Moving your online business from one platform to another can feel like a massive project with a million moving parts. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and keep putting it off. But what if you could complete the entire process in just 30 days? With a clear plan and a structured timeline, a swift and smooth EKM migration is not only possible, it’s the best way to minimise disruption and start reaping the benefits of your new platform faster.
A disciplined timeline keeps everyone focused and ensures that no critical steps are missed. It turns a daunting task into a series of manageable, week-by-week goals. This guide breaks down the entire process into a 30-day plan, showing you how to move from EKM to Shopify efficiently and confidently.
Week 1: Discovery & Planning
The first week is all about preparation. You can’t build a new house without a blueprint, and you can’t migrate a store without a plan. This phase is crucial for a smooth transition.
Goals for Week 1:
- Full Data Audit: Create a complete inventory of your EKM store. This includes all your products (with their variants, images, and descriptions), customer accounts, order history, and content pages (like your ‘About Us’ and blog posts). Knowing exactly what you need to move is the first step.
- Content Cleanup: This is the perfect time for a spring clean. Review your product descriptions, update images, and remove any old or irrelevant pages. You want to start on Shopify with clean, high-quality data.
- Choose Your Shopify Plan: Review Shopify’s pricing plans and select the one that best fits your business needs. Don’t worry, you can always upgrade later as you grow.
- Define Your Goals: What do you want to achieve with your new store? Better mobile experience? More sales? Easier admin? Write down your top three goals to guide your decisions during the migration.
- Contact an Expert: This is the ideal time to engage a migration specialist. A partner like Media Mole can help you create a detailed project plan and ensure your EKM migration stays on track from day one.
At the end of week one, you should have a clear map of what needs to be done and who is responsible for each task.
Week 2: Data Export & Shopify Setup
Now that you have a plan, it’s time to start building the foundations of your new Shopify store. This week is focused on getting your data out of EKM and into Shopify.
Goals for Week 2:
- Export Your Data: Export all your product, customer, and order data from your EKM store. This is usually done through CSV files. Take backups of everything before you begin.
- Import into Shopify: Begin importing the CSV files into your new Shopify account. Start with products, then customers. Shopify has built-in tools to help with this, but it requires careful attention to ensure all the data fields match up correctly.
- Set Up Basic Shopify Settings: While the data is importing, configure the basic settings in your Shopify admin panel. This includes setting up your store address, currency, payment gateways (like Shopify Payments and PayPal), and shipping zones.
- Create Collections: In Shopify, categories are called “collections.” Start organising your imported products into logical collections to make them easy for customers to browse.
By the end of this week, your new store will start to take shape. Your products and data will be in place, ready for the design phase.
Week 3: Theme Design & Apps
With the backend taking shape, this week is all about the customer-facing experience. It’s time to make your store look great and function perfectly.
Goals for Week 3:
- Choose and Customise Your Theme: Browse the Shopify Theme Store and select a theme that aligns with your brand. Shopify’s Online Store 2.0 themes are incredibly flexible. Spend time customising the colours, fonts, and layout to create a beautiful and unique storefront. Focus on creating a clean and intuitive navigation menu.
- Design Key Pages: Go beyond the homepage. Customise your product pages, collection pages, and create essential content pages like ‘About Us’, ‘Contact Us’, and ‘FAQs’.
- Install Essential Apps: This is where Shopify’s power really shines. Based on your goals from Week 1, install apps to add functionality. This could include an app for customer reviews, an advanced email marketing tool, or an app to connect with your social media channels. Don’t go overboard; start with the essentials.
At the end of Week 3, you should have a fully functional and beautifully designed store that you can browse and test behind the scenes.
Week 4: Testing & Launch
This is the final and most critical week. It’s all about testing, double-checking, and preparing for the big switch.
Goals for Week 4:
- Set Up SEO Redirects: This is a non-negotiable step. You need to create a 301 redirect for every page on your old EKM site to its new address on Shopify. This tells Google where to find your pages and is vital for preserving your search engine rankings. This is a core part of any professional EKM migration or Sellerdeck Migration.
- Thorough Testing: Place test orders to ensure the checkout process is smooth. Check the site on different devices (desktop, tablet, mobile) to confirm it looks and works perfectly everywhere. Click every link to make sure there are no broken ones.
- Final Review: Go through a pre-launch checklist. Are your payment gateways active? Are your shipping rates correct? Are your contact details right?
- Launch Day: Once everything is perfect, it’s time to go live. This involves pointing your domain name from your old EKM store to your new Shopify store. The change can take a few hours to update across the internet, but the process itself is quick.
Congratulations, your new Shopify store is live!
Post-Launch Checklist
The work isn’t quite over. In the first few days after launch, it’s important to monitor everything closely.
- Keep an eye on your Google Analytics and Search Console for any error reports.
- Place another test order to be certain that live payments are working.
- Announce your new and improved store to your customers via email and social media.
- Submit your new sitemap to Google to encourage it to crawl your new site quickly.
Why a Disciplined Timeline Matters
A 30-day timeline does more than just get the job done quickly. It creates momentum and focus. It forces you to make decisions and prevents the project from dragging on for months. For a business, time is money. The sooner you are on a more powerful platform, the sooner you can start increasing your sales and efficiency. A disciplined timeline ensures you get to the finish line without getting lost along the way.
How Media Mole Keeps Your Migration on Schedule
Managing a migration in 30 days requires experience and a proven process. At Media Mole, we are experts in keeping your EKM migration on a strict schedule. We provide you with a detailed project plan from day one, with clear weekly milestones. Our team handles the technical heavy lifting—like the data transfer and SEO redirects—allowing you to focus on the design and business decisions. We keep the project moving forward, ensuring a seamless launch right on schedule.
Final Thoughts
Migrating your e-commerce store doesn’t have to be a long, drawn-out ordeal. By breaking it down into a structured 30-day plan, you can tackle it in manageable steps and launch your new Shopify store with confidence. This focused approach minimises stress and maximises results, setting your business up for a new chapter of growth.
If you’re ready to make the move but want an expert to guide you through this 30-day journey, get in touch with us today. Let’s get your migration on the calendar.