Migrating from GoDaddy Website Builder to WooCommerce

Building an online store with GoDaddy Website Builder is a great starting point for a new business. 

But sometimes, good things must come to an end — especially when your business is pushing at the seams of your software’s capabilities.

Knowing when it’s time for an upgrade can be tricky, but it’s better to act sooner rather than later. When an ecommerce business does outgrow its means, the customer experience suffers — along with sales. 

Luckily, WooCommerce makes upgrading simple. You can even keep your website hosted with GoDaddy if you’d like! 

Let’s break down how to know when migration is necessary, explore the differences between GoDaddy Website Builder and WooCommerce, and show you how to migrate.

There are a variety of reasons you might need to move your website. A few signs include:

• Your traffic, product catalog, or monthly order volume start to slow down your website. When this occurs, you’ll want to migrate to a platform like WooCommerce, which positions you for growth.
• You run into functionality barriers with your software. You might think, “I’d really like to add this tool to my site,” but find out that the platform you’re using doesn’t allow for that. Or perhaps you want to offer more payment methods or shipping options. With WooCommerce, there’s always a way.
• You want more design flexibility. Perhaps you want to up the creativity and professionalism of your site or brand as a whole. A platform with more flexibility and intuitive site builder capabilities makes the options limitless.
• You want to reach an international audience. As you scale, you may want a platform that better allows for international growth — think advanced shipping methods, local payment methods, the ability to accept a wide range of currencies, content translations, and more.
• You want to enhance your marketing efforts. Your marketing efforts will change over time. Perhaps you need an ecommerce platform that better integrates with the tools you want to use, like ERPs, CRMs, and other selling channels.
• You want more control and ownership over your store. The more content, products, and sales you have, the more you value ownership. The last thing you want is to have your site taken down unexpectedly because you violated terms and conditions you might not have known about. And website owners using platforms like GoDaddy Website Builder often find themselves locked in. They need additional functionality or features, but run into walls over and over again, unable to expand their store the way they’d like.  

In the end, there are lots of different reasons to migrate. And the time is right when your current platform isn’t meeting expectations or doesn’t offer what you need to grow.

WooCommerce is an ecommerce tool built specifically for WordPress. In short, WordPress is the software that will power your new site, while WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that adds ecommerce functionality.

WordPress is an open source website platform, which means that it makes its source code publicly available to view or modify however you like. This not only provides a ton of transparency, it also means that you have full control and can create any sort of design or functionality. 

It also includes the powerful block editor that you can use to create custom pages and posts without having to work with code. All you have to do is drag and drop elements — like images, paragraphs, videos, and galleries — into place, then modify settings to customize each one.

But it’s more than just a standard page builder. You can use blocks to edit everything from headers and footers to templates, including layouts for blog posts, product pages, and archives. This opens up a whole world of possibilities! 

Without having to muddle through complicated settings, hire a developer, or even edit a single line of code, you can customize the appearance of your entire site. Edit checkout fields. Set a call to action to automatically appear in the middle of each blog post. Add an email capture into your footer. It’s all possible with WordPress.

It’s no wonder WordPress powers more than 43% of the web.

When you add the free WooCommerce plugin, you get everything you need to run an online store — checkout and cart pages, product listings, tax calculations, shipping capabilities, and more. 

On top of that, you gain access to tons of free and premium extensions that you can use to enhance your store. With these tools, you can:

• Sell new types of products like memberships, subscriptions, bookings, wholesale items, and more.
• Enhance the checkout experience with add-ons, gift cards, product bundles, and more.
• Accept a huge variety of payment types, from debit and credit cards to digital wallets, in person payments, and payment plans.
• Create custom shipping rules based on everything from weight and size to cart total and location.
• Integrate with third-party tools, including email marketing providers, CRMs, social media platforms, social selling platforms, ERPs, inventory management tools, accounting software, and shipping tools.

That’s a very condensed list. There’s a huge variety of extensions you can choose from. And if you don’t see something that meets your exact needs, you take advantage of the open source nature of WooCommerce and hire a developer to create something custom for you.

The short answer: Every business!

The long answer: It depends on what the store needs. If it will benefit from things like full-scale customization, unlimited flexibility, complete control over costs, and an enthusiastic, worldwide community of helpful developers, then a switch to WooCommerce will be a great move.

We explored some of the benefits of WooCommerce earlier, and compared features in the table above. But the word that keeps coming up over and over again is flexibility.

Unlike with GoDaddy Website Builder, you won’t be held back as you grow. Store owners who transfer to WooCommerce often do so because they want to add a specific feature to their site, but can’t find a way to do so with GoDaddy.

