E-Commerce Retail
Van Schaik Bookstore
Moved a 50,000-product catalogue and eight integrations to Shopify. E-commerce sales rose over 40% after launch.
Shopify Partner 
Move to Shopify without losing sales, data or search rankings.
We plan and run migrations from Magento, WooCommerce and custom platforms. The new store is built and tested alongside your live one, so you keep trading until the switch.
A move to Shopify can lower running costs and make a store easier to manage, if the migration is done well.
Stores on older or custom platforms often need a developer for every change and carry rising maintenance costs. Shopify takes care of hosting, security and scale, so the team can focus on selling.
The risk is in the move itself. Products, customers, order history, integrations and search rankings all have to come across intact. We plan and run migrations so the store keeps trading until the switch.
What has to move, not just the products
The catalogue is the visible part. Most migration risk sits in the rest of this list.
- Products, variants, images and the attributes filters depend on.
- Customer accounts, so returning customers can still sign in.
- Order history, for service teams and for customers.
- Every integration: ERP, payments, couriers, fulfilment and reporting.
- Features with no Shopify equivalent, rebuilt as custom apps.
- Every old URL, redirected so search rankings carry over.
Where migrations go wrong
The failures that show up after launch
A connection passes testing because the test order went through. Then a payment fails, a courier is unavailable or a stock update arrives late, and nobody planned for it.
Search traffic drops because old addresses were not redirected. Returning customers are asked to reset passwords on the busiest day of the year.
How we prevent them
What we do before the switch
- Map every integration, including what happens when it fails.
- Test with real data, real orders and realistic volumes.
- Redirect every old URL and keep metadata and structured data.
- Carry customer accounts across, with a sign-in that needs no reset.
- Schedule the switch around your trading calendar.
Related work
E-Commerce Retail
Computer Mania
After its move to Shopify, average engagement time rose 25% and new user acquisition rose 21%.
E-Commerce Retail
Exclusive Books
Rebuilt the online store without a single day of downtime, after eight years as its technology partner.
E-Commerce Travel and Tourism
Gondwana Collection Namibia
Rebuilt the booking site to show availability across all 23 lodges in one system, with a custom ecommerce cart.
Chris Fouche Special Projects and Group Business Development Manager, Van Schaik “The migration from our old website to Shopify was an almost seamless transition, despite numerous external challenges.”
Migrate to Shopify FAQs
Will we lose search rankings?
Rankings depend on content, links and addresses carrying across. We redirect every old URL, keep metadata and structured data, and monitor search visibility after launch.
Can customers keep their accounts?
Yes. On Van Schaik’s migration a passwordless login meant no one needed a password reset at go-live.
What happens to features Shopify doesn't have?
We build them as custom apps. For Van Schaik that included product sync, inventory integration, quotes for institutional orders and a store locator.
Do you migrate from custom-built platforms?
Yes. Van Schaik and Hyperli both moved to Shopify from custom platforms.
Tell us about the store you want to move.
Give us a sense of your platform, your catalogue and the systems the store connects to.
