Think of an operational WooCommerce store that you are managing.
A little downtime can cause serious loss to your (or your client’s) business and reduce customer trust.
Losing customer data or order details is a bigger mishap.
And what if a customer is making a purchase and your site is unavailable when about to make the transaction? Disaster, right?
The above are a few reasons why eCommerce businesses avoid transferring WordPress between hosts, even if the existing one is less performant. They only go for WordPress migration when things become intolerable.
WooCommerce developers, too, think of eCommerce migration as a troublesome task.
Same trouble?
Read this guide and figure out how to make e-commerce migration effortless, resulting in no downtime. We’ve covered everything related to WordPress migration for eCommerce sites here. So, let’s begin with the basics.
Table of Contents
What is WordPress Migration for eCommerce?
WordPress migration for eCommerce is a strategic process involving seamlessly transferring your online store from one platform to another. This procedure encompasses the relocation of vital site data, the entirety of your website content, and the integration of various components (e.g., plugins, theme, and so on) onto the new WooCommerce platform. If the WooCommerce site is multilingual, translated content must also be migrated.
When we say vital site data, it involves customer data, transaction details, orders data, warehouse/inventory data, etc. And that’s what makes WooCommerce migration a riskier task where you cannot take a chance.
When Should you move your WordPress site to a New Host?
Migrating a WooCommerce website should be a well-thought-out decision, where the site owner must weigh the pros and cons of migration before starting to work on the process.
A few good reasons to migrate your WordPress site to a new host are:
#1 – Subpar Performance
Is your website struggling to keep up with the demands of your growing business?
Sluggish loading times and technical glitches imply you use an outdated hosting platform. If these issues hinder your online presence, it might be time to consider migrating to a better host.
This time, you must ensure that you go for a scalable, performant, and eCommerce-centric option.
#2 – Outdated Tech Troubles
Tech moves fast, and if your online store is stuck with an old host that uses outdated technology, it’s like using a flip phone when everyone else has smartphones. Upgrading your WooCommerce site’s host will ensure you’re not missing out on the cool stuff your competitors are using.
#3 – Business Growth
Picture this: Your online business has blossomed, and your current host (or, say, shared server) feels like a snug space you’ve outgrown. In this case, there is no other option than transferring your WooCommerce site to a new host or a new server with the same host.
#4 – Cost
At times, it could be all about the money.
When things become unreasonable and go beyond your budget, you have no other choice but to move away from your current host.
P.S.: Here, we’re talking about the costs of staying with a host, keeping your site in shape, hiring migration professionals, and purchasing tools/services related to your host.
What Elements Need to be Migrated?
When gearing up to shift your WooCommerce shop from one WordPress site to another, figuring out what elements to export is key. There are three MVPs you should definitely bring along for the ride.
1. WordPress Users
Your WooCommerce dashboard is like the VIP lounge for all your customers who’ve made purchases. This user database holds gold – contact numbers, emails, delivery addresses, and more. You obviously cannot leave this data out when talking about making a move to a new host.
2. Products
Your store’s heartbeat lies in the products you’ve added. Descriptions, IDs, images – these are the essentials. And in case you run a multilingual store, the translated versions of your product pages also need to be migrated.
3. Orders
Every order is a piece of your store’s history, and you don’t want to leave those behind. Hence, exporting all the order details (payment methods, transaction history, delivery addresses, tracking IDs, etc.) becomes crucial.
4. Website data
Besides the product-related content, a typical eCommerce website also has various web pages, blog posts, categories, product tags, WooCommerce data, customer reviews, coupons, videos, and images. How can you miss out on this data when you transfer WordPress site to new host?!
5. Store Plugins
Any WordPress website, including online stores, requires plugins to run smoothly and customize it better. The same is true for your store, isn’t it? So, when moving to a new host, you will also need all those plugins and their data to keep functioning like before.
Migration Checklist that WooCommerce Developers Must Follow
Now, before you move ahead as a WooCommerce developer, be very clear about one thing – migrating a functional WooCommerce website is like shifting a brick-and-mortar shop to a new location. It can make or break a business. And hence, you must ask yourself the questions written in this 10-point WooCommerce migration checklist:
- Are you clear about the steps you have planned for migrating your ecommerce website?
- Have you cataloged all your existing content?
- How have you designed your new site for optimal performance?
- Is your data backed up securely before the migration process?
- What is the plan for migrating your data to the new platform?
- Have you connected all necessary plugins, email systems, and other tools?
- Have you thoroughly tested your website after migration for any issues or glitches?
- When do you plan to launch your new site officially?
- How will you communicate the migration to your existing customers?
- What measures are in place to monitor the results and performance of your newly migrated site?
A Quick Note on Rebranding or Domain Migration
To migrate WordPress site to new domain, you just have to point your servers to the new domain, make changes in your branding, replace the old name of your business, and make other such changes.
