Short answer: a WordPress (WooCommerce) to Shopify migration usually takes 6–12 weeks. You export products, customers and orders, rebuild the theme on Shopify, map every old URL to its new Shopify URL with a 301 redirect, and launch with a new sitemap. Done this way, most stores keep their search traffic and gain a faster, easier-to-run checkout.
Why do stores move from WordPress to Shopify?
- Maintenance: no more plugin conflicts, core updates or hosting tuning.
- Checkout: Shop Pay and Shopify's checkout convert well on mobile.
- Scale: traffic spikes and sales events are handled by the platform.
- Channels: social, marketplaces and POS run from one admin.
What moves from WordPress to Shopify?
| WordPress / WooCommerce | Becomes in Shopify |
|---|---|
| Products and variations | Products and variants |
| Product categories | Collections |
| Tags and attributes | Tags, product options and metafields |
| Customers | Customers (passwords must be reset) |
| Orders | Orders (historical, via migration app) |
| Posts | Blog articles |
| Pages | Pages |
| Coupons | Discounts |
| Plugins | Shopify apps or native features |
How long does a WordPress to Shopify migration take?
Small catalogues with a stock theme can launch in about six weeks. Stores with thousands of SKUs, subscriptions, B2B pricing or custom integrations usually take 10–12 weeks. The build itself is rarely the slow part — decisions about content, apps and URL structure are.
How do you keep your SEO during the move?
- Crawl every URL on the current site and export Search Console data.
- Map each old URL to its new Shopify URL. Shopify uses
/products/,/collections/,/blogs/news/and/pages/prefixes, so almost every URL changes. - Import the redirects into Shopify's URL Redirects before launch.
- Keep page titles, meta descriptions and H1s for your top pages.
- Re-add product structured data and check it with Google's Rich Results Test.
- Submit the new sitemap in Search Console on launch day and monitor 404s for 30 days.
What are the most common mistakes?
- Launching without a complete redirect map.
- Replacing every plugin with an app instead of using native features.
- Forgetting to tell customers they need to reset their password.
- Moving the WordPress blog without its internal links.
- Launching during your busiest sales week.
Should you keep WordPress for the blog?
Sometimes. If the blog drives most of your traffic and your team loves WordPress, a headless or subdomain setup can keep it. For most stores, moving the blog into Shopify keeps authority on one domain and is simpler to run.
The full six-phase plan, with a flow diagram and timeline, is on our WordPress to Shopify migration page. Moving from WooCommerce specifically? See WooCommerce to Shopify. Ready to scope it? Talk to DoodleWeb.
Seattle agency · Seattle, WA
A full-service digital agency working in WordPress, Drupal, Shopify, Webflow, React, and React Native. We partner with universities, nonprofits, governments, and growing brands to ship sites that hold up after launch.
