Migrating Magento site to Shopify Plus without dropping in SERPS
-
We have been looking at moving our ecommerce store www.pretavoir.co.uk from Magento to Shopify Plus. However, as we rank quite well at present we are interested in hearing experience others may have had making this change and also any advice that you may have... Also, any general comments on Shopify appreciated..
-
Hi Sean,
I can certainly empathise with your experience - Magento is definitely more complicated to set-up and customise initially. And for a little background, I worked on the early versions of WooCommerce with the original developers, so I understand why there has been a need for simpler, more effective eCommerce solutions.
With Magento, the key is to find developers and agencies/consultants who have experience with it. Like any platform, it's much easier when you know it well, but often we don't have time to spend learning before we're earning. I've worked on 2-3 fairly big Magento sites now, and can get stuff done reasonably quickly and cost-effectively, but it's never quite as fast as with Shopify or WooCommerce (although knowing some Magento specialists makes a big difference).
This article about a large company moving to Shopify sums it up - from the article it's clear they had appalling developers, but used that as the reason to switch platforms (http://elumynt.com/magento-to-shopify-plus-complete-guide-for-large-retailers/). I can't blame them for it when it was costing them money and business, but it's pretty clear it's a dev issue...
And Shopify isn't bad for what it is. If you're looking for something that is more plug-and-play, it'll do the job.
The problem is always that you're limited by what's available. So if what you need hasn't been created/verified/approved, you're basically stuck. From memory, a team I know have put together some SEO solutions for Shopify so will try and dig it out.
With regards to any migration - if it's done properly, you shouldn't lose rankings. I've moved tens of thousands of pages across domains and CMS platforms etc, and had minimal drops if any. Usually the new platform etc has been rolled out to improve things, so it often leads to a gain even if everything else stays the same, just because the new set-up is faster etc. The key is to plan out the switch very carefully and with plenty of time to check, double check and triple check - 301 redirects, .htaccess and robots.txt files are the essentials
-
Hi Dan
From my experience of Magento is a dog for development with a minefield of conflicts to negotiate for small changes, making progress slow and costly. It is also quite server hungry whereas Shopify is hosted by them and another headache removed. I like the concept of properly vetted plugins, centralised updates etc. From what I can see it is a platform that just works, that allows you to get on with looking after your customers rather than a IT department.
-
I'd be interesting in why you're planning to move from Magento - you tend to find most people graduate up to Magento from Shopify or WooCommerce as their inventory and business grows.
So I'd usually suggest actually improving the Magento install unless you're looking to radically simplifying your business and product lines and won't be looking for the in-depth functionality that Magento offers...
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What things i should do to add more attractiveness in my site?
I have 4 years of experience in feedback and survey of different companies for the people who want to learn some from online education about how to do something? and people want to get ease in daily life skills Kroger feedback provides them with a platform to learn everything about surveys and how to drive some to its highest peaks. It all works for People out there through Education SO I have now my own website ready to go but there is a problem in its on-page ranking factors I shall be thankful to you if some from you answer my question What things I should do to add more attractiveness to my site? take a look at my recent view of my site take a look at this Kroger feedback if somebody from you can answer my request??
Web Design | | SEOTOOLS021 -
Site move?
What happens in a site move from a subdomain to a new domain and how does that effect the root domain of the subdomain and whether or not the subdomain SEO would be transferred to the new domain?
Web Design | | Jjjay1 -
May open the site's homepage...?
In mobile search results, many of my inner pages show the title tag, but the link is removed. And instead of showing the meta description, there is the following: May open the site's homepage
Web Design | | Dino64
Try anyway | Learn more Both "Try Anyway" and "Learn more" are links. Try anyway used to link to the homepage, but after we removed a redirect plugin and got rid of all the html mobile pages (now we're just using the Wordpress responsive layout), the link is now going to the correct page. So, it in fact, does NOT "open the site's homepage" any longer. But, we're still seeing this on mobile searches for our inner pages. It's been almost 3 weeks now. Any ideas on how to get this back to normal?0 -
Responsive Design vs Mobile For This Site?
They are going to do an entire website redesign for http://gaport.com/ and I think they should adhere to responsive design best practices. However, I'm just saying that because everything I have read says that's the "way of the future" if not the way of the present already. Any reason, they shouldn't do that and keep the desktop/mobile sites? Thanks, Ruben
Web Design | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
My site build in HTML has been badly hit this recent update and I have been toying on the idea of changing it to Wordpress
My site build in HTML has been badly hit this recent update and I have been toying on the idea of changing it to Wordpress. Would this help in my rankings? It seems the hit came only that last 2-4 days when business become much quieter. Frankly i have no idea on why the site fell in ranking all of a sudden. Been comparing to competitors and even a friend in the same industry and nothing makes sense so far (link profile, DA, PA etc) This site has been ranking well for 3 years prior to this. 2. My site has loads of content and visitors arrive from various landpages. But by changing it wordpress, the url of most of them would probably change. What should i do? 301 redirect all of them or is there a better method?
Web Design | | rester0 -
301 redirects from old site to new
hey all, we just did a site redesign and have less pages on the new site than the old. is it bad to redirect multiple pages from the old site to the same page on the new? for example redirect ...com/apps ...com/android ...com/mobile and point them all to....com/custom-apps thanks!
Web Design | | jaychow0 -
Question About Site Redesign and Nav / Page Structure
Hey guys, i am currently redesigning our company's site, and have come across some things that I'm not quite sure of. We used to have individual service pages in our main navigation (design, video, marketing) before the redesign. In this new design, i had the idea of making just one "services" or "capabilities" page, where these three services would each be outlined, and each service would have a list of links to more specific landing pages. Obviously, breaking it up correctly with HTML5 using the andtags. What I'm wondering is that if i'm going to be penalized for having those three services that aren't necessarily related too closely on the same page as opposed to having the one page for each service (like we have now). Any help would be greatly appreciated, and let me know if i need to elaborate more. Thanks in advance!
Web Design | | RenderPerfect0 -
How can I reduce my warnings for excesive links on our site?
Our campaign overview shows well over 100 warnings that could be hurting our google ranking based on excessive links on pages. Each page listed, however, is simply due to listing the brands we carry, and linking to the products. Is there a way to do this without hurting our ranking? A better way than linking, perhaps? Thanks in advance!
Web Design | | guycochran0