Moving your store to Shopify from WooCommerce, Magento, Wix or another platform is one of the best upgrades you can make — as long as you don't lose your data or your Google rankings on the way. Most migration problems come from skipping the planning. This checklist covers what to move, in what order, and how to protect the traffic you've already earned.
Before you move anything
Take a full inventory
List everything your current store has: products and variants, collections or categories, customers, past orders, blog posts, pages, discount codes, gift cards and reviews. Note which ones you actually need on day one and which can wait. Not every old record is worth moving.
Export every URL that gets traffic
Before you change anything, export a list of all your current URLs. Use your old platform's sitemap and the Pages report in Google Search Console to see which pages bring in visits. This list becomes your redirect map later — it's the single most important step for keeping your SEO.
Record your current numbers
Write down your monthly organic traffic, top landing pages, conversion rate and average page speed. Without a "before" picture, you can't tell whether the migration helped or hurt.
Moving the data
Products first
Products are the heart of the store. Use Shopify's CSV import or the Store Migration app for supported platforms. Check variants (size, colour), SKUs, prices, weights, images and inventory after import — these are the fields that most often come through wrong.
Customers and orders
Customer accounts can be imported, but passwords can't be moved between platforms for security reasons. Plan to send customers an account invitation after launch. Importing past orders is optional but useful for customer service and repeat-purchase marketing.
Content and reviews
Move your blog posts and important pages (About, FAQ, shipping and returns). Most review apps can import reviews from a CSV export, so ask your old review provider for one before you cancel.
Protect your SEO
Map old URLs to new ones
Shopify uses fixed URL patterns — /products/, /collections/, /pages/, /blogs/ — so your old URLs will almost certainly change. For every old URL on your list, decide the closest new page and create a 301 redirect. You can bulk-import redirects as a CSV in Shopify's URL Redirects screen.
Keep titles and descriptions
If a page ranked well before, carry its title tag, meta description and main content over as they were. A migration is not the time to rewrite everything at once — change one thing at a time so you can see what worked.
Check it again after launch
After the switch, submit your new sitemap in Search Console, click through your redirect list to confirm each one lands on the right page, and watch the Pages report for new "Not found (404)" errors over the next few weeks.
Launch day checklist
- Place a real test order with a real payment method, then refund it.
- Check shipping rates and taxes for your main countries.
- Confirm order confirmation and shipping emails look right.
- Reconnect your domain and set it as the primary domain.
- Turn off the storefront password.
- Reinstall tracking (Google Analytics, Meta pixel) and test it.
- Send the account invitation email to imported customers.
After launch
Expect some movement in rankings for a few weeks while Google recrawls the new URLs — that's normal if your redirects are in place. Keep an eye on Search Console, fix 404s as they appear, and use the move as a chance to tidy up with our Shopify SEO checklist and speed guide.
Want the whole move handled for you? Our store migration to Shopify service covers data transfer, redirects and launch checks, and our Shopify workflow automation service can rebuild the order and inventory flows you relied on before.