E-commerce businesses today have more platform options than ever when it comes to building an online store. Two of the most popular are Shopify and BigCommerce. Shopify powers over 1 million businesses with its easy-to-use store builder and thousands of app integrations. BigCommerce has over 60,000 customers leveraging its enterprise-level features for security, analytics, and global sales.
If your business has outgrown Shopify or you simply want to upgrade to BigCommerce’s robust capabilities, migrating platforms doesn’t have to be painful. With careful planning and execution, you can switch e-commerce platforms without losing valuable customer data, sales history, or your hard-earned SEO rankings.
In this guide, we’ll cover:
- Reasons you may want to migrate from Shopify to BigCommerce
- Step-by-step process for migrating while maintaining data integrity
- Tips for retaining SEO through the transition
- Why Anchor Group is the top choice for managing your BigCommerce implementation
Why Migrate from Shopify to BigCommerce?
There are a few key reasons why fast-growing businesses migrate from Shopify to BigCommerce:
More advanced enterprise features. BigCommerce offers robust B2B functionality, complex pricing/quoting tools, powerful CRM and ERP integrations, and built-in cross-border trade and tax compliance.
Lower transaction fees. BigCommerce has lower credit card processing rates, ranging from 0.5-2% vs. Shopify’s flat 2.9% + 30¢ fee per transaction.
Greater flexibility and control. BigCommerce gives you more direct access to and control over core code and design elements like templates, schema markup, and CSS.
Improved performance. BigCommerce stores see faster page load speeds and built-in image optimization. This boosts conversions by up to 15%.
As your business expands beyond Shopify’s main target customers of startups and small businesses, migrating to an enterprise-level platform like BigCommerce ensures you have room to scale.
How to Migrate from Shopify to BigCommerce
When moving commerce platforms, follow this process to make it as seamless as possible:
Set up your new BigCommerce store
Sign up for a BigCommerce trial and choose a theme that matches your brand. Install any must-have app integrations like tax calculators, live chat, affiliate programs etc.
Customize the design using colors, fonts and imagery to closely resemble your Shopify storefront. This helps returning customers easily recognize your new site.
Use a migration service
Rather than starting from scratch, migrate all your products, customers, orders and content to BigCommerce using athird-party migration service like Anchor, Cart2Cart, or LitExtension.
Services like Anchor’sShopify to BigCommerce migration seamlessly:
- Transfer product catalogs, inventory counts, images, categories, variants, custom fields and descriptions
- Map customers and order histories
- Migrate blogs, web pages and navigation menus
- Retain review ratings
This preserves all your e-commerce data and assets without errors or omissions from exporting/importing CSVs. Anchor’s migration specialists can even configure custom discount rules, payment methods, and sales tax settings in BigCommerce based on your Shopify setup, saving you tons of manual work.
Optimize for maximum uptime
As you get close to go-live on the new BigCommerce platform, use Anchor’s staging capabilities to clone your live Shopify site. You can then run them side-by-side to rehearse the switch and spot any issues without affecting real Shopify store traffic.
When fully prepared, redirect all traffic from Shopify to BigCommerce and deactivate the old Shopify store. Thisseamless cutover method prevents downtime where customers can’t purchase.
Throughout the process, Anchor provides 24/7 migration support and progress monitoring to ensure no interruptions for your business.
Maintaining SEO Through the Migration
Since search rankings reflect years of effort, it’s crucial to retain SEO equity when moving e-commerce platforms. Follow these best practices:
Choose equivalent theme and design. Use a BigCommerce theme with similar site architecture to preserve user experience. Keep imagery, branding and content types consistent.
Set up 301 redirects. Install a301 redirect app to seamlessly reroute all Shopify URLs to the new BigCommerce equivalent pages. This passes link equity to corresponding URLs.
Maintain metadata. Migrate over product descriptions, Meta tags and alt text via the migration service to retain keywords and page relevance signals.
Update XML sitemaps. Generate a new XML sitemap for BigCommerce and resubmit it to Google Search Console. Monitor any crawl errors and optimize content freshness.
Review analytics. In Google Analytics, compare traffic metrics pre and post-migration to confirm no changes in rankings or organic acquisition channels. Address any discrepancies with further SEO refinement.
With an expert migration partner, the right platform settings, and post-launch optimization, you can expect minimal impacts to SEO or revenue when moving from Shopify to BigCommerce.
Why Choose Anchor Group for BigCommerce Implementation
In addition to seamless e-commerce migrations, Anchor Group is a top BigCommerce implementation and integration partner for enterprise organizations.
Anchor offers:
Deep BigCommerce expertise. 20+ years implementing BigCommerce and BigCommerce ERP across 500+ businesses ensures best practices for all configurations from financials and inventory to manufacturing, POS and HCM.
Full-service strategy and execution. Anchor’s strategic blueprint and experienced project teams deliver fixed-cost BigCommerce solutions tailored to each client’s processes and objectives.
Unmatched speed and agility. Anchor accelerates implementations by 50% over other partners through point-and-click configuration vs. risky custom code. Rapid results with less business disruption is guaranteed.
Ongoing optimization support. Post go-live, Anchor Group provides personalized performance tuning, custom reporting and staff training to unlock maximum value from BigCommerce long term.
Key Takeaways When Migrating E-Commerce Stores
- Work with a data migration provider to transfer all products, customers and history from Shopify to BigCommerce without manual exports or imports.
- During migration, run parallel sites using staging to prevent any interruptions for customers.
- Choose equivalent themes, maintain metadata, set up redirects and monitor SEO analytics to retain rankings when switching platforms.
- For managing BigCommerce or integrating it with other enterprise systems, Anchor Group has the proven strategies, expertise and support to drive transformative results.
