OpenCart to WooCommerce Migration with Cart2Cart
Table of Contents
Launching an eCommerce website is one of the most effective money-making opportunities for businesses of all sizes and related to various industries. While launching a web store from scratch or updating the existing one, business owners want to use the most reliable eCommerce platform to support all the needed functionality they look forward to adding to their websites, thus providing the web users with a top-notch online experience. Although OpenCart seems to be a wise option for building eCommerce websites, WooCommerceWooCommerceA free, open-source e-commerce plugin for WordPress.
More About WooCommerce remains the most popular platform among merchants. Many eCommerce website owners have started thinking about the OpenCart to WooCommerce migration. Why do users decide to migrate to WooCommerce, and what are the most effective online store migration procedures? Let’s find it out.
Why Migrate from OpenCart?
OpenCart became one of the top choices for small and medium-sized businesses. There are many reasons why companies use this eCommerce platform to launch their online stores. It’s well-known for its ease of use and navigation. Some drawbacks could have been improved.
One of the main reasons many businesses migrate from OpenCart is the lack of customization options. Unlike WooCommerce, which provides users with the freedom to choose from thousands of free and premium themes, OpenCart offers merchants the selection of only 500 paid and free themes.
Why Should You Migrate to WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a WordPressWordPressOpen-source content management system (CMS) that allows users to create and manage websites and blogs.
More About WordPress pluginPluginA piece of software that can be easily installed and activated on a CMS platform to enhance its capabilities.
More About Plugin used on more than 40% of websites currently available. WooCommerce is so popular among merchants seems to be ob<es an intuitive and usable admin interface that provides you with quick access to multiple customization options and features, enabling you to personalize your online project just the way you want. Besides, WooCommerce store owners may feel free to choose from multiple ready-made themes and website templates, which they can edit using integrated features of the supported WooCommerce plugins.
Three Ways to Complete OpenCart to WooCommerce Migration
Migrating to another platform is an important decision for every business owner. One needs to choose a better alternative for managing their online presence. Migrating to another web platform suggests that you should change the whole website structure. So you need to ensure that you move in the right direction and won’t need to spend hundreds of hours fixing bugs.
OpenCart to WooCommerce migration can be completed in several ways. Let’s discuss each of them to help you choose the best way to migrate your website.
Manual OpenCart to WooCommerce Migration
It’s one of the most time-consuming methods, which suggests that you should do all the work by yourself. Depending on the size of your website, it may take weeks or months to complete the migration. Doing the manual OpenCart to WooCommerce migration is the right choice for tech-savvies. Those users who have little to no technical knowledge should consider the automatic migration with a plugin or getting the job done with the help of a professional web developer or a web designWeb DesignCreating and organizing the visual layout, user interface, and overall aesthetics of a website.
More About Web Design company.
Hiring a Professional Web Developer
Working with a third-party expert to migrate your website to WooCommerce will cost you $50-$250 per hour. A professional web developer will be in charge of exporting your data from OpenCart, moving it to WooCommerce, fixing bugs, and applying the needed changes to your website’s structure. This is a rather expensive and time-consuming method, unlike manually completing the OpenCart to WooCommerce migration or using a dedicated plugin. The time within which the migration will be complete depends on the professionalism of the chosen third-party web developer or web design company.
Automated OpenCart to WooCommerce Migration
It’s one of the most effective and top-recommenced options for every merchant looking forward to migrating their online store. An automated migration tool will access all data of your OpenCart store that you need to import to WooCommerce and migrate it to the chosen eCommerce platform. Using an automated migration tool saves your site and money and helps you improve your productivity.
There are many automated OpenCart to WooCommerce migration tools. Cart2Cart is one of the leading automated migration plugins, which allows you to perform the migration in less than one hour. Let’s see how.
How to Migrate from OpenCart to WooCommerce with Cart2Cart
Cart2Cart is one of the leading automated migration tools enabling you to import your OpenCart store’s needed content to WooCommerce in 4 easy steps. Although the process seems to be rather quick and easy, it’s still worth getting ready for the WooCommerce migration by paying attention to the following steps:
- Run an audit of your OpenCart store by removing all outdated and unnecessary data. It lets you complete the OpenCart to WooCommerce migration much faster.
- Back up your website. Although the Cart2Cart plugin won’t delete or modify your website’s data, it’s still advised to play safe and back up your store if you decide to restore it.
- Add enough funds to the Cart2Cart account before you start the migration. There is a Cart2Cart pricing calculator that you can use to estimate the migration costs.
Before initiating the migration, you need to create a WooCommerce store. Install WordPress to the chosen web hostingHostingThe process of storing and serving website files on a remote server, making them accessible to visitors around the world.
More About Hosting provider and install WooCommerce. Next, install and activate the Cart2Cart plugin, and take the following steps to proceed with the WooCommerce migration.
Step 1. Connect the source OpenCart store with the target WooCommerce store
To initiate the OpenCart to WooCommerce migration, you need to set up the source (OpenCart store) and target (WooCommerce store) carts. You need to enter your admin URLs for both carts and provide your admin login and password details.
Step 2. Choose the data you want to export
Select which OpenCart data you want to export to your WooCommerce store. You may choose products, orders, customer data, coupons, reviews, etc. Cart2Cart also lets you choose additional migration options, such as preserving order IDs after migrating data to the target store. You may also pick the options to migrate your customers’ passwords, SEOSEOSearch Engine Optimization involves optimizing various website elements to make it more attractive to search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
More About SEO URLs of your products and categories, etc. If you don’t have any preferences, you may tick the Select All option and migrate every entity. While choosing what options you’d like to migrate, bear in mind that exporting some of them is only possible at an additional cost.
Step 3. Get an insight into the entire migration process with the demo migration option
Cart2Cart Demo lets you export up to 10 online store entities for free. The demo migration process won’t last for more than 30 minutes and doesn’t include any extra costs. Launching the demo migration option is essential because it will give you an insight into the migration process and will help you understand whether you are happy with the results.
Step 4. Launch full migration
If the demo migration results meet your expectations, you can proceed with the full OpenCart to WooCommerce data migration. Unlike the demo migration options, the full migration will take up to 5 hours. As the Cart2Cart plugin takes care of your eCommerce site’s migration, you can close the browserBrowserA software application that enables you to view and interact with websites.
More About Browser winder and take care of running your online store like nothing is happening.
Once the migration is completed, you will receive an email notification. After that, you can continue using WooCommerce as the main platform that powers your web store.