Starting an online store on Wix is a common path for many entrepreneurs. It is accessible, easy to use, and lets you get a shop online quickly. However, as your brand gains traction and sales volume increases, you might start feeling like you have hit a ceiling. The tools that once helped you launch are now the very things holding you back from scaling.
This is the pivotal moment where many growing businesses decide to migrate Wix to Shopify.
Moving your entire digital storefront can feel daunting. There is data to move, designs to replicate, and the ever-present fear of losing your hard-earned Google rankings. But with the right strategy, moving platforms isn’t just a technical necessity—it is a massive upgrade for your business.
In this guide, we will walk you through exactly how to move from wix to shopify without losing your data or your sanity.
Why Businesses Outgrow Wix
Wix is fantastic for getting started, but it often struggles to keep up with high-growth ecommerce brands. You aren’t alone if you are feeling frustrated; many merchants encounter specific limitations as they scale.
Limitations in Scalability
Wix is primarily a content management system with ecommerce capabilities added on. As your product catalogue grows from 50 to 5,000 items, the backend can become sluggish. Inventory management becomes a headache, and the platform simply isn’t built to handle complex variations or high-volume sales events without friction.
SEO Control Issues
While Wix has improved its SEO features over the years, it still lacks the granular control that professional SEOs and growing brands require. Issues with URL structures, limited access to the robots.txt file, and slower server response times can cap your organic growth potential.
Checkout Optimisation
The checkout experience on Wix is relatively rigid. You have limited ability to customise the checkout flow, which is critical for reducing cart abandonment. For a brand looking to squeeze every percentage point out of their conversion rate, these limitations translate directly to lost revenue.
Why Shopify Is the Best Upgrade
Shopify powers some of the biggest brands in the world for a reason. It is built purely for commerce. When you transfer wix to shopify, you are moving to an ecosystem designed to sell.
Faster Checkout
Shopify’s checkout is legendary in the industry. It is optimised for speed and conversion, handling millions of transactions per minute without breaking a sweat. The introduction of ‘Shop Pay’ allows customers to check out in seconds, significantly boosting conversion rates.
Better Apps and Integrations
The Shopify App Store is vast. Whether you need advanced email marketing, loyalty programmes, or complex shipping solutions, there is an app for it. Unlike Wix’s more limited marketplace, Shopify integrates seamlessly with almost every major third-party tool a business needs.
Stronger SEO Foundations
Shopify offers cleaner code, faster load times, and better control over essential SEO elements. With the ability to edit meta tags, alt text, and URL handles easily, you have a much stronger foundation to compete for top keywords in your niche.
Pre-Migration Checklist
Before you press any buttons, you need a plan. A rush job is the quickest way to lose data. Here is what you must prepare before you migrate wix to shopify.
- Product Data Audit: Clean up your current inventory. Delete old products, update descriptions, and ensure your variants (sizes, colours) are organised.
- URL Mapping: This is critical. You must create a spreadsheet listing every URL on your current Wix site. You will need this later to set up redirects so customers don’t land on “404 Not Found” pages.
- SEO Assets: Note down your current meta titles and descriptions for your top-performing pages. You will want to carry these over.
- Content Backup: Back up all your blog posts, images, and static page content. Wix doesn’t always make exporting this easy, so you may need to save some elements manually.
- Integrations List: Make a list of every third-party tool you use (email, accounting, shipping) to ensure you connect their Shopify equivalents immediately after launch.
How to Migrate Wix to Shopify (Safely)
The migration process involves moving several distinct types of data. While there are apps that can automate parts of this, a careful human eye is required to ensure accuracy.
1. Products and Collections
You can export your products from Wix into a CSV file. However, Wix’s CSV format doesn’t match Shopify’s exactly. You will need to format your data to match Shopify’s import template. Pay close attention to product variants and image links.
2. Customer Data
Exporting customer lists is straightforward, but passwords cannot be transferred due to security encryption. You will need to invite your customers to reactivate their accounts on the new Shopify site.
3. Orders and History
For historical accuracy, you may want to import past orders. This is often complex and is best handled by a migration app or a professional developer to ensure financial reporting remains accurate.
4. Pages and Blog Posts
This is often a manual process. Recreate your ‘About Us’, ‘Contact’, and legal pages on Shopify. For blog posts, you will need to copy the content over. Crucially, ensure the publication dates remain the same to maintain historical context for Google.
SEO Pitfalls to Avoid During Migration
The biggest fear when you move from wix to shopify is tanking your organic traffic. This usually happens due to three specific mistakes.
1. Broken URL Structure
Wix URLs often look like /product-page/red-shirt, whereas Shopify uses /products/red-shirt. If you simply launch the new site without telling Google where the old page went, you lose all the authority that page built up over the years.
2. Missing 301 Redirects
This is the solution to the URL problem. You must set up 301 redirects for every single old Wix link, pointing them to the relevant new Shopify link. This tells search engines, “This page has permanently moved here.”
3. Metadata Loss
It is easy to forget meta titles and descriptions in the chaos of a redesign. If you replace optimised titles with generic ones, your click-through rate from Google will drop, and your rankings will follow.
How SEO Tailor Handles Wix → Shopify Migrations
Migrating a site isn’t just about moving data; it’s about preserving your business’s momentum. At SEO Tailor, we have specialised in this exact process since 2018.
We don’t use automated “one-click” tools that often scramble data. Instead, we use a Zero-Traffic-Loss Framework.
We start by crawling your existing site to build a comprehensive map of your current SEO standing. We handle the data formatting manually to ensure product variants transfer perfectly. Most importantly, we manage the entire 301 redirect strategy, testing every link before your new Shopify store goes live. We treat your migration as a rebranding exercise, ensuring the new site isn’t just a copy of the old one, but a significantly better version.
Results You Can Expect
When you execute a migration correctly, the results are often immediate and impactful.
- Higher Conversion Rates: Thanks to Shopify’s superior checkout and mobile responsiveness, our clients typically see a lift in conversion rates within the first month.
- Improved Core Web Vitals: Shopify’s infrastructure is fast. You can expect better scores on Google’s page speed tools, which is a direct ranking factor.
- Stronger Organic Rankings: With a cleaner site architecture and better technical SEO, your site becomes easier for Google to crawl and index, leading to long-term traffic growth.
Next Steps: Get a Free Migration Assessment
Moving your business to a new platform is a big decision, but staying on a platform that limits your growth is a bigger risk. If you are ready to scale, you need a partner who understands both the technical and SEO implications of a migration.
Why SEO Tailor is your perfect partner:
We have been a certified Shopify Partner since 2018. We are not just developers; we are SEO experts who build websites. This means we build your store with organic growth in mind from day one. We have successfully helped dozens of businesses transfer wix to shopify, turning a complex technical challenge into a smooth, profitable upgrade.
Don’t let the fear of technical hurdles hold your business back. Let us handle the heavy lifting so you can focus on selling.
Ready to upgrade your business?
Contact SEO Tailor for your migration strategy today.