Feb 10, 2019
How We Migrated Cloudberry Living from Magento to Shopify
Cloudberry Living is a Scandinavian-inspired interiors retailer based in Falmouth, Cornwall.
They came to us with a Magento store that had served them well in the early years but was now visibly slowing them down — poor performance, escalating hosting costs, and a developer experience that made even simple updates feel like a project.
The migration to Shopify was not just a platform change. It was a full brand refresh and a commercial reset.
The Brief
Cloudberry's core requirements were clear: a faster site, a better mobile experience, a platform that the team could manage without relying on a developer for every change, and — critically — no loss of SEO rankings during the transition.
They had built genuine organic search visibility over years of trading, and protecting that was non-negotiable.
Pre-Migration Audit
Before we moved anything, we audited the existing Magento store thoroughly — covering product catalogue structure, URL structure (every URL needed to be mapped for redirect coverage), and existing search rankings. The SEO audit was particularly important. Cloudberry had URLs that had accumulated backlinks and ranking history over several years. We documented every URL that carried any meaningful organic traffic or inbound link equity before writing a single line of redirect code.
The Migration Process
Product data migration from Magento to Shopify requires careful attention to the differences between the two platforms' data models. We used a structured export–transform–validate–import approach, converting Magento's configurable product structure into Shopify's variant model and cleaning data throughout.
The 301 redirect map covered every legacy URL — product pages, collection pages, content pages, blog posts — and every redirect was validated before launch.
The Outcome
The new site launched significantly faster than the Magento predecessor. The team found they could manage product updates and content changes without developer support for routine tasks.
And the SEO rankings held — the 301 redirects did their job.
The project reinforced something we had been observing across a growing number of Magento clients: the total cost of operating a Magento store significantly exceeds what merchants expect.
Shopify's managed infrastructure and merchant-friendly admin resolve most of these issues comprehensively.
If you're running a Magento store and wondering what a move to Shopify would involve, we've done this enough times to give you a clear and honest picture.
