What actually decides whether a migration succeeds?

The redirect map, in almost every case. Not the data transfer, which is largely a solved problem, and not the design. The usual failure is building the URL inventory from the old sitemap rather than crawling the live store. On an established site a crawl typically finds 20-40% more URLs than the sitemap knows about, and the missing ones are disproportionately the oldest — which means they are also the ones with the most links pointing at them.

How long does a migration take?

A straightforward catalog with a conventional variant structure is typically six to ten weeks end to end. Larger catalogs, B2B pricing rules, ERP integrations or subscription programmes extend that considerably. The variable that moves the timeline most is rarely the platform work. It's content and data: product information that lives in three places, photography that needs re-shooting, and category structures nobody has reviewed in five years.

Will we lose traffic?

Expect a temporary dip. Four to six weeks at 10-20% down is normal on a well-executed migration, followed by recovery to baseline or better. What is not normal is a dip still deepening at week six. That indicates a real problem, and the cause is almost always redirects — missing, chained, or resolving differently in production than they did in testing. We record your baseline before launch precisely so this is a measurement rather than an argument.

Can you migrate us off a platform you also sell?

Yes, and we do it regularly. We run migrations in both directions across BigCommerce and Shopify, and off both to headless when that's genuinely right. We make a living on all of them, which is the only reason our recommendation is worth anything. An agency that sells one platform will always conclude you need that platform.

Do you use automated migration tools?

For bulk data, often — moving products, customers and orders is a well-solved problem and there is no virtue in doing it by hand. What those tools do not do is the work that determines the outcome: the redirect map, the variant remodelling, the apps your storefront depends on, and every category of data that doesn't transfer cleanly. A migration is not a data transfer with some work around it. The work around it is the migration.

What if we're not sure we should migrate at all?

Then that is the right first conversation, and we would rather have it before the project than during it. We talk merchants out of migrations regularly. The common case is a store blamed for a problem it isn't causing — slow because of accumulated app scripts, or converting poorly for reasons a new platform carries straight across. Migrating those stores produces the same problems on a new bill.

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Most migrations are sold on the data transfer. That is the part that is already solved — several tools move products, customers and orders competently, and none of them is why migrations fail.

Migrations fail on the redirect map, and they fail quietly. The store launches, everything looks right, and six weeks later someone finally examines the organic traffic.

We have been running ecommerce migrations since 2010, in both directions across BigCommerce and Shopify, off Magento and WooCommerce, and onto headless when the platform itself has become the constraint.

The thing that decides it

We build the redirect map from a live crawl of your store, not from its sitemap.

That sounds like a small methodological distinction. It is the single largest predictor of whether a migration holds its rankings.

Sitemaps are incomplete on essentially every established store. They miss orphaned pages, retired campaign landing pages, discontinued products that still hold links, and anything the CMS quietly stopped listing. On a store of any age, crawling typically surfaces 20–40% more URLs than the sitemap knows about — and because those URLs are the oldest, they are disproportionately the ones with backlinks pointing at them.

So we build the inventory from three sources: a full crawl of the live site, every URL that earned a visit or an impression in the last twelve months, and your backlink profile. Then every URL in that union gets a destination, and every destination is tested before launch — in both trailing-slash forms, because platforms and hosting layers disagree about whether /product/ and /product are the same address, and a map that only covers one silently loses half of everything.

We know that failure mode intimately. We found it on our own site earlier this year: four backlinks landing on 404s, including one from a DR 92 domain, because a rule matched the slashed form only.

The whole method, as a working list: SEO migration checklist.

Migrations we run

WooCommerce to Shopify — including WordPress sites where commerce was bolted on later. Reviews and subscriptions usually live in plugins rather than in WooCommerce, so they migrate separately or not at all.

BigCommerce to Shopify — usually driven by the app ecosystem or by operations rather than by the storefront.

