All you need to know for OpenCart To Shopify Migration

Both the platforms, Shopify and OpenCart, are popular choices for eCommerce businesses. These eCommerce platforms have their strengths and weaknesses and also meet different objectives. The right choice mainly depends on elements like ease of use, SEO, budget, community, and support. Both these platforms offer businesses to adopt headless commerce as well. But most probably, you chose Shopify for its ease of use. And are looking to get an overview of OpenCart to Shopify migration. In this blog, we have written about different migration methods and considerations for smooth re-platforming.

Different Approach To Follow For Migration of OpenCart to Shopify:

A: Manual Migration:

The migration process from OpenCart to Shopify can be challenging for beginners. It would be more than just copying the information from the source store and pasting it to the target store. Irrespective of this, you must categorize your entities separately and configure the website framework to integrate everything smoothly.

That’s why the entire manual migration process is much more complicated, and it might take days to complete the import to Shopify from OpenCart. But this migration process is one of the most cost-effective ways to rely on. It is because you do it all by yourself. The risks here are high because there are chances of errors, including data omission and incompatible theme application forced restart.

B: Automated Migration:

Automated migration from OpenCart to Shopify is your best bet if the manual process is not your cup of tea. Automated migration offers you benefits to control with no inclusion of any technical challenges. You may use some specialized tool plugin extensions to complete the transfer. Once you link the same with the respective cart directories, the system will automatically do the rest.

C: Technical Assistance:

You can opt for technical help if you do not want to try manual or automatic ways. It will help you focus on the critical job of your business. The alternative method of migrating OpenCart to Shopify makes it mandatory for you to seek professional help from leading eCommerce migration professionals or Shopify developers. The eCommerce migration expert will migrate the entire data on your behalf. This approach will likely demand the required time and resources to complete the migration process.

Steps To Migrate From OpenCart To Shopify:

When done right, moving from OpenCart to Shopify is rather easy. You can migrate your OpenCart data to Shopify by following the procedures listed below.

Step 1: Account Registration

To switch from the OpenCart eCommerce store to the Shopify one, you can use a few apps. If the eCommerce store has a lot of data, you could have certain migration issues. You can use the cart-to-cart store migration app.

Step 2: Setting up of source cart

Here, it would be best if you typed the current store URL, and then you can download the connection bridge file. It is a way to get information and offer interaction between stores. You have to unzip it and upload it to the correct folder in the store.

Step 3: Setting up the Store

Once you set up the source cart, you have to click on the option to install the plugin and get a migration app, which will allow me to take the process ahead and set it up with the Shopify admin.

Step 4: Pick entities

Choose that you wish to move along with the additional options. This is all optional. You can source the different storage categories from the collection and create about 301 redirections to your target store.

Step 5: Free demo integration

You have to check the working of your service in action and get the right results.

Step 6: Execution of the complete migration

You may even turn off the browser after the migration process starts; it will not interrupt the process. At the very least, you will get the data moved as per your expectations.

Following the conversion from OpenCart to Shopify, you should:

• You need to choose a new theme and personalize it.
• You can install the required app from the chosen Shopify App Store
• Checkout process and test your store.
• Invite your clients to reactivate the account.

You can transfer the following information from OpenCart to Shopify:

• Products: Name, full name, manufacturer status, special price, price, meta title, meta description
• Product Categories: Image name description meta description meta title status
  Manufacturer name
• Customers: Last name first name shipping address billing address Email newsletter
• Orders: Customer name, order details, billing address, email shipping address
• Coupons: Coupon codes and coupon data
• Reviews: username, title, created, date, and rate.

Red alerts you must know about when migrating from OpenCart to Shopify:

• Shopify follows a peculiar system, due to which all the categories and sub-categories of Shopify become product tags or collections, influencing the URL creation big time.
• If the OpenCart store’s email is incorrect, then Shopify will create a “Shopify email address which will be unknown.” A similar approach will also be followed with the orders in case they have not been assigned to any guest or customer.
• To make the previous URLs work seamlessly on Shopify, it is essential to choose ‘Create Redirects 301’ on the target store post-migration.

Things you need to consider while migration

Before the migration process ends, clear all the data on the target store.
If it holds something, including customer name, product name, etc., this option will allow you to manually delete the existing data depending on the entities you select. The test data will also be deleted after the demo migration. You need to follow the steps if the target store is not empty.

Preserve order IDs:

Using this option, you can preserve the order IDs on the Target store post-migration. If you do not do this, your order IDs on the Target store will appear different; you only need to select this option.

Migrate additional images

The image helps migrate additional images of the products apart from the thumbnail images.

Strip HTML tags

It will strip all the HTML tags from the product categories and names.
The information mentioned above would be very helpful while migrating from OpenCart to Shopify. Following the steps and approaches discussed above can simplify the data migration without data loss.

Going through a checklist is a regular practice followed by industries with high stakes. That is why before making your new Shopify store live, it is advisable to go through an eCommerce launch checklist. It might be possible that you find a crucial call-to-action button is not working, or some product images are not good enough.

If you need the assistance of experienced developers to re-platform your e-commerce store or design one from scratch, contact our eCommerce development company.