Playceholdr helps established ecommerce businesses migrate to Shopify and Shopify Plus across New Zealand and Australia.
We handle migrations from platforms such as Magento, WooCommerce and BigCommerce, covering the storefront, products, customers, historical orders, integrations, URLs and the technical work required to move without unnecessarily disrupting the business.
A migration is not a CSV import. It is a replatforming project and the difficult part is making sure everything the current store depends on still works when the new one goes live.
The first job is understanding what actually exists in the current ecommerce environment.
Over time, stores accumulate products and variants, customer accounts, historical orders, content, promotions, applications, integrations, custom code, tracking, redirects and operational processes nobody remembers being part of the original build.
Some of those things should move. Some should be rebuilt differently. Some should be retired entirely.
Simply recreating the old platform inside Shopify usually wastes the opportunity to simplify the business.
We therefore start by documenting the current environment and deciding what the new Shopify store genuinely needs before migration begins.
Data migration sounds straightforward until the two platforms structure the same information differently.
Products may have attributes that do not map neatly into Shopify variants. Customer records may be duplicated or incomplete. Historical orders may depend on applications or data structures that do not exist in the new environment.
We work through the data before importing it.
The objective is not simply to get the records into Shopify. It is to make sure the resulting store is organised in a way that is useful once the migration is finished.
Shopify’s own migration guidance similarly treats migration as a wider process covering content and data, product verification, payments, shipping, domains, testing and SEO rather than a single import step.
Changing ecommerce platforms often means changing URL structures.
If the existing store already receives organic traffic, that creates risk.
Important product, category and content URLs should be mapped to their appropriate Shopify destinations before launch.
Where a URL has changed, the old address should redirect to the most relevant new page rather than simply sending everything to the homepage.
We account for existing indexed URLs, high-value organic landing pages, product and collection URLs, blog and content URLs, redirects, metadata, canonical behaviour, crawlability and sitemap changes.
After launch, redirects and indexing should be checked rather than assumed.
Shopify specifically recommends setting redirects from important old URLs to preserve search visibility during migration.
A migration will always involve change. The goal is to avoid throwing away search equity simply because the ecommerce platform changed underneath it.
A migration does not always need to become a complete redesign.
Sometimes the existing brand and customer experience are working well and the priority is moving onto a better technical foundation.
In other cases, replatforming is the right time to address a storefront that has also become outdated or difficult to use.
We separate those decisions. The migration solves the platform and operational problem.
Combining the work can be efficient, but only when both are genuinely required.
One of the easiest migration mistakes is focusing on the storefront and leaving the wider ecommerce operation until later.
The existing site may depend on ERP, PIM, inventory systems, fulfilment and 3PL, accounting, CRM, loyalty, subscriptions, search and merchandising, reviews, customer service, and analytics and marketing systems.
Some existing integrations can be replaced with native Shopify functionality. Others need new applications. Some need to be rebuilt entirely.
We review those dependencies before launch and work out how each system should connect to Shopify.
The migration is complete when the business can operate on the new platform, not when the homepage looks finished.
Businesses move to Shopify from a range of platforms, and each brings a different set of considerations.
Magento can support highly customised ecommerce environments, but that flexibility often comes with a larger development and maintenance burden.
Moving from Magento to Shopify usually involves more than transferring the catalogue. Custom functionality, integrations, attributes, customer data and historical orders need to be reviewed individually because the two platforms approach ecommerce differently.
The objective should not be recreating Magento architecture inside Shopify. It should be understanding why the customisation existed and finding the cleanest way to solve that requirement on the new platform.
WooCommerce migrations have a different set of considerations.
The ecommerce store may sit inside a much larger WordPress environment, with plugins controlling parts of the catalogue, checkout, subscriptions, content or SEO.
A migration therefore needs to separate what belongs in Shopify from what should remain elsewhere. Products, customers, orders, content and URLs can all be moved, but the wider plugin ecosystem needs to be reviewed rather than automatically replicated.
Businesses also move between SaaS ecommerce platforms.
The reasons are usually less about avoiding maintenance and more about platform fit, ecosystem, internal usability or a specific functionality requirement.
For Micro Scooters, Playceholdr transitioned the B2B ordering portal from BigCommerce to Shopify Plus while documenting the wholesale requirements and integrating the new solution with NetSuite.
The fact that both platforms are modern SaaS systems does not make the migration trivial. Catalogue structure, customer accounts, B2B data and integrations still need to be mapped carefully.
Harlequin Kids moved from Magento 2 to Shopify.
Playceholdr handled the ecommerce migration alongside a wider redesign, moving products, customers and historical orders and integrating the new Shopify store with Cin7 Omni. We also built a custom bag designer and implemented new search and merchandising functionality.
The project demonstrates why migration work often extends well beyond transferring data.
Micro Scooters moved its B2B ordering portal from BigCommerce to Shopify Plus.
The project brought B2B and B2C ecommerce into one Shopify Plus solution and integrated NetSuite across orders, inventory, products and customer data.
The migration was driven by how the business needed to operate after launch rather than simply replacing one storefront with another.
Reviewing the existing ecommerce environment and defining what needs to move, change or be retired.
Products, variants, images, collections, categories and related product data.
Customer records, accounts and historical order information where required.
Replatforming Magento stores into Shopify or Shopify Plus.
Moving ecommerce operations out of WooCommerce while accounting for WordPress content and plugins.
Moving stores from BigCommerce into Shopify while mapping catalogue, customer and operational requirements.
URL mapping, redirects, metadata and technical checks designed to protect existing organic visibility.
Reconnecting ERP, inventory, fulfilment and other business systems to the new Shopify environment.
Depending on the source platform, a migration can include products, variants, customers, historical orders, images, content and other ecommerce data.
Some information maps directly. Other data needs to be transformed because Shopify structures it differently.
We establish what needs to be retained before deciding how it should be migrated.
A platform migration creates SEO risk because URLs and technical behaviour can change.
That does not mean rankings have to disappear.
Important URLs should be mapped, appropriate redirects implemented and the new site’s indexability and metadata checked carefully.
The strongest existing pages should be treated individually rather than assuming the migration tool will preserve everything automatically.
It depends heavily on the existing platform and how much sits around it.
A relatively straightforward catalogue migration can move quickly.
A larger replatform involving thousands of products, historical orders, ERP integration, custom functionality and a redesign can take several months.
We normally establish the timeline after reviewing the existing environment.
Not necessarily.
The migration should be based on what the business requires after the move.
Many established ecommerce businesses can operate perfectly well on standard Shopify plans.
Where the requirements justify Shopify Plus, we can design the migration around those additional capabilities. See our Shopify Plus development work.
Yes.
Migration and redesign are separate decisions.
If the current brand and customer experience still work well, the storefront can be recreated or evolved without turning the project into a full redesign.
If the business needs both, we can run the design and migration work together.
You might be leaving Magento or WooCommerce, moving a B2B operation from BigCommerce, or trying to simplify an ecommerce stack that has become expensive and difficult to maintain.
We can work from the initial platform and migration assessment through data, design, development, integrations, testing and launch.
The first step is understanding everything the existing store needs to leave behind without losing the things that still matter.
