Should businesses redesign during migration?

It depends on the business’s goals, budget, and timeline. A Magento-to-Shopify migration is an excellent opportunity to refresh the store’s design, but combining a full redesign with a platform migration also increases project complexity and risk.

Reasons to redesign during migration:

• Modernize the store’s appearance and branding.
• Improve the user experience (UX) and customer journey.
• Optimize for mobile devices and responsive design.
• Increase page speed and Core Web Vitals.
• Simplify navigation and product discovery.
• Improve conversion rates with updated layouts and checkout experiences.
• Take advantage of Shopify’s Online Store 2.0 features and modern themes.
• Enhance accessibility and SEO.

Reasons to avoid a major redesign during migration:

• Increases project scope, cost, and development time.
• Makes it more difficult to identify the cause of issues after launch.
• Can introduce additional bugs and usability problems.
• May temporarily affect customer familiarity and conversion rates.
• Requires more extensive testing before going live.

Best practice:

Many businesses choose a phased approach:

1. Migrate to Shopify first while preserving the existing user experience as much as possible.
2. Stabilize the new store, verify that SEO, integrations, and business operations are working correctly.
3. Implement a redesign in a later phase based on customer feedback, analytics, and business goals.

This approach reduces migration risk while still allowing the business to benefit from a modern, optimized storefront over time.

Ultimately, if the current Magento store is outdated or provides a poor user experience, a redesign during migration can be worthwhile—provided there is sufficient planning, testing, and resources to ensure a successful launch.