How to migrate your website from Magento to WooCommerce?

Magento and WooCommerce are open source eCommerce platforms used to create online stores, accept payments and manage products. The community edition can be downloaded for free whereas the paid version comes with additional support, features and cloud hosting. WooCommerce is built over WordPress, as a result of which it provides the user access to a large number of WordPress themes and plugins which further help them to grow their online store. Both platforms can utilize templates for designing websites and can be further extended with extensions. You can contact eCommerce development company Kolkata, India to develop your online store. However, there are reasons why people go for wishes for Magento to WooCommerce migration. In this blog, we are going to discuss the reason and the steps to follow if one chooses to migrate their website from Magento to WooCommerce.

Things to look for while choosing an eCommerce Platform

Before discussing the reasons for Magento to WooCommerce migration, let us discuss the things that you should ideally want to keep in mind while choosing an eCommerce platform.

• Ease of use – While selecting an eCommerce platform, you would like to select one that would be easy to use for beginners.
• Budget – You should also take into consideration the expenses involved in running your online store and also other recurring expenses while choosing an eCommerce platform.
• Payment Methods – Another important factor you must consider that the eCommerce platform you choose should support multiple payment gateways.
• Scalability – Scalability is an important factor while choosing an eCommerce platform. Your eCommerce website should have the capability to change and grow as per the business needs.

Reasons for Magento to WooCommerce migration

Now that we have gained an understanding of some of the basic factors one should consider while choosing an eCommerce platform, let’s discuss the reasons for Magento to WooCommerce migration.

Flexible & Easy to use     

You can develop a high-level functionality eCommerce website with no previous coding experience with WooCommerce or you can hire a developer for the same. Since WooCommerce is built for WordPress, you can choose from a wide range of free and paid themes available on WordPress and further use the WordPress customizer to change different aspects of your website such as fonts, colors, menus, etc.

The block editor also allows you to create pages required for your store by including various texts, columns, buttons, products, categories, etc. Besides, the documentation of WooCommerce is extensive and written mainly for the store owners. Hence, you can set up and manage your store internally without the help of coding. You can get help from WordPress development company Kolkata, India in this regard.

Affordable 

Another reason for Magento to WooCommerce migration is that unlike Magento, WooCommerce is entirely open source and hence available for free. You can develop a completely functioning online store with a domain name at a much cheaper rate.

While Magento Open Source is free, however, its functionality is limited. Hence, you might require an expensive VPS or a cloud hosting plan for its effective running. Besides, it doesn’t include any support from Magento. Further, for developing even a basic store, Magento recommends hiring a developer which increases the expenses involved in the building and maintenance of your store. On the other hand, Magento Commerce is a paid service that comes with varied pricing depending on your sales volume. For instance, if your store generates less than one million dollars as annual revenue, you might need to pay a license fee.

Considering all these aspects, WooCommerce and its extensions are comparatively more affordable than Magento.

Offers great support

Support is another key reason why people opt for Magento to WooCommerce migration. People with any skill level will find it easy to follow the documentation of WooCommerce, as it provides tutorials from basic to advance to developer levels. Besides, Happiness Engineers – support professional for Automattic’s products and WordPress developers, also monitor free support forums for your benefits. If you need in-person assistance, you can join any local meetups that take place regularly across the globe. Or you could also attend a WordCamp, a conference-styled event that offers various hands-on classes and support tables that allow you to work hand-in-hand with the Happiness Engineers.

WooCommerce also offers a support ticket system for those who opt for a paid extension or theme, which helps them connect with these Happiness Engineers, who can help you in troubleshooting or provide answers to your question.

Steps involved in Magento to WooCommerce migration

Now that we know what benefits WooCommerce provides over Magento, it is fairly easy to understand why you might choose Magento to WooCommerce migration. In this regard, you can appoint an agency that offers WordPress development services India to develop your online store. Let’s discuss in this section, the steps involved in the process. First, you need to choose a hosting site and install WordPress which you can do from the official website of WordPress.

Install a WordPress theme

• To complete this process, you need to go through the following steps.
• Select a theme from WooCommerce Library
• Visit your WordPress dashboard, and select ‘Themes’ from ‘Appearance’.
• Click on ‘Add New’ button located at the top of the page
• Next, click on ‘Upload Theme’.
• Select the ‘Choose File’ option and from your theme provider, upload the ZIP file.
• At this point, a message will appear showing the installation has been successful. Now, click on ‘Activate’ to enable your new theme.

You can refer the documentation for your theme’s support for further details to set up your online store and customize it as per your preference & requirements.

Now that your store has been set up, it is time to move your content over. We are going to discuss a few ways for Magento to WooCommerce migration

Process 1: Manual Import/Export

This process is free and is comparatively simple. The following steps are involved in the process

• Export the Magento data as CSV file
• Visit your WordPress dashboard, and go to ‘WooCommerce’ and then ‘Products’.
• Select ‘Import’ at the top of the page. You will also notice a built-in product CSV importer.
• Click on ‘Choose File’ and select the CSV file you wish to import. Next click on ‘Continue’.
• A ‘Column Mapping’ screen will appear. The WooCommerce will try to match the column name of the Magento CSV file to the product fields of WooCommerce. You might need to make a few changes by using the drop-down menus present on the right side of each row.
• Select ‘Run the Importer’. You have to repeat all the steps for your remaining CSV files.

Process 2: Get help from a WooCommerce professional

Another effective way for Magento to WooCommerce migration is by hiring someone who has expertise in WooCommerce. You can filter your search by country and check the profile of each expert, their work samples and their previous experience. Based on all these aspects, you can connect with the one you feel will meet your requirements.

Process 3: Use Cart2Cart

Step 1: Connect the source cart i.e. Magento. Provide details of your current URL and API.

Step 2: Connect a target cart, which is WooCommerce. You can install the Connection Bridge; it will link your two sites on the WordPress site.

Step 3: Select the data you want to migrate. Also, select the data types that you want to move and complement the corresponding WooCommerce fields.

Launch your migration and wait till the process completes. Now you have successfully migrated your website from Magento to WooCommerce.

Therefore, from the above discussion, you can understand why you need the WooCommerce platform for your online store. And if you already have a site on Magento, you can easily migrate it to WooCommerce by following the above processes.