Moving from WooCommerce, Wix or Squarespace to Shopify: what Irish retailers should expect

Last checked: October 2026

The short answer: most Irish stores can move to Shopify in a matter of weeks, and your products and customer details come across fairly easily. The parts that need planning are your old web addresses (so you keep your Google rankings), order history, reviews, customer passwords, and setting up VAT and shipping properly for Ireland, the UK and the EU.

Here's what to expect, and where stores usually trip up.

How long does it take to move to Shopify?

Shopify says most businesses complete their migration in less than three months. A small store with a tidy catalogue can be much quicker. What stretches it out is usually messy product data, lots of custom features, or decisions that haven't been made yet.

A migration usually runs in five stages:

1. Plan and tidy up. Decide what's coming across, archive old products and duplicate customers, and list every app and plugin you rely on now.

2. Set up Shopify. Choose a theme, set up payments, tax, shipping and your domain, and find Shopify apps to replace your old plugins.

3. Move your data. Bring products and customers across first, then order history and reviews if you want them.

4. Map your old web addresses. Match every old page to its new Shopify address, so Google and your customers land in the right place.

5. Test, launch and watch. Place test orders, check emails and redirects, go live, then keep an eye on traffic and rankings for the next few weeks.

Timing tip: avoid moving in the weeks before Black Friday or Christmas. January to March is a good window for most Irish retailers, because there's breathing room before spring trading picks up.

What comes across, and what doesn't?

Shopify's free Store Migration app handles the basics: products and customer details. Almost everything else needs a paid migration app, a CSV import, or setting up again by hand.

Two things are worth planning early. First, tell customers before launch that they'll need to reset their password, so it doesn't feel like something's broken. Second, the free app sets each product to its highest price and doesn't bring stock across by location, so if you sell from a shop and online, that needs setting up separately.

Source: Shopify, Store Migration app guide

Will you lose your Google rankings?

Not if you set up redirects properly. The risk comes from Shopify using its own fixed web address structure, so almost every page on your old site will get a new address.

On Shopify, products always live at /products/, categories become /collections/, and pages sit under /pages/. So a WooCommerce product at yourstore.ie/product/linen-apron becomes yourstore.ie/products/linen-apron. Without a redirect, anyone clicking the old link from Google, an old email or Instagram lands on an error page.

To protect your rankings:

• List every page that gets traffic now. Export your top pages from Google Search Console or Analytics before you start, including blog posts.

• Redirect each old address to its closest match. Product to product, category to collection. Shopify has a built-in redirect tool, and you can upload them in bulk from a spreadsheet.

• Don't send everything to the homepage. Google treats that much like a missing page, so it doesn't save your rankings.

• Bring your SEO titles and descriptions across. Re-enter them in Shopify's SEO fields so your pages still say the same things to Google.

• Change one thing at a time where you can. Moving platform, rewriting every product description and renaming everything at once makes it hard to tell what caused a dip.

• Check again after launch. Watch Search Console for pages Google can't find, and fix any redirects you missed.

A small dip in traffic for a few weeks after launch is normal while Google catches up. A big or lasting drop usually means redirects are missing.

What do Irish stores need to set up differently?

Most migration guides are written for US stores, where prices are shown before sales tax. Irish shoppers expect prices to include VAT, and selling into the UK and EU adds a few extra steps.

• Show prices including VAT. Set Shopify to include tax in your prices, so €40 on the product page is €40 at checkout. Most Irish goods are at the 23% standard rate, but some products use reduced rates, so check yours.

• Get your EU sales right. Once your sales to consumers in other EU countries go over €10,000 a year in total, you charge VAT at each customer's local rate, usually through the EU's One-Stop Shop (OSS) scheme. Shopify can calculate this, but you need to switch it on.

• Plan for the UK separately. Since Brexit, selling to consumers in Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) has its own VAT rules for lower-value orders, and customs paperwork applies. Decide whether you'll handle UK VAT yourself or have customers pay on delivery, and say so clearly on your delivery page.

• Treat Northern Ireland on its own. For goods, Northern Ireland largely follows EU VAT rules rather than Great Britain's, so orders there work differently from orders to England, Scotland or Wales.

• Sell in other currencies if it helps. Shopify Markets can show prices in sterling or other currencies while you're still paid in euro. Many UK shoppers are more comfortable buying in pounds.

• Set up local payments and shipping. Shopify Payments works in Ireland, and Apple Pay and Google Pay come with it. Set shipping rates by zone (Ireland, Northern Ireland, Great Britain, the EU, rest of world) and show delivery times on your product pages.

Tax rules depend on your business, so run your VAT setup past your accountant before you launch.

Does it matter which platform you're coming from?

A little. The basics are the same, but each platform has its own quirks.

Whichever platform you're on, take a full backup of products, customers and orders before you start, and keep your old site running until the new one has launched and been checked.

How Fig & Function handles migrations

We're a small Shopify studio in Ireland, and moving stores from WooCommerce, Wix and Squarespace is a big part of what we do. We handle the parts that are easy to get wrong: redirects, VAT and shipping setup for Ireland, the UK and the EU, and making sure your customers aren't caught off guard by a password reset.

We also hand over properly. You'll know how to run your new store yourself, without needing us for every small change.

Not sure if you're ready to move? Start with a store audit. We'll look at your current site and tell you honestly whether moving to Shopify makes sense, what it would involve, and what to fix first. See our migration service or get in touch.

Thinking about a grant? If you're working with your Local Enterprise Office, read our guide to using the Grow Digital Voucher for a Shopify store before you sign anything.