Migrating to Shopify in Australia:
What to Expect (2026)
Most brands that move to Shopify come from WooCommerce, Squarespace, or Wix. The product data migration is usually straightforward. The parts that go wrong — and that cost you search rankings if handled badly — are URL redirects and data structure.
When migration makes sense
The most common triggers for migrating to Shopify from another platform:
- WooCommerce performance issues at scale. WooCommerce requires self-managed hosting. As catalogues and traffic grow, hosting costs increase and plugin conflicts become more common. Shopify's managed infrastructure handles scale without the operational overhead.
- Squarespace or Wix limitations. Both platforms restrict product complexity, payment provider options, and checkout customisation in ways that become constraints for growing DTC brands.
- Access to Shopify's payment ecosystem. Shop Pay, Shopify Payments, and Afterpay (natively integrated) have measurably higher checkout conversion rates than third-party payment setups on other platforms.
- The platform cannot support where the business is heading. Multi-market pricing, wholesale accounts, subscription logic, and advanced fulfilment integrations are areas where Shopify's ecosystem is mature and other platforms are not.
What migration actually involves
A Shopify migration is not a data transfer. It is a rebuild — the store design is built fresh on Shopify, and the data (products, customers, orders) is moved across. These are separate workstreams that happen simultaneously.
Data migration covers:
- Products: title, description, images, variants, pricing, inventory levels
- Customer records: email addresses, order history, tags
- Historical orders: important for returning customer recognition and loyalty mechanics
- Collections: recreated in Shopify's collection structure
Data that requires additional work:
- Product reviews: platform-specific and require a third-party app (Judge.me, Okendo, Yotpo) and either export/import or a manual process
- Blog content: URL structure changes between platforms; each blog post needs a redirect
- Custom fields: any custom product attributes need to be remapped to Shopify metafields
What does not migrate: the store design. You are starting fresh on Shopify. The old theme is not portable.
The URL redirect problem
This is where migrations most commonly fail. Every URL on the old platform that has accumulated backlinks, search traffic, or is shared in marketing materials needs a 301 redirect to its equivalent Shopify URL.
Shopify generates URLs differently from WooCommerce and Squarespace. WooCommerce product URLs are typically /product/product-name/. Shopify product URLs are /products/product-name. Collection URLs use /collections/ instead of /category/ or /shop/.
Every changed URL that is not redirected is a broken link. For URLs that have accumulated search authority — product pages, collection pages, blog posts — a missing redirect means the search ranking built over months or years is discarded. This is not recoverable quickly. It takes months of re-indexing and re-ranking to rebuild what a redirect preserves immediately.
A migration without a complete redirect map is incomplete. It is the most time-sensitive part of any migration and should be planned before the new store goes live, not after.
Cost of migration in Australia (2026)
| Scope | Range (AUD) | What's included |
|---|---|---|
| Data migration only | $2,000–$6,000 | Products, customers, order history, URL redirects. No new store design. |
| Migration with theme setup | $8,000–$20,000 | Data migration plus a purchased Shopify theme with brand application — fonts, colours, layout customisation. |
| Migration with custom build | $20,000–$50,000+ | Data migration plus a fully custom-designed and built Shopify store. See custom build costs for full breakdown. |
Timeline
- Data migration only: 2–4 weeks, depending on catalogue size and data quality
- Migration with theme setup: 4–8 weeks
- Migration with custom build: 8–16 weeks
The most common timeline extension: poor data quality on the source platform. Products with inconsistent naming, missing images, or incomplete variant data take significantly longer to migrate cleanly than well-structured data.
What to do before starting a migration
- Export a complete product list and audit it for inconsistencies before migration begins
- Identify the 20 most-trafficked URLs on the existing site (Google Search Console shows this) — these are the redirects that matter most
- Decide on the Shopify URL structure before any products are imported — changing URLs after migration requires additional redirects
- Check whether product reviews need to be migrated and which app will handle them on Shopify
- Confirm that customer data handling complies with Australian Privacy Act requirements for data transfer between platforms
Adam Dirani handles Shopify migrations for Australian brands — data, redirects, and the new build. Write to discuss your migration.