Should we actually move off Shopify?

Often not, and we say so more on this platform than any other. If the motivation is design freedom, a Webflow front end with Shopify still handling the transaction gets you that without moving the part of the business that works. Moving the checkout makes sense when the commerce model itself has outgrown the platform, which is a narrower case than it first appears.

What exports cleanly?

Products, customers and order history come out as CSV. The storefront, the theme customisations, the app configurations, the payment setup, the shipping zones and the tax rules do not. That list is the actual project, and it is worth pricing before the content export makes it look simple.

What is the hardest part?

Variants, usually. The export flattens a structure that has to be rebuilt as collection fields, and a catalogue with several options per product needs deliberate remodelling rather than a straight import. Time here scales with catalogue complexity rather than with how many products you have.

How do we avoid losing product rankings?

Treat product URLs and content URLs as two separate mapping jobs, because their shapes differ and their traffic differs. Build both from a crawl, keep the old store live until the redirects are verified, and do not restructure the catalogue in the same release as the platform move.

Shopify3 min read

Shopify to Webflow migration

This one is a commerce rebuild, not a content move, and the honest answer is often to keep the store where it is.

Best for brands whose storytelling has outgrown a theme, and who understand what moving a checkout actually involves.

Shopify migrations deserve more scepticism than the others on this list, and we would rather apply it before the project than during it. Brands leave Shopify for a real reason, which is that theme-first commerce constrains how a brand can present itself, and they underestimate what moving the transactional layer costs. These are two separable problems, and treating them as one is the most expensive decision available here.

What actually exports

Shopify's built-in CSV export covers products, customers and order history, which sounds like most of a store and is the easy part. Product variants are where it gets awkward: the export flattens a structure that has to be rebuilt as collection fields on the other side, and a catalogue with several options per product produces a file that needs deliberate remodelling rather than a straight import. Budget that as its own task, proportional to catalogue complexity rather than product count.

The transactional layer is configured again, not moved

Payment gateways are set up fresh, shipping zones and rates re-entered, and tax settings reconfigured to match what the old store was doing. None of that transfers, and all of it is the part where an error costs money rather than rankings. Add the apps: a Shopify store of any age is running several, and each is a decision about whether an equivalent exists, whether it is needed, or whether the workflow it supported changes.

The answer we most often give

Keep the checkout and rebuild the brand around it. A Webflow marketing and content site handling everything up to the buying decision, with Shopify continuing to handle the transaction, gets the design freedom that motivated the migration without moving the part of the business that is currently working. It is less satisfying than a clean platform switch and it is usually the better commercial decision, particularly for a store with real revenue and no appetite for a checkout outage.

A frank assessment of whether the checkout needs to move at all
Product export remodelled around variants rather than imported flat
Payments, shipping and tax reconfigured and tested before any switch
App inventory with a decision for each
The split option priced alongside the full migration, so the comparison is real

What a build here actually includes

Every build is scoped to the practice, but on this kind of site these are the parts that are not optional.

A stay-or-split recommendation before the project is agreed
Product data remodelled around variant structure, not imported flat
Payment, shipping and tax configuration rebuilt and verified
App inventory with a replacement or a deliberate drop for each
Redirect map covering product, collection and content URLs separately

What we keep seeing go wrong

None of these are hypothetical. They are the things that turn up again and again on sites in this vertical, and most of them are cheap to avoid and expensive to undo.

Moving the checkout because the brand site needed a redesign
Importing a variant-heavy catalogue flat and rebuilding it twice
Treating shipping and tax configuration as a launch-day task
Forgetting that product URLs and content URLs need separate redirect handling
Switching a revenue-generating checkout without a rollback plan

Questions we get asked first

Should we actually move off Shopify?: Often not, and we say so more on this platform than any other. If the motivation is design freedom, a Webflow front end with Shopify still handling the transaction gets you that without moving the part of the business that works. Moving the checkout makes sense when the commerce model itself has outgrown the platform, which is a narrower case than it first appears.
What exports cleanly?: Products, customers and order history come out as CSV. The storefront, the theme customisations, the app configurations, the payment setup, the shipping zones and the tax rules do not. That list is the actual project, and it is worth pricing before the content export makes it look simple.
What is the hardest part?: Variants, usually. The export flattens a structure that has to be rebuilt as collection fields, and a catalogue with several options per product needs deliberate remodelling rather than a straight import. Time here scales with catalogue complexity rather than with how many products you have.
How do we avoid losing product rankings?: Treat product URLs and content URLs as two separate mapping jobs, because their shapes differ and their traffic differs. Build both from a crawl, keep the old store live until the redirects are verified, and do not restructure the catalogue in the same release as the platform move.