An eCommerce migration is about re-platforming the business from one site to another. You need to transfer the complete data, integrations, content, systems, designs, and other business elements to the targeted setup that involves updating servers and storage infrastructure. In this article, we will discuss the process of how to migrate a WooCommerce shop from one WordPress site to another.
Why do you need to migrate a WordPress Site?
There can be some personal reasons for cloning depending upon your business operations, level, and growth. Your system might not have staging and you are looking to migrate your website to another WordPress site for testing new functionalities and updates or you need a fresh subdomain.
How to Migrate?
Migration depends on your store data volume when you need to export and import the data from one site to another. Also, you need to do manual changes in the file path for downloadable files for a seamless flow on the new site. We have listed the procedure in the following points.
Steps to use the Default WordPress website migration
We can use the default WordPress Importer for importing orders, products, tax rates, etc., which also allows you to import data from a CSV file.
Search for the “Tools > Export” section and download the data from your WooCommerce store. Keep everything separate such as different products, refunds, and coupons.
Coming to the new site for installing WordPress importer, go to the “Tools > Import” section and press the “Install Now” link under the “WordPress” column.
To run WordPress Importer, click on the “Run Importer” to move to the “Tools > Import” section.
Here comes the import section, you can easily import your downloaded files using the choose file option.
Which Elements or Parts should be migrated to a new store
When you are planning to migrate your WooCommerce shop from one WordPress site to another you need to consider which elements you need to export.
There are mostly 3 elements that are most important and which need to migrate.
- WordPress Users: In the WooCommerce dashboard you have a user database of customers who ordered products from your store. This database contains customer-related information such as contact number, email, delivery address, etc. You can consider installing this plugin Import Export WordPress Users to migrate your user data.
- Products: All the products that you added to your WooCommerce store are vital to your store and must be migrated. These products contain your product description, product id, images, etc. You can easily use this plugin: Product Import Export for WooCommerce to migrate all your product data.
- Orders: All the existing orders must be managed by the admin and should be considered while you plan to migrate your online store. Order contains all the information regarding payment method used, delivery address, shipping method, tracking id, etc. You can use this plugin Order Export & Order Import for WooCommerce. to easily export all your orders.
Migrating Store Using Plugins
- First of all, take the backup of all your content and database.
- Download the customer data from the WordPress admin panel.
- Go to the WooCommerce > Customers section.
- Click on the “Download” option and export complete existing customer data.
- Set up a new WordPress site with a new domain/ subdomain of different site addresses. Now, Install and activate the WooCommerce plugin. The version has to be the same on both sites. Either get an option to export all plugin settings from the first site or manually perform their mapping.
- Now, you need to install and activate 3 Import & Export plugins in the old and the new site.
- Go to the Plugins > Add New section. Now search and install the plugin: Import Export WordPress Users
- Install and activate it.
- Now moving to the next step of Exporting and Importing Customers from the old to the new site.
- Go to your WordPress site admin panel and click the WebToffee Import Export section on your first site.
- From the option Select a post type to export you can choose the items to export. You have the facility to export users/customers.
- Firstly, let’s export WooCommerce Users. From the dropdown menu choose the option User/Customer. Now, click the Select and export method option.
In the next step you can choose among 2 options:
- Quick Export allows you to export all the basic user data from your WooCommerce store.
- Advanced Export that allows you to filter data based on columns.
Once you have selected an export method you can download the data using the Export button.
The plugin will display a download window from there you can click the Download file option. The user data will be downloaded to your local system in a CSV format.
Uploading User data to a new site
Now, set up a new subdomain or a new website for migration. You can install the WooCommerce plugin and above mentioned 3 plugins to proceed forward.
The speed of this process depends upon the number of users. Keep on checking the status of users until all of them are imported to the new database. You will also get the final success notification.
- Login to the admin panel of your new site and go to the WebToffee Import Export section. Select the appropriate Import option from the Select a post type menu. You can easily import all the elements that we mentioned earlier. For now, let’s focus on importing the user data that we downloaded in the previous step.
- Click the dropdown button, choose the option User/Customer and proceed to the next step.
- In the next section, you have the option to quickly import your user data or set filters and use the advanced import feature. To quickly Import the WooCommerce user data you can simply drag and drop the CSV file that we downloaded earlier.
- Once you are done click the Import button. Done! Your user data is successfully imported to your new WordPress site.
You can repeat the same process to migrate the following elements
- Order
- Coupon
- Product
- Product reviews
- Product categories
- Product tags
To export and import products you can use this plugin: Product Import Export for WooCommerce and follow the above process for migration.
For exporting orders to a new site you can follow the same above steps after installing this plugin: Order Export & Order Import for WooCommerce.
Other plugins that can be used for Migration
Here is a list of a few plugins that you can use to Migrate the WooCommerce shop from one WordPress site to another
- Duplicator Pro – This plugin allows easy migration from your existing website to a new site. You can use the multisite feature if you have more than one website and backup data directly on your Google Drive or Dropbox.
- UpdraftPlus – The premium version comes with a migration feature to allow users to download the website data and import it to another website. Additionally, this plugin enables you to schedule and save backups to remote locations.
- Bluehost Migrator – If you are planning to migrate your site to Bluehost then this plugin is the most convenient option. It allows you to migrate any WordPress site to a Bluehost server in just a few steps.
- WP Migrate DB – If you want your new site to be exactly like your previous site you can consider installing this plugin and migrate all your data easily.
Alternatively, Backup Buddy,and JetPack are also common plugins for migration. For more migration plugins you can read this article.
Also, the other alternative is to download the entire database and import it to a new site with the later exclusion of unnecessary data.
An eCommerce migration is about transferring each and every aspect of a WooCommerce store to a new site. It can be done through a manual process or using a plugin. Just follow the above steps on how to migrate a WooCommerce shop from one WordPress site to another. If you have any questions you can write to us directly and don’t forget to leave a comment below.
