How to Convert Shopify Theme to WordPress: A Step-by-Step Guide
Table of Contents
- Why Convert Your Shopify Theme to WordPress?
- How Can You Convert the Shopify Theme to WordPress?
- Step-by-Step Process to Convert Shopify Theme to WordPress
- How to Manage Shopify to WordPress Theme Conversion?
- Can You Convert the Shopify Theme to WordPress By Yourself?
- How to Hire an Agency That Can Convert Your Shopify Theme to WordPress?
- How WP Creative Can Help Convert Shopify to WordPress?
One of the main reasons people move from Shopify to WordPress is the cost. Shopify isn’t cheap. It’s cheap to get started, but it can quickly become costly before you realise it.
You could end up paying annually around $840 to $3600 just to manage a simple eCommerce store.
It can quickly eat into your profit.
And we all know eCommerce is a very competitive space, where you’re often running on thin profit margins.
Jeff Bezos famously said, “Your margin is my opportunity.”
And worst of all, you’re locked in.
There’s nothing you can do except pay the price they demand.
That’s not all—there’s the issue of limitations. Shopify themes are difficult to customise, and there aren’t as many plugins or the flexibility to manage your site exactly the way you want.
For many eCommerce stores that have outgrown Shopify, moving to WordPress makes sense.
WordPress offers more flexibility with plugins, hosting, data management, and security. Plus, it provides the scalability needed to grow your business on your own terms.
Why Convert Your Shopify Theme to WordPress?
When you move from Shopify to WordPress, chances are that you will want to keep your Shopify look and feel. And there are many reasons for that.
- Familiar Design for Customers:
- When you move from Shopify to WooCommerce, keeping the same theme ensures that your customers recognise your brand. The design elements, such as colours, layout, and overall look, are part of your brand identity.
- Changing the design can confuse your returning customers, leading to lower brand recall. A familiar look helps maintain customer loyalty and encourages them to continue shopping at your store.
- Avoid Customer Confusion:
- If you alter the design too much, customers might feel like they’ve landed on a completely different website, which could lead to trust issues. Maintaining the same design minimises this risk.
Proven Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)
- Tested and Optimised Theme:
- Your Shopify theme has likely undergone various tests to optimise conversion rates. You know how visitors navigate through your site, what elements work best, and what leads to conversions.
- By keeping the same theme, you preserve the optimisation work you’ve already done. You won’t have to re-test and re-optimise a new design, which saves time and ensures continuity in your sales performance.
- Retain Familiar Buyer Journeys:
- Your buyer journey on Shopify has been refined over time. Visitors know how to interact with your site and where to find what they need. Keeping the same theme ensures that this journey remains smooth and familiar for your users.
Ease of Implementation
- Faster Migration Process:
- Recreating a theme on WordPress from Shopify you already know is much easier than starting from scratch. You won’t have to spend weeks or months designing and developing a new website layout.
- By sticking with the same theme, you can focus on migrating your store quickly, without getting bogged down by design decisions. This allows you to launch your WooCommerce store faster and start generating sales sooner.
- Reduced Development Time:
- Designing a new theme from scratch involves a lot of back-and-forth between design and development, which can be time-consuming. By keeping your existing theme, you skip this phase, focusing solely on migration and functionality.
In essence, keeping your previous Shopify theme for the WordPress ecommerce store ensures brand consistency, leverages your existing CRO efforts, and simplifies the migration process.
Read More: WooCommerce vs Shopify – Ecommerce Store Comparison Cost
How Can You Convert the Shopify Theme to WordPress?
Converting your Shopify theme to a WordPress theme is not an easy task, especially if you’re a beginner or don’t have experience with coding. The main challenge comes from the fact that Shopify themes are built using Liquid, a templating language based on Ruby, while WordPress themes are built using PHP. These are two entirely different programming languages with different structures, which makes the conversion process complex.
Understanding the Challenge
1. Different Programming Languages
- Shopify’s Liquid uses Ruby, while WordPress uses PHP. This means the backend logic for both platforms is completely different. Converting a theme isn’t just a matter of copy-pasting code—it requires restructuring the theme entirely to work with a new language.
- Liquid templates focus on logic for rendering your Shopify store’s content, while PHP in WordPress involves a lot more flexibility and different ways to structure content. Therefore, converting a theme involves a deep understanding of both languages to ensure your site functions properly.
2. Design Conversion Process
- Even if you have the technical knowledge, the first step is to extract your Shopify theme’s design elements and recreate them in a format that WordPress can use. This often means converting the Shopify design into Figma or another design tool to create a visual reference of your site’s layout.
