Most Popular Ways To Migrate From WooCommerce To Magento

In recent years, with the robust features and superior customization opportunities, Magento, especially Magento 2 has knocked down other eCommerce platforms then taken its chance to tempt millions of worldwide store owners. As a result, a bunch of companies have been flocking to Magento with high hopes of sales boost, improved business performance, enhanced SEO and other inviting benefits. 

Recently, many store owners have been switching their stores from WooCommerce to Magento. The main reason for it is because Magento outperforms WooCommerce in terms of speed and performance, security and adds-on. Magento is an ideal choice to scale your business up to be a global brand, while WooCommerce is suitable for small businesses with enough performance and ease of use. That explains why store owners who want to extend their business scale favor Magento than WooCommerce.

Probably while you’re reading this article, you yourself have also intended to move your store from WooCommerce to Magento. Therefore, we will instruct you on the process of migrating your store from WooCommerce to Magento from A to Z. In this data migration process, we will also illuminate 3 different methods to transfer e-commerce data and provide you with a comparison among them.

Step 1: Prepare data backups

It doesn’t matter if you are an experienced store owner or just a beginner, before making any minor or significant change of your website, creating a backup is of paramount importance. As the core of the future database is nothing but your e-commerce entities, make sure that any possible information loss is excluded. 

There are three ways to backup WooCommerce store data:

1. Manual backup
2. Backups via Your Web Host
3. Backups Using WordPress Plugin

Manual backup

The manual method of backing up is not too complicated but it can be risky. Even the smallest error results in serious repercussions. The following steps are:

• Download your WordPress website files onto your local system (your computer). You can do this through:
  • An FTP tool like FileZilla
  • File Manager in cPanel of your web host account
• Next, you need to backup your database. Via your host’s database management panel, access phpMyAdmin.
• Select the database from the wp-config.php file. 
• Select all the tables and click Export.

Backup via Your Web Host

Most WordPress hosting providers provide backups either inclusive in their plan or as an additional paid feature. However, they mostly provide daily backups. It is incredibly challenging to find a host that offers real-time backup service. But if you want to backup your database through your hosting provider, here’s the guideline:

• Contact your hosting provider and download the last backup.

• Export and backup your database via the manual method. Alternatively, you can export the database to your local folder using the MySQL manager.

Backups Using WordPress Plugin

Using an automated backup plugin is the simplest way to backup WordPress sites. It is convenient and quicker to install and use. Many plugins like BlogVault, UpdraftPlus and BackupBuddy facilitate the backup process and make it absolutely simple to conduct and manage backups.

Step 2: Install Magento

You can’t migrate to Magento unless you have one. Follow this guideline to install a Magento store:

1. Download Magento software package
2. Setup FTP
3. Transfer the Magento archive to your hosted system with FileZilla
4. Running Setup Wizard

To see the big picture of the installation process in detail, check up a guideline on “How To Install A Brand New Magento 2 Store”. In addition, you can directly preview the process by watching a video tutorial below:

Step 3: Data Migration

The process of migrating data from WooCommerce to Magento can be carried out in 3 ways. It can be done by yourself, by the developer hired to perform the migration, or an automated shopping cart migration service. 

Each method will be walked through step-by-step. You can later decide which one is the best fit for you after seeing the comparison among three methods (discussed below).

Manually migrate store data

If you want to carry out the migration yourself, you can manually export data from WooCommerce and import it to your Magento store.

However, let me clear this out before we start. With manual migration, make sure you have technical knowledge since you’re dealing with the database structure of the two platforms. Secondly, the limit of imported data is one major disadvantage. Magento doesn’t permit you to import some data like orders, product SKUs, etc. You can check a detailed guide from Magento to get further information.

If you find this complicated and unsure about the capacity to do it on your own, straightforwardly skip to the other options (mentioned below). 

Anyway, let’s see how to perform manual migration!

1. Export store data from WooCommerce

WooCommerce allows store owners to export almost every kind of data, such as categories, taxes, products, customers, orders,…

First, from the admin panel in WordPress, click “Export Orders”. Choose the output format to be CSV and click the “Export” button. All other options should be left as default.

This will download a CSV file with all orders included. This file will be used for importing your order information to Magento.

Second, we will export product data.

From your WooCommerce admin panel, choose “Product Import-Export”. Several export options will show up afterwards:

Choose the product attributes you wish to export then click  “Export Products” at the bottom.

This will download a CSV file with all product information included. 

Third, we will export customer data.

