Is WordPress the Right Move for Your Shopify Store?
If you currently sell products through Shopify and make use of various plugins to enhance your store’s functionality, you may have encountered limitations that hinder your ecommerce goals. Shopify plugins come with recurring fees, offer limited features, can slow down site performance, and may not fully meet your brand’s unique needs.
For ecommerce store owners, bloggers, content creators and entrepreneurs looking for an all-in-one solution to sell products and publish content, WordPress offers greater flexibility, customization and control. The open-source WordPress platform powers over 40% of all websites, and when paired with ecommerce plugins like WooCommerce, can provide a robust alternative to Shopify’s walled garden.
This comprehensive guide will walk you through evaluating if WordPress is the right move for your Shopify store, outline actionable steps for transitioning your products and content, and equip you with tips to optimize your new WordPress-powered online store.
Assessing Your Current Shopify Setup
Before deciding whether to make the jump to WordPress, audit your current Shopify store’s functionality and pain points:
- Which Shopify plugins are essential to your store operations? Do they come with limiting factors like pricing tiers or features only available in premium versions?
- Does your store require functionality beyond the scope of what Shopify and its plugin ecosystem can provide?
- Are you running into constraints managing and publishing content beyond products?
- Is growth hampered by transaction fees or revenue share from Shopify payments?
For bloggers and content creators, highlight key WordPress benefits:
- Robust content management and publishing: Custom post types, built-in SEO options, and user role management for teams.
- Design flexibility: Thousands of themes and full control over site design and layout.
- Community and support: Vast resources and documentation from the open-source WordPress community.
If your Shopify frustrations boil down to wanting more control, better content workflows, and avoiding plugin fees, WordPress may be the ideal solution.
Planning Your Transition
Migrating an existing ecommerce store requires careful planning and execution. Begin by exporting your vital data from Shopify.
Exporting Your Data from Shopify
Shopify provides built-in tools to export the following:
- Products: Use the “”Export products”” option under Products to export product details, variants, images and other metadata.
- Customers: Navigate to Customers > Export customers for email list and purchase data.
- Blog content: The Shopify app WordPress Mapper from SkyVerge seamlessly transfers blog posts and metadata from Shopify to WordPress XML files for import.
For more complex migrations, commercial migration plugins(https://wordathemes.com/best-shopify-wordrpess-migration-plugins/) help transfer additional data like orders, reviews and theme settings. Consult a Shopify to WordPress migration service for large-scale or ecommerce store transitions.
Setting Up Your WordPress Store
With data in hand, it’s time to lay the groundwork for your new WordPress-powered store.
Choosing a Hosting Provider and Domain Name
Your WordPress hosting provider and domain name form the foundation for a fast, secure site. When choosing a web host for an ecommerce site, key factors include:
- Optimized WordPress infrastructure: Managed WordPress hosts like WPEngine offer performance-tuned servers.
- High uptime and page speed: Guarantees like 99.95% uptime, free CDNs and caching improve site reliability.
- Top-tier security: Protection like firewalls and dedicated security teams help block threats.
- Scalability: Support for traffic spikes and large product catalogs through auto-scaling bandwidth and storage.
Purchase a domain name that aligns with your brand identity, preferably the same one used for your Shopify store to retain SEO equity. Reliable domain registrars include Namecheap, Google Domains and Bluehost.
Installing WordPress and Essential Plugins
Once hosting is set up, it’s time for the fun part—installing WordPress! The famous 5-minute installation process is easy to follow:
- Create a database on your host to store WordPress site data.
- Upload WordPress core files to your server via FTP.
- Run the installation wizard and enter database details.
- Configure basic settings for your site title, admin user and passwords.
For an ecommerce store, essential WordPress plugins include:
- WooCommerce: The premier WordPress ecommerce plugin and equivalent of Shopify functionality.
- Yoast SEO: Improves site SEO with XML sitemaps, meta tag optimization and more.
- WP All Import: Imports products and data from CSV, XML and other files. More below!
Migrating Your Content and Products
Now comes the most crucial step—bringing over your Shopify products, orders, and content.
Importing Products and Customer Data
The WP All Import plugin is invaluable for importing the products CSV exported from Shopify earlier. You can map Shopify product fields to WooCommerce equivalents and bulk upload hundreds of products at once, saving huge amounts of time and effort.
Customer data can be imported to WooCommerce via CSV using built-in tools, retaining purchase history and other details. For more complex order history transfers, commercial order migration plugins bridge the data gap between the two platforms.
Migrating Blog Posts and Other Content
For blogs and content-focused sites, importing your posts preserves valuable SEO equity. The WordPress Importer plugin allows you to import the WordPress XML file exported from your Shopify blog.
Third-party plugins like BlogVault also offer simplified blog migration processes while retaining URLs, tags, images and more. When importing posts and pages, take care to properly configure permalinks settings to avoid broken links.
Design and Customization
With the hard work of migration done, the fun of designing your WordPress store begins!
Choosing a Theme and Building Your Brand Identity
One of the biggest perks of WordPress is the ability to customize your site design. There are thousands of free and premium WooCommerce-optimized themes to choose from with diverse styles and features.
Popular multipurpose themes like Astra, GeneratePress and OceanWP allow deep customization using drag and drop page builders. Or choose an ecommerce-specific theme like Storefront, Electro or Shopkeeper for built-in shop functionalities.
No matter what theme you select, ensure it aligns with your brand identity and provides the features and aesthetic you desire.
Testing and Launch
Before showtime, thoroughly test and optimize your migrated WordPress store.
Thoroughly Testing Your WordPress Store
Conduct tests across the entire customer journey to catch any issues, including:
- Overall functionality: Test forms, menus, widgets, payment gateways.
- Site speed and mobile-friendliness: Use Google PageSpeed Insights and Google Mobile-Friendly tests.
- Checkout process: Verify seamless checkout with test purchases.
- Security: Check for vulnerabilities using WordPress security plugins.
- SEO: Confirm proper meta tags, XML sitemap, and SEO plugin configuration.
Gradually launch your store by putting it behind a coming soon page, or redirecting a percentage of traffic to test load capacities before the full rollout.