Shopify to BigCommerce — usually driven by catalog scale, B2B pricing requirements, or per-order economics at volume.

Magento to BigCommerce — configurable and bundled products do not map one-to-one onto a variant model, and deciding how they should land is a modelling exercise, not a transfer setting.

Magento to Shopify — the same remodelling problem, made sharper by Shopify’s three-option limit. Frequently the hardest catalog work in any migration we run.

WooCommerce to BigCommerce — attribute and variation structures need remapping onto options and variants.

Onto headless — when the constraint is the platform’s storefront rather than the platform. Keep the commerce engine, replace the head.

Migrating off something not listed here, or onto Throttle? The work is the same shape. Tell us what you’re running.

What we do that the tools don’t

Build and verify the redirect map. Described above, and it is most of the value.

Remodel the catalog. Variant structures, option sets, bundles and configurables rarely map one-to-one between platforms. This is the step that gets discovered late and blows up timelines, so we run a trial migration on a representative subset early — a few configurables, a bundle, a handful of customer records — specifically to surface it while it is still cheap.

Audit the app stack. On Shopify and BigCommerce alike, a large share of storefront behaviour lives in apps rather than the platform. Reviews, loyalty, subscriptions, wishlists, quoting. Each needs an equivalent, a custom implementation, or a decision to drop it — and this is frequently the largest single piece of work in the project.

Plan for what does not transfer. Password hashes never move between platforms, so every customer faces a reset; unannounced, that reads as a security incident. Subscriptions almost never transfer, because recurring billing is tied to the processor. Order history often migrates partially, and partial history is worse than none. Gift card and store credit balances are real liabilities.

Record the baseline. Traffic, rankings, conversion rate and Core Web Vitals, captured before launch. Without it you cannot distinguish a normal settling period from a genuine problem, and you will either panic or fail to react when it matters.

Rebuild the SEO surface. Titles, meta descriptions, canonical tags, structured data and sitemaps. Product and review markup are easy to lose silently in a theme change.

When we tell you not to migrate

Worth stating plainly, because it costs us projects.

When the problem will follow you. Stores are frequently slow because of accumulated third-party app scripts and unoptimized images. Both survive a replatform intact. Fix them where you are; if the store is fast afterwards, you have saved yourself a migration.

When it’s a demand problem. A store converting poorly on flat traffic does not have a platform problem. A new platform will convert the same traffic at roughly the same rate, on a new bill.

When the limit isn’t real. Much of what gets attributed to platform limits is configuration nobody has had time to revisit — particularly on B2B setups, where BigCommerce and Shopify both do more natively than they are credited for.

When the timing is wrong. Migrating into your peak season is a decision with a predictable outcome. If it is September and you sell at Christmas, the answer is usually January.

How engagements start

With an audit, not a proposal. The first useful week is spent establishing what you actually have: the real URL inventory, the catalog’s true shape, which apps are load-bearing, and what has been customized and why.

That audit is worth having even if you never migrate. Occasionally it is the thing that demonstrates you shouldn’t.

Migrations we’ve run

Extra Virgin Olio came off Magento onto BigCommerce. The drivers were the familiar pair: scalability limits and a storefront that had aged past the point of patching. They landed with a rebuilt storefront, reworked navigation and recurring-order functionality they didn’t have before.

Epic Dental moved onto BigCommerce and lifted conversion 30% on the rebuilt storefront.

Beyond migrations, the same team rebuilt Modula Racks (revenue up 720%), BuyPlastic (sales up 800%) and Baby Cubby (conversion up 110%), and took RV Gear Pro to its sales goal in two months from a standing start — later rebuilding it headless.

See the full portfolio, or read the ecommerce migration checklist and the full migration guide for how we approach the work.

Start with what you actually have

Tell us the platform you’re on, roughly how many SKUs, and what’s driving the conversation. If migrating isn’t the right answer, we’ll say so — that’s a cheaper conversation to have now than in month three.