- After you have the design files, the next step is to turn those Figma files into PHP code. This involves creating WordPress templates that match the look and feel of your Shopify store. It’s a detailed process that requires coding skills and attention to detail to ensure your WordPress site looks the same as it did on Shopify.
3. Dealing with Custom Features
- Shopify themes often come with custom features built into Liquid, like dynamic product displays or customised checkout pages. Recreating these features in WordPress will require additional development, as the PHP code needs to handle the same logic that was originally written in Liquid.
- You might also need to find or build WordPress plugins that can replicate Shopify’s functionality, such as product management systems, checkout processes, or integrations with payment gateways.
Step-by-Step Process to Convert Shopify Theme to WordPress
Step 1: Create a WordPress-based Website
The first step in migrating from Shopify to WordPress is to create a WordPress website, typically hosted on your own server. You’ll need to migrate your current domain so that it points to your new WordPress site. This setup ensures that your entire website is now functioning within the WordPress ecosystem, laying the foundation for the rest of the migration process. Ensure that everything, from hosting to the domain setup, is properly configured before moving forward.
Step 2: Backup Your Shopify Store
Before diving into the migration, it’s crucial to back up your entire Shopify store. This includes downloading all data, such as products, images, product descriptions, and customer information. There are WordPress plugins available to assist with this process, like “Shopify to WP” or “Shopify to WordPress Import.” These plugins will help you seamlessly transfer your data from Shopify to WordPress. Having a full backup ensures that nothing is lost during the migration and gives you a safety net to revert to if something goes wrong.
Step 3: Customise Your WooCommerce Website
Now that your data is backed up, the next step is to begin customising your WooCommerce website. Start by copying your Shopify theme and creating a PSD or Figma version of that theme. This step is important because you want your new site to resemble your previous Shopify store to maintain brand consistency. If you’re a designer, you can create these files yourself. If not, you’ll need to hire a designer to replicate your Shopify theme in a format that can be used to develop your new site.
Step 4: Develop the Front-End Theme
Once your design is ready, it needs to be coded as a front-end theme for WordPress. This involves using HTML, CSS, and, in some cases, JavaScript and jQuery. The goal here is to replicate the look and feel of your Shopify store on your new WooCommerce site. This development phase can be complex and may require a developer if you don’t have the necessary skills. It’s important that the theme is responsive and fully functional to provide a smooth user experience.
Step 5: Set Up Page Builders
With your theme developed, it’s time to install page builders on your WordPress site. Page builders allow you to easily update or change the layout without constantly needing a developer. These tools provide drag-and-drop functionality, enabling you to make adjustments to your site whenever necessary. Whether you’re launching a seasonal sale, promoting discounts, or highlighting a new product, page builders give you the flexibility to make changes quickly and easily.
Step 6: Optimise Your WooCommerce Website
After your site’s design and structure are set up, the next step is to optimise your new WooCommerce website. You’ll want to ensure that all necessary tracking codes and plugins are installed. This includes Google Analytics, Search Console, Google Ads, and any other scripts you previously used on Shopify. Proper optimisation ensures that your website performs well, is tracked correctly, and provides valuable data for your marketing and business strategies.
Step 7: Set Up Domain Migration and Redirects
Finally, after everything is in place, it’s time to migrate your domain from Shopify to your new WordPress WooCommerce website (if you haven’t done that already). Along with this, you need to set up redirects from your old Shopify URLs to your new WordPress URLs. This step is crucial to avoid broken links and ensure a seamless transition for your customers. If not handled properly, customers may encounter 404 or 403 errors, leading to a poor user experience. Redirecting your URLs correctly ensures that your SEO efforts remain intact and your website continues to perform well in search engines.
Read More: 50+ Best WordPress eCommerce Themes For 2024
How to Manage Shopify to WordPress Theme Conversion?
If You Have Coding Skills
If you’re proficient in both Liquid and PHP, you can attempt the conversion yourself. Here’s how:
- Step 1: Extract the Theme Details: Start by carefully analysing your Shopify theme. Break it down into components and note how each part functions (header, footer, product pages, etc.).
- Step 2: Convert Design to Figma (or any design tool): This step involves taking the Shopify theme and recreating it visually in Figma. You’ll use this as a blueprint to create the corresponding elements in WordPress.
- Step 3: Recode in PHP: Now comes the challenging part—converting your Figma designs into PHP code. This involves creating WordPress templates for each page, styling them with CSS, and ensuring the site works seamlessly.
- Step 4: Test and Optimise: Once the initial conversion is done, you’ll need to rigorously test your site to ensure all features work properly and that the design looks consistent across devices.
If You Can’t Code or Don’t Have Time
If you lack the technical skills or simply don’t have the time to handle the conversion yourself, hiring an agency is a smart move.