In short, if you are just changing your eCommerce site’s name or domain, it doesn’t require full-fledged migration. It doesn’t fall under the scope of this WordPress migration guide for e-commerce.
How to Migrate Your WooCommerce Site?
When you want to transfer WordPress site to a new host, there are 3 paths you can take:
#1 – Manually
That’s the longest path, not suitable for WordPress beginners – until and unless you have a valid reason to do so. For example, if you are migrating from another platform to WooCommerce, manually exporting & importing eCommerce data makes sense.
#2 – Using a WordPress Migration Plugin
It’s a popular, easy, and budget-friendly way to make the heavy lifting happen without breaking a sweat. There are famous WordPress Migration plugins like InstaWP Connect, WP Migrate, and All-in-one Migration that can help you in the process.
Learn how to Create Staging and Migrate an eCommerce Site →
Many store owners love this because it’s like a shortcut that smoothly moves all their store stuff, settings, and content from one place to another. However, it’s not always right to use a migration plugin when it comes to WooCommerce (especially when you choose the wrong plugin!).
#3 – Using 3rd-Party Services
If you are a business performing migration, you might not want to lose your precious business data. If your team lacks adequate technical knowledge, hiring WooCommerce migration experts to perform in operation is better.
WooCommerce Testing After Migration
Testing is a critical aspect of the entire e-commerce migration and replatforming journey. If you skip it, more downtime and troubles will follow. Hence, take the time to meticulously test each page, site element, and functionality after migrating to your new site.
Key areas to focus on include:
- Landing Pages
- Product Filtering and Search Functions
- Orders, tags, and other WooCommerce data
- Website Navigation
- Checkout Process
- Email and other essential integrations
Use InstaWP to Create Staging and Test eCommerce Sites →
WooCommerce Content Migration: The New Way
Think of landing pages of your multilingual eCommerce store, blog posts, product pages, and everything that can be managed using the WordPress admin dashboard. You might often have to update these pages and the site’s content in multiple languages.
To ensure your live site’s safety and maintain consistency, you often maintain a staging site.
Your team and translators upload the content to this staging site, and reviewers check if everything is fine.
The content is finally updated to the live eCommerce site manually.
If you follow the above-mentioned process like other websites, it’s time to change.
You can improve your WooCommerce Content Management (and Migration) process using InstaWP.
To begin, create an account with InstaWP
Now, install the WordPress staging plugin InstaWP Connect on your live website.
Click the Create Site link from the Plugins page in your WordPress dashboard.
Clicking this button will create your live site’s staging in your InstaWP dashboard. You may need to take a few more actions to create this staging, for example, choosing if you want to create full staging or custom, and so on.
Now, enable the Start Listening for Changes option from the Sync on the staging.
Now, the changes being made to this staging website will be recorded.
You can update pages, posts, etc. on the staging site and click Sync Changes to update them on live.
The best part of using this approach is, your WooCommerce site won’t be unavailable for the site visitors – no matter if you update/add 1 page to your site, or 100. This means, your online store won’t miss any order, transaction, or query.
Bulk content updates, translation, and regular updates can be made effortlessly through this approach. Security issues can also be avoided by limited access of most of the users to the staging site only.
How WooCommerce Developers can use InstaWP?
One-time migration or continuous WooCommerce content management aren’t the only aspects where you can use InstaWP for WooCommerce development. The tool can help you improve your workflow in multiple scenarios.
Safe Staging
You can use InstaWP to create a staging environment for your WooCommerce site. It will help you perform all migration-related tasks and changes in the staging environment to ensure the live site remains unaffected.
Product and Data Testing
Developers can migrate WooCommerce products, customer data, and other essential information to the staging site. It is also possible to test the functionality of the migrated data in the staging environment to identify and resolve any issues before syncing with the live site.
Theme and Plugin Updates
User experience matters the most in the eCommerce sector. So, whenever there are plugin and theme updates, you must test them for compatibility before updating a live site. Do it in a staging environment using InstaWP.
Order and Payment Gateway Testing
InstaWP can help you ensure that all transactions and payment processes work seamlessly before syncing changes to the live WooCommerce site.
Content and Design Tweaks
Utilize the 2-way sync feature to implement approved changes on the live site while keeping your development and production environments in sync. It can help you avoid downtime while letting you make major content-related changes in one go.
Final Word
WordPress migration for eCommerce has a distinct set of obstacles, which sets it apart from migrating blogs and normal websites. It is a mission-critical task that must be lossless, fast, and performed with extreme care. For this reason, developers must make all changes to eCommerce sites in a staging environment, test everything thoroughly before the release, and make sure the update results in the least downtime.
As clear from the blog post, using InstaWP as your staging environment and utilizing the 2-way sync feature of the InstaWP Connect plugin for eCommerce site’s content management is a great way out for WooCommerce developers.