From your WooCommerce admin panel, click “Customer Import-Export”.

Click the checkboxes to select or deselect the attributes you want to export. For a full store migration, you will ideally export all data. When you are ready, click “Export Users” to proceed.

This will download a CSV file with all customer information included.

2. Import store data into Magento

Next, you have to import data into Magento. Data for all product types can be imported into the store. In addition, you can import products, advanced pricing data, customer data, customer address data, and product images. This may seem complex, but we break down each step to make it accessible.

Step 1: Check the database compatibility between two platforms

Before importing the downloaded files to Magento, you need to check the compatibility between two platforms. In order to do so, please download the CSV sample files of Magento and compare them to WooCommerce’s CSV files.

1. From your Magento admin, go to System > Data Transfer > Import.
2. Under Import Settings, set Entity Type 
3. Click Download Sample File.
4. Locate the export file at the downloads location for your web browser and open the file. 

Open Download Sample File

5. Check the structure of the sample file and use it to prepare your CSV import file, make sure that the column headings are correct.
6. Verify that the size of your import file does not exceed 2M.
7. If the import data includes paths to product images, make sure that the image files have been uploaded to the appropriate location. The default location on the Magento server is: pub/media/import.

If the images reside on an external server, make sure that you have the full URL to the directory that contains the images.

Step 2: Prepare data transfer

From the Admin menu along the left sidebar, click “System.” Under the Data Transfer heading, click “Import” to proceed to the Import screen.

From the Import screen, you will choose settings before proceeding. First, select the “Entity Type” that you want to migrate under the Import Settings heading. Select the type of entity that you are currently migrating:

• Advanced Pricing
• Products
• Customers and Addresses
• Customers Main File
• Customer Addresses

Step 3: Choose the import behavior

Now that the Import settings are completed, we can finish the Import Behavior section.

Using the “Import Behavior” drop-down menu, choose one of the actions listed:

• “Add/Update”
• “Replace”
• “Delete”

Next, set up parameters for when an error pops up during the process. Under “Validation Strategy”, choose rom the below options:

• “Stop on Error”
• “Skip error entries”

Error limits are manually set, so that the import process will be shut down if this error limit reaches its peak. Enter the number you want to be the error threshold in the “Allowed Errors Count”. The default error count allowed is 10.

As you will be migrating data using a CSV file, make sure that both the “Field separator” and “Multiple value separator” fields have a comma (,) entered. This is the standard setting, as a comma is the default separator used for a CSV file, but you should verify this before proceeding. If your import file uses a different character, make sure to change the separating value so the file imports properly.

Click the “Fields enclosure” checkbox to enclose special characters in the data as escape sequences.

Step 4: Identify the import file

Next, we will select the file to import. Click “Choose File.” and look for the CSV file you prepared for import and click “Open.”

Use the “Images File Directory” field to input the relative path to the location where images are stored on the Magento server. For example, it may look like this: var/import.

Step 5: Check the import data

Once you’ve made all the selections on the Import screen, click “Check Data” to check the data to see if it is compatible to carry out the migration. This may take some time to finish.

Once import data is reported valid, the verification message will display the “File is valid! To begin the import process, press the ‘Import’ button”. This indicates that the data is ready to be imported. Click “Import” to begin the transfer.

If the import is invalid, the errors will be listed under Validation Results. In this circumstance, correct each error and then restart the import process.

Once the data has been validated and an import has been chosen, the data will be imported. This should take some time to process.

Now that you’ve completed the import, repeat this process for each entity type you want to migrate.

As you can see, migrating manually is a long process and it requires you to have technical skills. Also, the limit of imported data is another cons worth being pondered over. Some data like orders, product SKUs, etc are not allowed to be migrated.

So let’s move on to the second migration method to find out how it solves problems for you.

Hire website development experts or freelancers 

If you are confused whether to go with the manual migration solution because it’s too hard or time-consuming, you can ask for help from a web agency or a developer. 

Here at SimiCart, we’re a team of Magento experts equipped with the experience and knowledge necessary for a bug-free and data-complete migration for your Magento store. With our dedicated, experienced team to handle your migration process, you are ensured to have your peace of mind, knowing that your store’s migration process is guaranteed to go over smoothly and within no time at all.

To start your Magento 2 migration process with our dedicated team, first:

Step 1: Head over to our Magento 2 Migration Service page

Step 2: Provide some information about your store

To have an overview of the size of your store, we need some information including the total number of products, customers, and orders.