- Expect Costs: Converting a Shopify theme to a WordPress theme is considered custom design work. Agencies typically charge anywhere from $15,000 to $50,000 AUD depending on the complexity of your Shopify store and the level of customisation required.
- Agency Process: The agency will handle everything for you, from extracting your Shopify theme details to coding them into a functional WordPress theme. They’ll ensure all custom features are replicated, and the design matches your brand identity perfectly.
- Quality Assurance: A good agency will also handle testing and quality assurance to make sure everything works as expected on the WordPress platform. This allows you to focus on running your business while they take care of the technical work.
Can You Convert the Shopify Theme to WordPress By Yourself?
Converting a Shopify theme to WordPress is particularly challenging for beginners. If you have a background in development and the time to dedicate to building a theme from scratch, it’s possible but quite intricate. The primary difficulty lies in the backend. Shopify offers certain built-in features that aren’t readily available on WordPress. To replicate these features, you’ll need to either install plugins or develop custom functions on your WordPress site.
The question then becomes: can you convert the Shopify theme to WordPress by yourself? The answer depends on your skills and confidence. If you know how to code, have the time to dedicate to the project, and are familiar with all the features of your Shopify store, then yes, you can undertake the conversion yourself. However, this means not only handling the design but also replicating the functionality of your Shopify store in WordPress. This will require understanding how to work with PHP, customising WordPress to fit your needs, and ensuring all features operate as they did in Shopify.
If, on the other hand, you’re not confident in your ability to replicate the Shopify theme and its features in WordPress, it’s better to seek help. Hiring an agency or a freelancer who specialises in WordPress development might be the best option. They can handle the technical work, allowing you to focus on running your business while ensuring the theme is converted properly and your website functions smoothly.
How to Hire an Agency That Can Convert Your Shopify Theme to WordPress?
When hiring an agency to convert your Shopify theme to WordPress, it’s crucial to do your homework. You need to check their portfolio to see if they have experience converting Shopify themes to WordPress. How many themes have they converted? What types of designs have they successfully replicated? These are essential questions. Get on a call with them, ask for specific examples of their work, and review their portfolio carefully. If they haven’t worked on eCommerce websites before, your project could become their learning experience, which is risky. You don’t want your project to be an experiment for them; you want a team that knows exactly what they’re doing.
We’ve been in the business of developing WordPress websites and converting Shopify themes to WordPress for a long time, so we understand the challenges that small businesses and eCommerce stores typically face. Even after a theme is designed, issues can arise—site downtime, slow speed, or malfunctioning features. That’s why many agencies offer a 3- to 6-month post-launch maintenance contract to address any problems that come up. This is essential because even after launch, websites can encounter issues that need immediate attention.
Things to Consider when Choosing WordPress Agency for Shopify Theme Conversion:
- Check their previous designs: Focus on agencies with experience in eCommerce, especially those that have worked on Shopify to WordPress conversions. Their past work is a good indicator of how well they can handle your project.
- Ask about pricing: The cost typically ranges from $15,000 to $50,000 AUD, depending on your website’s complexity. Simpler websites will cost less, but if your website requires more development hours, expect higher fees.
- Review their developers’ skills: During your discussions with the agency, ask about their developers’ expertise. What types of projects have they handled before? If they’ve worked on eCommerce sites, that’s a good sign. However, make sure to clarify in which markets or regions they have experience.
In some cases, we’ve encountered challenges specific to certain regions. For example, working in the Australian WordPress domain has revealed that slow website speeds, broken pages, and downtime are common issues for marketing managers. If the site isn’t functioning properly, it directly affects their ability to receive orders, which is a nightmare scenario. Therefore, the goal is to make the process as seamless as possible. Any hiccups—whether in loading time or site crashes—will not only frustrate you but also upset your customers, which is something you need to avoid at all costs.
Read More: How to Migrate from Webflow to WordPress
Conclusion
Converting a Shopify theme to WordPress is challenging but possible. Experienced developers can do it themselves using our step-by-step guide. Others should consider hiring freelancers or agencies. The shift from Shopify to WordPress is a logical one especially if they are paying thousands in website hosting. This shift will potentially increase sales and operational efficiency of the ecommerce store.
Whether you DIY or outsource conversion of Shopify to WordPress theme, you now have the information at hand to help you get started.
How WP Creative Can Help Convert Shopify to WordPress?
WP Creative can assist businesses in smoothly converting Shopify stores to WordPress by providing expert migration services tailored to specific business needs.
We ensure that all product data, customer information, and design elements are seamlessly transferred while maintaining the website’s functionality. By migrating to WordPress, businesses can take advantage of the platform’s flexibility, enhanced customisation options, and cost-effective management.
