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Moving from Shopify

How a move off a Shopify theme works: a storefront of your own with Shopify kept behind it, or off Shopify entirely, with your products, customers and rankings carried across.

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What comes with you

Leaving a Shopify theme, piece by piece. What moves, and what doesn't.

Stays behind

The theme, the apps that patched it, and a storefront shoppers have seen before.

  • The theme and its sections
  • Apps bolted onto the theme
  • A storefront shoppers have seen before
  • App scripts on every page
  • What the theme allows

Comes with you

Your products, customers, orders, domain and rankings, in a storefront built for your brand.

  • Products and collections
  • Customers, exported
  • Order history, for your records
  • Your domain
  • Your rankings, through redirects

How the move runs

Moving off a Shopify theme, step by step. From the first call to the weeks after.

Your store keeps selling until the day we switch.

Nothing goes offline while the new storefront is built, and checkout is tested before it takes a real order.

  1. 01Choose the routeKeep Shopify behind a storefront of your own, or move off it entirely.
  2. 02Take stockProducts, collections, apps, pages and customer accounts, listed.
  3. 03Export what you needProducts, customers and orders as spreadsheets, with images and variants.
  4. 04Plan the storefrontProduct pages and collections planned around how your customers shop.
  5. 05Design and buildYour storefront, designed and built in code, on a private link.
  6. 06Test checkoutReal products, test orders and payments, checked end to end.
  7. 07Map every addressEvery /products/, /collections/, /pages/ and blog address matched to its new page.
  8. 08Switch and watchThe domain pointed at the storefront; orders and rankings watched after.

What's different about leaving a Shopify theme

The catches, and how we handle them. Specific to Shopify.

Two ways to go

Keep Shopify running the store behind a custom storefront, or leave it entirely.

Checkout

Staying keeps Shopify's checkout; leaving means a checkout of your own, tested first.

Products and variants

Exported with images, options and stock, and checked line by line.

Customer accounts

Customer details move; passwords can't, so customers set a new one.

Apps that patched the theme

Reviews, filters and upsells built into the storefront, or kept where they earn it.

Shopify's addresses

/products/, /collections/ and /blogs/ URLs redirected one by one.

Payments

A payment provider set up and tested, if you leave Shopify.

Order history

Past orders exported and kept for your records and your accounts.

Keeping your rankings

How your search rankings come with you. The checklist we work through.

Rankings move with the pages, as long as every page has somewhere to go.

Search engines know your Shopify store by its addresses. Each one is mapped to its new page before the switch.

  • Every old address mappedEvery product, collection, page and blog address matched to a new page.
  • Permanent redirectsEach old page sends visitors and search engines to its new one.
  • Titles and descriptions carriedThe words search results show, kept or improved.
  • Structured data addedYour business, services and reviews, in the form search engines read.
  • A new sitemapSubmitted to Google and Bing the day the site goes live.
  • Search Console watchedErrors and missing pages caught in the weeks after the switch.
  • Your Business Profile linkedThe website link on your Google Business Profile updated.
  • Load time checkedPages tested on phones before launch, so the new site starts ahead.

Moving from a Shopify theme, explained

Everything to know before you leave your theme. In plain English.

Two ways to move off a Shopify theme

Many stores don't need to leave Shopify, only its theme. Shopify can stay behind the scenes running products, stock and checkout, while a storefront built for your brand does the selling. That keeps what works and replaces what holds the store back.

For stores that want out entirely, products, customers and orders move to a store of your own, with its own checkout and payments.

Why stores outgrow their theme

Themes are shared, so stores start to look alike. Apps fill the gaps, each adding scripts that weigh pages down and charges that add up. And the theme decides what a product page can do, not the brand.

A storefront of your own starts from how your customers shop: what they compare, what reassures them, and what gets them to the checkout.

Products, customers and orders

Products, collections, customers and orders all export as spreadsheets, with images and variants. No platform can move customer passwords, so customers set a new one the first time they sign in, and we send a friendly note to make that easy.

The day of the switch

The storefront is tested on a private link with real products and test orders. On the day, the domain points to it with every redirect in place, and checkout and payments are checked again, live.

The weeks after

We watch Search Console, orders and checkout closely, resubmit the sitemap, and retire the theme and the apps the storefront no longer needs.

  • Orders watched
  • Search Console watched
  • Old apps retired

Questions and answers

Still have a question?

Ask us anything. We'll answer it straight, even if the answer is that we're not the right fit.

Ask us

  • No. Shopify can keep running products, stock and checkout behind a storefront built for you. You only leave it if you want to.

  • Only if you leave Shopify. Customer details move, but no platform can move passwords, so customers set a new one when they next sign in.

  • Reviews are exported from your reviews app and shown on the new storefront, so the proof stays with the products.

  • Yes, with every product and collection address redirected to its new page before the switch.

  • No. Your Shopify site stays live while the new one is built, and the switch takes minutes once it's ready. Visitors go from one to the other without a gap.

  • Not if every old address is redirected to its new page, which we set up before the switch. Rankings usually hold through the move, and often improve once the new pages settle in.

  • The move is part of building the new site: a fixed project price agreed before anything starts, then one monthly fee to host and look after it. You keep paying Shopify only until the switch.

Kind words

Hear it from the businesses we've built for. What it's like to work with us, in their own words.

“Our new website and ads brought in more customers than we expected. Stratasis made the whole thing easy from start to finish.”
Anna BorowskaOwner, Apex Windows
“They took our whole website from idea to launch, online booking included, and never made it feel complicated.”
Elizabeth MarkowskiOwner, Virelle
“Everything was built around how we actually work, with the compliance side looked after from the first day.”
Daniel ZhaoFounder, Pelagion
“One team for the brand, the site and the ads. It finally feels like one business online.”
Mark SullivanDirector, Harbor
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