. The migration process allows your online store to stay fully operational during the data transfer.
2. By choosing the right migration method – automated migration tools or professional migration services – you can keep processing orders, managing inventory and serving customers as normal.
3. This minimises downtime and prevents lost sales during the transition.
4. Selling during migration keeps customer trust and revenue streams active.
5. Overall selling during migration means a smooth and efficient transition to your new Shopify store for you and your customers.

This way your online store stays operational during the migration, minimises downtime and prevents lost sales. By selling during migration you keep customer trust and revenue streams active, so the transition to your new Shopify store is as smooth and efficient as possible for you and your customers.

Post-Migration Support and SEO-Friendly Migration Best Practices

Once migrated:

• Check the storefront for consistency, including onsite search and product visibility.
• Make sure your domain is active and all internal links work.
• Install apps from the Shopify app store for extra features like payment gateway and multi-channel.
• Test purchases to ensure checkout flow is smooth.
• Use post-migration Shopify support for ongoing help.

Shopify’s interface is user friendly even for non techy users to manage and customize your store after migration.

Why Choose WebbyCrown Solutions for Your BigCommerce Migration Services?

• Zero downtime store migration.
• No data loss migration.
• Migrate data from BigCommerce to Shopify efficiently and securely.
• Advanced SEO setup including 301 redirects.
• Custom theme migration and app and integration migration.
• Professional Shopify migration expert agency behind your project.

Migrate to Shopify today with confidence using our Shopify migration checklist and expert guidance.

WebbyCrown Solutions is your go to platform migration agency for a smooth, accurate and secure BigCommerce to Shopify migration.