The making of Moving an Equine Therapy Store From WooCommerce to Shopify

The Horse's Back sells red light therapy gear for horses in Australia. We moved their store from WooCommerce to Shopify — redirects, reviews, preorders. See how.

Client: The Horse's Back
Built with: Shopify, Horizon Theme, Liquid, WordPress, WooCommerce, Judge.me

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Moving an Equine Therapy Store From WooCommerce to Shopify — the delivered interface

Challenges

Ten years of inbound links — from Facebook horse groups, forums and the site's own articles — pointed at WooCommerce product URLs, so the migration had to be invisible to anyone arriving on an old link or it would have cost the store its best traffic source
The store is one half of a site whose other half is a working editorial and bodywork-practice website that the client did not want to touch, which ruled out a full rebuild and meant the two platforms had to look and navigate as one
A catalogue that mixes physical goods on a monthly preorder cycle, digital eBooks, an online course, external Apple and Amazon listings and finance products — each with different fulfilment — had to sit in one storefront without confusing a horse owner who just wants a pair of hoof boots

Solution

The Horse's Back is run by Dr Jane Clothier, an equine bodyworker and acupuncturist based in Tamworth, New South Wales, and it has two halves: a long-running WordPress site of articles on ex-racehorse problems, saddle fit and parasites, and a store selling red light near-infrared boots and pads, BEMER therapy blankets, eBooks and online courses. The store had been bolted onto WordPress as a WooCommerce shop, and it was the half that kept breaking — plugin updates, payment hiccups and a checkout that did not inspire confidence on a $1,545 back pad. We separated the two. The articles, the bodywork practice pages and the BEMER explainers stayed on WordPress where they belong, and the store moved to Shopify on a subdomain running Horizon, Shopify's newest theme. Every product, collection, customer and the Judge.me review history came across; the old WooCommerce URLs were redirected so nothing a search engine or a Facebook group had linked to was lost; and the header, footer and typography were rebuilt so a visitor moving from an article to a product never notices they have changed platforms.

Services provided

Design

A store for a bodyworker should feel like her practice, not like a gadget shop, so the interface is kept to black on white, with one teal reserved for the Contact Me band that closes every page, a pale sage for sold-out badges and one light grey for rules. Horizon's rounded buttons at a 14px radius soften what would otherwise be a stark scheme. The type pairing does the brand work: Cormorant, a high-contrast serif, carries the headings and gives the store the same considered, written register as the articles next door, while Quicksand's rounded sans takes the product copy and keeps the measurements and diode counts friendly rather than clinical. Product photography is left to supply the colour — red light boots on a bay horse need no help from the palette.

Colors

#000000
#009182
#EEF1EA
#DFDFDF
#FFFFFF

Typeface

Headings
Cormorant
A high-contrast Garamond-style serif carrying collection titles and product names. It matches the editorial tone of the WordPress articles, so the store reads as written by the same person.
Body copy
Quicksand
A rounded geometric sans for descriptions, specifications and the preorder notes. Its soft terminals keep lists of wavelengths and diode counts approachable for a horse owner rather than reading like a datasheet.

What we built

Content Stays, Commerce Moves

Articles, podcasts, the bodywork practice and the BEMER explainer pages remain on WordPress; the store lives at shop.thehorsesback.com on Shopify. Each platform does the one job it is good at, and the client keeps the editorial workflow she has used for a decade.

One Header Across Two Platforms

The Shopify header and footer carry the full WordPress menu — Articles, BEMER, Equine Healthworks, Reviews, Podcasts, Contact — and the WordPress nav links back to the store, so the two sites behave as one to the visitor.

Catalogue Migrated Into Nine Collections

Thirty-odd products regrouped into red light therapy for Australia, BEMER for horses and people, dog pads, people products, eBooks, online learning, accessories, demo and pre-owned devices, and payment plans — a cleaner taxonomy than the WooCommerce categories it replaced.

Old URLs Redirected

The WooCommerce store path forwards to the new subdomain and the old product URLs are caught and redirected, so a decade of links from Facebook horse groups, forums and the site's own articles still land somewhere useful.

Reviews Carried Across

Judge.me reinstalled on Shopify with the existing review history imported, so the tendon boots arrive on the new store already carrying their eight reviews rather than starting from zero.

Monthly Preorder Cycle, Explained on the Product

Stock is renewed monthly and back pads are usually preorder only, so every red light product states the rule — order by the 15th, delivered by month end — and backorders are accepted rather than showing a dead sold-out button.

Digital and Physical in One Cart

PDF and ePub eBooks and an online lungeing course sold alongside boots and pads, with the Apple Books and Amazon editions linked out as external products so the catalogue is complete without duplicating fulfilment.

Payment Plans and Finance

A payment-plans product and collection spelling out 24-month interest-free fortnightly or monthly repayments, plus humm finance on BEMER — on a $1,545 pad for a horse, the monthly figure is often the deciding one.

Professional Partnership Route

A partnership scheme for Australian equine professionals using red light boots and pads, surfaced on the product pages so a vet or bodyworker buying for clients finds the trade route without hunting for it.