The world of modern e-commerce is unforgiving. Staying competitive often requires switching to a platform that offers more features, better scalability, and easier management. If you’re running your online store on Volusion but feel limited, a switch to Shopify can change your fortunes.
Many business owners worldwide prefer Shopify online stores, and for good reason. Shopify is a modern platform that provides the right tools to manage your online stores, helping you run your e-commerce sites easily and affordably.
However, migrating from Volusion to Shopify isn’t as simple as flipping a switch. A poorly executed migration can negatively impact your business days down the road if you’re not meticulous in the planning and execution phase.
A migration gone wrong can result in lost data, broken SEO rankings and needless downtimes that impact your sales and revenue. This guide takes you through five essential tips to make your Volusion to Shopify migration as seamless as possible.
1. Thoroughly Prepare and Back Up Your Data
First things first, you’ll want to be sure that you’ve got a game plan in place for facilitating your Volusion to Shopify migration and a secure means of backing up all of the data associated with your preexisting store.
To begin with, it’s important that you conduct a thorough audit of your current Volusion store. Essentially, you’ll want to identify and note any and all data that needs to be transferred from one platform to the other.
This will include everything from your products to customer information, order histories, and more. Once you’ve made a plan for what needs to be moved over, back it all up and export your product details, customer lists, and order information to CSV files. This organization helps with your new site setup and also ensures you don’t lose any data during the switch.
2. Choose the Right Migration Method
How you’ll perform the migration should be your first and foremost concern. You can do this manually or utilize automated migration tools. Manual migration is for those who want full control, allowing you to move everything yourself and tailor your new Shopify store accordingly.
However, it can be a time-consuming method, and you will still need some technical expertise. Automated migration tools, on the other hand, help to speed up the process. They are specifically built to make data transfer from Volusion to Shopify an easy task.
With automated migration, you enjoy a smooth and effortless migration process, zero downtimes, 100% SEO retention, and improved speed and performance. Some even provide up to 2 months of performance monitoring for your new Shopify store.
Besides these two options, you can also opt for the Volusion to Shopify migration services from a reputed company. Such companies have a team of experts that can complete your project swiftly and provide real-time support.
3. Maintain SEO Rankings with Proper URL Redirects
Preserving your hard-earned e-commerce SEO rankings during the migration is crucial to keeping your store visible in online searches. One big part of that is dealing with URL changes. Because Volusion and Shopify have different URL structures, if not handled properly, you could lose search engine rankings and encounter broken links.
To do this, set up 301 redirects from your old Volusion URLs to your new Shopify URLs. This will let search engines know that your pages have permanently moved and transfer the SEO value of the old URLs to the new ones. Taking care of URL redirects ensures that there is no disruption for both search engines and customers.
4. Customize and Optimize Your New Shopify Store
One of the best things about moving to Shopify is that you have plenty of tools to redesign your store and improve the overall user experience. You first need to find a theme that aligns with your brand and appeals to your customer base.
Shopify has several customizable themes, free and premium, that make your store look uniquely yours. But don’t just think about looks; think about features. Fortunately, Shopify also provides an app store filled with extensions you can add to your store for additional functionality and features like advanced search, product recommendations, reviews, etc.
While making all the changes, remember that the themes you consider should be mobile responsive as mobile phones lead global digital commerce website visits, contributing to the largest share of online orders.
5. Test Rigorously Before Going Live
It is extremely important to do a thorough testing of your new Shopify store and work on any issues that you come across. Start by going through your store as a customer, make sure there are no broken links, no missing images and that all pages are loading properly.
Test the checkout process to confirm that transactions are being processed correctly and that payment gateways are working as expected. Also, check that all migrated data, like product details, customer details and purchase histories, have been imported correctly.
Also, test your store’s performance across different devices and browsers to confirm nothing has broken along the way. The more you can test during this phase, the better. The last thing you want is for customers to start reporting issues with your new ecommerce site after launch.
Final Thoughts
Moving from Volusion to Shopify should not be taken as just moving data but as an opportunity to best set your business up for long-term success. Spend the time upfront preparing correctly, use the right migration, and optimize that design you’ve always wanted. Lastly, test your new Shopify store before going live to ensure everything has been prepared properly.
Remember, no migration is 100% perfect. There may be little hiccups here and there, but the most important thing is to stay flexible and focus on improving your new store. If something doesn’t move over right at first, Shopify’s flexibility allows you to iterate the new store as you go.