Step 3: Click Submit

After you click Submit, one of our migration specialists will reach you to discuss about the details of the migration and assist you during the process.

The automated shopping cart migration tool

The third solution is to use an automated shopping cart migration tool. Basically, you will input the information of two stores, select what you want to migrate and then let the tool do the rest. 

These tools are safe and well-functioning. At present, many merchants have proven their performance on several forums, websites and review platforms. It can migrate almost every important data in literally hours and leave no interruption on your source store. Voila!

Top automated shopping cart migration tools on the market are LitExtension and Cart2Cart. However, if you look around on the internet for the review. LitExtension is evaluated higher for their customer service and price. You can refer to this comparison between LitExtension vs Cart2Cart to know more about them.

As an example, today we will show you the migration process performed with LitExtension tool. There are four steps and when migrating from WooCommerce to Magento 2. You can migrate products, orders, customers, product categories, manufactures, CMS pages, coupons, and other related entities from WooCommerce to Magento 2. Now, let’s begin!

Step 1: Access LitExtension and click register/log in

Step 2: Setup Connector To Source Store and Target Store

1. Enter Source Store information

On the Migration Page, click Create New Migration at the top right button on the screen. 

Choose Magento as your source cart and fill in its URL in the corresponding field. Then, click LitExtension Connector to download the connector. This connector will set up a connection to your old store. Unzip it and upload to the WooCommerce root folder.

Right here, the Connector Installation will be automatically checked and informed on the screen without manual checking.

2. Enter Target Store information

The same setting up procedure of the target store. Download LitExtension Connector, extract the zip file and upload the connector to Target Store’s root folder.

3. Choose Entities You Want To Migrate

You can either choose all your data or only choose the necessary categories. 

If desired, at this stage, you can select additional options that will help to extend the data import functionality. This shopping cart migration service has developed the features to help you solve important problems following migration as it aims to provide you with the best possible service. For instance, to minimize the SEO effect after switching, you can create 301 redirects to your target store.

Step 3: Perform Migration

You can try a demo first or run a full migration immediately.

• To Try Demo: Start your demo migration with a limited number of entities. You will see the same actions as the actual migration. 
• To Perform Full Migration: Please click on the “Skip Demo Migration” button to perform full migration immediately.

Step 4: Check Result After Migration

An email will be sent to you after complete migration. Now head to your target store backend to check the result.

In order for the data to show on the frontend, you need to run command line (login with SSH) to resize images, reindex and clear cache as follows:

bin/magento catalog:images:resize
php bin/magento cache:clean
php bin/magento cache:flush
php bin/magento indexer:reindex

Note: Out-of-stock products are disabled on Magento store by default. This means they will not be shown on the frontend and not visible to your customers.

To display these products, you need to follow these steps:

• Go to System > Configuration > Catalog > Inventory > Stock options > Choose “Yes” in Display Out of Stock Products and click “Save config”

Post-Migration Activities

Run Recent Data Migration

After the data migration process, you’re going to set up the new store for a while. You’ll be dealing with design customization, discovering the new admin panel or digging into new SEO features. In the meantime, your old store still stays active and keeps receiving orders or you can update new products. So the concern here is how will you transfer the new entities to the Target Store?

If you perform the migration with LitExtension, there is a unique solution from LitExtension for such occasions called Recent Data Migration. It is an additional service enabling you to automatically transfer all new products, customers and orders after the complete platform switch. If you migrate manually, repeat the same procedure just as you have done earlier. 

What’s more, with LitExtension, you can migrate your recent data, with no additional cost, up to 3 months after your full migration.

Change DNS and switch domain

Your domain has grown to achieve its popularity and you definitely don’t want to lose it after all, right? Then, to finish the last step after migration, you should change your store’s DNS and switch domain to make sure that your domain won’t lose its popularity.

Basically, the process covers three main steps:

1. Log in to the Domain Management System
2. Confirm that the CNAME of www for your DNS servers points to your domain.
3. Change A record to point to the IP of Server containing the target store.

For detailed information, check it out here.

Conclusion 

In general, the article has shown you three ways to migrate from WooCommerce to Magento. Of all the three methods that you’ve just walked through, hiring website development experts or using an automated shopping cart migration tool is the safest and can guarantee the most accurate result, especially when you are not a techie. 

Having had no intensive hands-on experience yet still want the migration to be done properly? If the answer is “yes”, your arrival to SimiCart migration service or LitExtension automated shopping cart migration is definitely the right choice. We do highly recommend you give it a try!