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hairdoshop.de on Shopify — the same shop, built twice
A multilingual online shop for real and synthetic hair extensions has been running on WooCommerce for years – built by us, maintained by us, and it will remain there . In parallel, we are building the same product range on Shopify, under a separate web address. This isn't a migration, but a direct comparison : the same products, the same variations, the same legal obligations – two platforms.
Regarding the status of this page: The project is ongoing. Therefore, this page reflects what we've found, decided, and planned – but doesn't yet include any performance metrics. We'll add those once both shops can be measured side-by-side. And because it's a valid question: The existing WooCommerce shop will not be shut down. It will remain the primary shop.
Why build the same shop twice?
Otherwise, platform comparisons remain mere assertions. Every agency will tell you when Shopify is the right fit and when WooCommerce is better – almost always based on gut feeling, because the comparison projects are never the same. Different product ranges, different budgets, different requirements: What was due to the platform, and what to the project?
Everything here is the same. The same ten products, the same 72 color variations, the same two languages, the same mandatory German information, the same team. Any differences are due to the platform – and can be measured, not just claimed. For the merchant, this creates a second sales channel, and for us, it provides a solid basis for our system recommendation on our Shopify page.
The starting point: the existing shop
hairdoshop.de sells clip-in extensions, bangs, braids, and real hair hairpieces to both end customers and hair salons. The shop runs on WordPress with WooCommerce, is bilingual (German and English) via WPML, and is legally adapted to the German market using Germanized.
The product range is manageable, but the underlying data structure is not: Each product is a variable product with its own color selection. The color palettes differ depending on the material type – synthetic hair (Tru2Life) has different colors than human hair. This is precisely where a replica loses combinations if you simply run the import process and hope for the best.
Inventory in numbers
| Products per language | 10 (all variable) |
| Variants per language | 72 – up to 10 per product |
| Total data sets (DE + EN separated) | 20 products, 144 variations |
| Color variations | 11 Tru2Life colors, 6 real hair colors, 2 color splash shades |
| Categories | 3 per language (clip-in extensions, bangs/braids, real hair) |
| Addresses in the index | 73 (44 German, 29 English) |
| Price range | 79 - 289 € |
| Payment methods today | PayPal, Klarna, on account |
Six areas where the platforms really differ
Not all variants are created equal.
WooCommerce supports product attributes with any number of values. Shopify allows three options per product and limits the number of combinations. Here, the two approaches work well together – one option (color), a maximum of ten variations. Nevertheless, each combination is checked individually: stock level, price, product number, and image for each color.
Shopify truncates URLs differently
Shopify enforces its own patterns: /products/, /collections/, /pages/, /blogs/The WooCommerce shop has a different layout – products are located below. /shop/kategorie/name/, categories under /haarshop/We compared all 73 addresses. This isn't a redirect project, but rather an answer to the question of how much freedom you give up when switching: In WooCommerce, you define the structure; in Shopify, it's provided to you.
Two products become one
The underestimated difference. In WPML, the German and English products are two separate data records with two addresses. In Shopify, there's one product with a handle; the language is embedded in the market prefix. All twenty products had to be matched in pairs. Seven pairs could be uniquely identified by price, number of variants, and image—three couldn't, because they matched in all three attributes. We matched these manually, not by guessing.
What will replace the extensions?
The WooCommerce shop uses, among other things, an affiliate program with its own login and registration area, a rating system, dynamic pricing rules, and Germanized. For every feature in Shopify, it's either built-in tools or an app – or it's simply not included. An affiliate program is one of the things Shopify doesn't offer. It's precisely these kinds of features that determine the ongoing costs, not the platform's monthly fee.
Shopify does not provide German legal information.
Cancellation policy including sample form, basic price information according to the German Price Indication Ordinance (PAngV), complete shipping costs and delivery time information, the labeling of the order button according to § 312j of the German Civil Code (BGB), and information on the authenticity of reviews: Germanized handles all of this in the existing shop. In Shopify, it is set up anew and individually verified – with real test orders via each payment method.
Two shops, two texts — no copy
Because both shops need to be publicly discoverable, they can't share the same text. Two domains with identical product descriptions compete against each other, and in the end, the shop that can least afford it loses. Therefore, the Shopify shop gets its own product, category, and meta texts – this is the part that cloning tools can't handle.
The procedure
inventory
Products, variants, attributes, categories, language pairs, extensions, payment methods, and all indexed addresses were recorded and counted. The result is the table above.
Address and structure comparison
All 73 addresses of the existing shop were compared to the Shopify templates, including cases without a match: WordPress categories become blog tags in Shopify, and the author archive is removed without replacement.
Setting up the Shopify store
Theme, product range structure, product data, color options with images, payment methods, shipping rules and legal texts – initially password-protected, not publicly accessible.
Original content, two languages
Product and category texts rewritten instead of being copied, English version as a translation of the same product instead of as a second product, prices and tax rates separated for each market.
Testing before going live
Test order via each payment method, verification of all mandatory information, comparison of content against the existing shop for unwanted duplicates, measurement of loading time and Core Web Vitals.
Live launch at own address
Separate domain, separate search console property. After that, both shops run side by side – and provide the figures for the comparison below.
What we will compare
To ensure that numbers, and not adjectives, appear here later, the measurement points are predetermined – identical in both shops:
- Setup time per platform until the stand is ready for sale, in hours
- Loading time and Core Web Vitals From the start page, category page, and product page – WooCommerce's current baseline value: approximately 2,3 seconds until the complete response.
- Running costs Full screen view: platform fees, apps, transaction fees, hosting, Maintenance
- maintenance effort – how long does the same change take here and there
- Limits in the purchase agreement – what could not be implemented in Shopify, what could not be implemented in WooCommerce without effort
- Conversion after sufficient running time, provided the figures become reliable
Are you facing the same question?
We develop on four platforms and therefore don't sell a platform, but rather an assessment – and we're currently working on substantiating it with metrics instead of opinions. An initial consultation is free, even if we ultimately advise you to stay where you are.
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