When you use WooCommerce, you’ll never run into limitations — they simply don’t exist. You can customize your store in any way you’d like thanks to the WordPress site editor, extension library, and open source code. And you’ll never lose access to, or control over, your business or data, because you own it. 

Plus, you can take your website to any host you’d like, all while keeping the customer experience consistent. You’re not locked in whatsoever. 

And if you started using GoDaddy Website Builder for its ease of use, don’t worry! The WordPress block editor simplifies the website creation process, allowing you to edit absolutely every aspect of your design and layout without having to work with code. It’s more powerful and flexible than GoDaddy’s, but is still extremely accessible for non-technical site owners.

When you use WooCommerce, you’ll never run into limitations. You’ll never lose access to, or control over, your business or data, because you own it. You can customize your store in any way you’d like thanks to the WordPress site editor, extension library, and open source code.

And you can take your website to any host you’d like, all while keeping the customer experience consistent.

All of this on top of powerful functionality, a platform built to scale, top-notch security integrations, and an incredible, widespread community ready to support you along your journey. Plus, compared to GoDaddy, WordPress and WooCommerce give you all the essentials you need at no cost!

There are three primary ways to migrate:

1. Do it yourself
2. Hire a developer
3. Hire a WooExpert (recommended)

No matter which option you choose, you’ll only be able to migrate over basic order information. You’ll need to rebuild your website design and functionality using WordPress and WooCommerce. So, keep this in mind when choosing the route you’d like to take.

1. Do it yourself

Choose a host

The easiest option here is to use GoDaddy for hosting, but migrate your store to WooCommerce. You can simply reach out to GoDaddy support and request to move from GoDaddy Website Builder to their managed WooCommerce hosting plan. 

If you’d like to change both your hosting and your ecommerce platform, we’re here to help. WooCommerce works with many different hosts, but here are a few recommended options.  

If you’d like to keep website management simple, but still get all the flexibility WooCommerce has to offer, the Entrepreneur plan on WordPress.com is perfect for you.

Download your site data

Now is the time to download and save information from your current store. While the data you can download is limited, you can save orders using this tutorial.

You’ll also want to save any additional information, like blog posts, images, and page content. You can do this by copying text and downloading images to your computer.

Rebuild your website

Now you’ll need to build your website on WordPress and WooCommerce. To eliminate downtime, it’s best to start building your ecommerce site on a temporary URL (which your host can provide) and maintain your original website during the development process. 

Then, you can follow our five step getting started guide, which walks you through installing WordPress and WooCommerce, choosing a theme, adding products, installing any extensions you need, and more.

Make sure that you add any content that you want to keep from your old site to your new store (using the same URL structure). This is particularly important for maintaining your search engine rankings after your migration.

Once your site is ready, simply point your domain name to your new host (if applicable) and enjoy your new, more flexible and powerful store.

2. Hire a developer

If you don’t have the experience, desire, or time to complete your site migration on your own, you can always hire a developer to take care of things for you. Since WooCommerce is an open source ecommerce platform, there are a wealth of experienced developers and agencies you can choose from. And they can handle saving your store data and building your new site all in one fell swoop. 

Just take the time to choose a vetted developer with excellent reviews, a solid portfolio, and experience in migrating from GoDaddy Website Builder to WooCommerce. There are a variety of platforms you can use to find a developer, including Upwork, Fiverr, and Codeable. 

And if you choose to go with WordPress.com, you can take advantage of their site development capabilities, which start at $499 for a WooCommerce site.

3. Hire a Woo Partner Agency (recommended)

For the most seamless migration, hiring a Woo Partner Agency is the way to go. Woo Partner Agencies are thoroughly-vetted agencies that specialize in WooCommerce. There’s an entire directory that you can look through to find the perfect fit for your business.

Have specific requirements? Filter through the list based on time zone, language, industry, services offered, rates, and budget. You can read about each agency, look through their work, review testimonials, and navigate to their website for even more information. 

And since every WooExpert is, well, an expert, you can trust that the migration and site build process will be top-notch and efficient.  

Whether you’re ready to migrate to WooCommerce from GoDaddy Website Builder or just want to learn more, don’t wait. Reach out to our support team to learn more about migration and how we can help you achieve your business goals. 

Niall has focused on WordPress due its open nature and customizability for over 16 years and WooCommerce for almost 5 years. He’s a Woo Customer Growth Happiness Engineer helping Woo merchants and agencies get the most out of WooCommerce by consulting on best practices, site optimization, checkout flow improvements, and more. In his free time, Niall tinkers with hardware and software from Linux distros to gaming devices and remains an avid lifetime gamer and member of the PCMR.