Moving a shop from WooCommerce to Shoptet: where it gets stuck

Old URLs must lead to new ones

The biggest risk of a migration is not the design but losing your Google positions. WooCommerce uses URLs like /produkt/name/ and /kategorie-produktu/name/, while Shoptet uses just /name/. If you keep the names in the URLs, only the prefix changes and the redirects can be generated by a script rather than written by hand.

The goal is simple: no old URL may return a 404. That includes goods you no longer want to sell. Their products do not move across, but the address has to lead somewhere, ideally the closest category. Add content pages and terms to the redirects by hand, because you only know their new address once the page exists.

Set VAT and currency before the import

In Shoptet, first set the VAT rates, whether prices include VAT, and the currency. Do it after the import and you have to recalculate every price by hand. A short job that saves a lot of recalculating.

Photos are downloaded from the old site

Shoptet fetches photos from their URLs during import. So the old shop has to stay online until the import finishes. Do not switch it off early, even if it looks done.

Variants and repeat imports

Products are matched by code, variants by a pairing code on rows next to each other. Get that right and a repeat import only updates what already exists and duplicates nothing. That matters, because the first attempt often does not work. Test everything on a trial shop and leave the live site untouched until the switch.

The trap you only find when shipping

After the move, shipments started failing at 35 kg, even though the heaviest item in that shop weighs 4 kg. The imported weights were wrong and nothing on the site showed it. Before launch, sort your products by weight in the admin and create a test shipment.

What to check before you decide

• What your plan allows. On the lower one, Shoptet would not run the discount code my client wanted, so I set the sale up through prices instead.
• What your plugins do today. Shoptet is a rented system: you can change the look and add add-ons, but you cannot reach its code.
• What exactly moves across. I move products, variants, customers and copy. Goods you no longer sell do not have to move.

If a shop runs on custom logic that Shoptet could not carry, migrating makes no sense and I will tell you so.

After the switch

Submit the new sitemap in Search Console and watch whether Google has indexed the new pages and whether any link leads nowhere. For a few weeks after the switch, also watch the cart, payments, shipping and the first real orders. That is where whatever the testing missed shows up.