There always comes a point where most growing eCommerce businesses hit a ceiling. The old systems look rusty and they cannot keep up with the speed that is demanded in a competitive market. And on paper, that does sound easy. Export your data, import it into Shopify, apply a theme, go live. It looks doable, and thus, most businesses simply look at Shopify migration services as a technical checklist they can just tick off.
However, as manageable as you think it is, migrating to a different platform is one of the most sensitive phases for your business. It touches your revenue, your SEO, your customer experience, and your internal workflows all at once. Because underneath everything, migrating to Shopify from a platform like BigCommerce is a big strategic shift. You’re practically redefining how your eCommerce store operates. Do it wrong and your business will bleed money. However, planning it correctly can actually give your business the boost you’re looking for. To make matters more comprehensible for you, this guide touches every necessary point that you’d want to go over before you decide to migrate. So, let’s get started!
Why Businesses Move from BigCommerce to Shopify
It’s easy to say that migrating from BigCommerce to Shopify is an inevitable step for all because of the advanced features you gain access to. However, for most businesses, this decision is made because of operational friction.
Execution speed becomes a bottleneck
No one really wakes up one day and decides to migrate their eCommerce store to Shopify because it looks better. They do so because BigCommerce often falls short as the business grows. Sure, it works fine for new eCommerce stores, especially in the early stages. It offers structure and control which are pretty crucial in ensuring that your store doesn’t lose stability. However, as you scale, BigCommerce often slows the processes down.
Marketing teams are usually the first to notice it. Campaigns take longer to launch. Landing page updates require developer support. Testing new ideas becomes slower than it should be. In a fast-moving market, that delay becomes expensive.
Scaling campaigns becomes more complex
When eCommerce businesses grow, it naturally involves more complex operations, more advanced technology. They often have to rely on more integrations and automations. However, they also don’t usually have much time for experimentation. BigCommerce often fails to support this newly picked up pace when companies scale. Shopify, thus, becomes a lifesaver for growing eCommerce brands. The development cycle with Shopify is usually not very extensive, which allows brands to test new features and ideas in relatively less time.
Limited Customization Features
When you first start your eCommerce store, BigCommerce proves to be a good platform. However, it can feel restrictive in the growth phase. Especially if you want to include custom features, that's a significant issue with BigCommerce stores. Shopify brings different themes, APIs, a massive app ecosystem, and lots of third-party tools that allow you to build the store in your vision. In fact, when you hire Shopify developers for custom store development, you'd often find it easier to build unique experiences.
Better User Experience and Store Management
Speaking of experiences, user experience is one of the most important factors that define an eCommerce store. You don't want to confuse or frustrate your customers with an interface that lacks clarity. Unfortunately, that is often the issue with BigCommerce. Shopify is a platform that brings clean interfaces. On top of that, it's very easy-to-use, both from the perspective of customers and business owners. Thus, when you switch from BigCommerce to Shopify, it effectively brings faster execution and improves your operational efficiency.
BigCommerce to Shopify Migration: What Needs to Be Moved
Migration is a complex strategy and it must be handled with utmost efficiency. Many eCommerce businesses go off track because they don't clearly understand the process. So, we’re going to take a quick glance at how exactly you should start planning the migration.
Product Data and Catalogue Structure
When you make the move, the most important thing that needs to migrate is your product catalogue. It covers your:
- Product titles
- Descriptions
- Images
- Variants
- Pricing
Now, this is the most crucial step for when you opt for BigCommerce to Shopify migration. You need to hire Shopify experts who understand the process clearly to prevent loss of data or formatting issues.
Customer Data and Order History
When businesses migrate to Shopify from BigCommerce, customer experience is often a major driving force. So, it goes without saying that you cannot make your customers start anew with your store even when you migrate. That can lead to some frustration. You need to migrate customer data and order history to maintain continuity. This will ensure that:
- Customer accounts remain intact
- Order history is preserved
- Marketing systems continue working
And this way, you avoid any disruption for your customers.
SEO Structure and URLs
When you migrate to a new platform, you often run the risk of losing your SEO rankings. The only way to prevent that is preserving your URLs, meta titles and descriptions, and redirects when you migrate. This way, you won’t be losing any of the existing traffic. Professional Shopify migration services always focus on maintaining the SEO structure because it protects your visibility on the SERPs..
Design and User Experience
Unless you’re planning a complete rebranding, your new store design should improve upon the existing one, not deviate from it. Your customers become habituated with your brand in a particular way. Migrating to Shopify gives you a chance to improve the UI/UX design, optimize how users navigate through different pages, improve the mobile experience, and so on. However, completely changing the way your store appears can be a bad idea.
BigCommerce to Shopify Migration: A Step-by-Step Guide
Audit your Existing Store
The entire point of such a migration is making improvements. Which means you need to start with a clear understanding of what exactly about the old store isn't working for you anymore. It's also important to figure out what is functioning well, so that you don't mistakenly omit features or functions that your users love. An audit makes your head clear about the direction you want your eCommerce store to embark on. This also ensures that you don't invite unnecessary complexity into your new platform.
Set up your Shopify Store
Once you know what you want, you can hire Shopify developers to build a store. Choose a suitable theme and configure your store settings, payment gateways, shipping options, pricing logic, and whatever else you need to set up. This new store becomes the foundation for the migration.
Export data from BigCommerce
If you couldn't guess it already, once your new store is ready, you need to export all the valuable data from the existing one. You also need to ensure that the data is clean and properly formatted. This eliminates the risks of running into errors.
Import the Data into Shopify
Shopify offers both built-in tools and migration apps to upload existing data. However, you may need to readjust the data according to Shopify's data structure. When you choose expert Shopify migration solutions, they usually take care of all that.
Design and Customize your Store
Now that all the heavy lifting is over, you can finally make decisions on how you want your store to appear. You can customize the designs based on:
- Branding
- Navigation
- Product presentation
- User expectations
Set up Redirects and SEO
You need to then implement 301 redirects from your old URLs to the new ones. This way, you retain your traffic continuity and SEO rankings.
Test the New Store
Now that your new store is ready for the market, you have just one more step left: testing. Before you go live, you need to test every aspect of the store, including:
- Checkout processes,
- Payment systems,
- Mobile responsiveness,
- Page speed, etc.
Launch and Monitor
If your newly designed Shopify store passes all the tests and QA checks, you can finally go live. However, your job doesn't end there. You need to monitor traffic and conversions to ensure that business is going on fine.
Common Challenges in Migration
As easy as we've made it all sound, the reality could be different for you depending on a bunch of factors. There are some challenges that many stores face:
- Data loss and formatting issues
- SEO ranking drops
- Downtime during migration
- Integration issues
Working with a professional Shopify migration company, however, ensures that the entire process goes fine and you can relaunch your store without any hiccups.
Conclusion
While most people believe that migrating to Shopify from BigCommerce is an obvious step, that is far from the truth. It is a strategic decision and must be approached as one. If you don't plan it right, that could turn out to be really bad news for your store. From a loss of traffic to reduced conversion rates – a poorly handled migration could be the final nail in the coffin.
At Jaipuria Geeks, thus, we take Shopify migration projects with utmost seriousness. We analyse what exactly your store needs to improve and we work on that instead of changing everything. We bring a strategic roadmap to the table for eCommerce brands that want to do more with Shopify.
Share your insights with us and we could help you plan Shopify migration in a way that's destined for success. Get in touch with us now!
