Shopify Migration Checklist: Steps Before, During and After

A Shopify migration checklist breaks the move into five stages: planning and backups, setting up Shopify, migrating your data, protecting SEO and testing, then launching and monitoring. Working through it in order keeps products, customers and orders connected, protects your search rankings and catches problems before customers do.

Migration trouble usually comes from skipped preparation rather than the data transfer itself. Use the checklist below whether you’re moving from WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento, Wix, Squarespace or a custom platform.

Shopify Migration Checklist at a Glance

Each stage depends on the one before it, so finish the key tasks in one stage before moving to the next. This overview shows what each stage covers:

Stage 1: Plan and Prepare

Planning decides how smooth the rest of the migration will be. Before touching any data, work through these items:

• Define your goals. Write down why you’re migrating and how you’ll measure success, such as conversion rate, page speed or lower maintenance time.
• Record a baseline. Save current traffic, rankings, top landing pages, conversion rate and order volume so you can compare after launch.
• Audit your store. List products, collections, customers, orders, reviews, gift cards, loyalty data, blog posts and pages, and decide what’s worth moving.
• Export every URL. Crawl your site or export your sitemap, and flag high-traffic and high-revenue pages for your redirect map.
• Save SEO details. Record page titles, meta descriptions, headings, image alt text and structured data for important pages.
• Document operations. Note shipping rules, tax setup, payment methods, discount logic and any custom checkout behavior.
• List apps, plugins and integrations. Include ERP, fulfillment, email, reviews and support tools, and note which need Shopify replacements.
• Back up everything. Export all data and keep at least one copy outside your current platform.
• Choose a migration method. Decide between CSV imports, Shopify’s Store Migration app, third-party migration tools or an agency.
• Set a timeline and launch window. Assign owners, set milestones and plan the launch for a quiet period, away from peak season.

Stage 2: Set Up Your Shopify Store

Configure your Shopify store before importing data, so products and customers land in a store that’s ready to sell. Check off these settings:

• Plan and store details. Choose a plan that fits your sales volume and features, and set your store name, currency, time zone and language.
• Theme and navigation. Install a theme, add your logo and brand colors, and plan menus around how customers shop.
• Payments. Set up Shopify Payments or other providers, plus wallets such as PayPal, Apple Pay and Shop Pay if you offer them.
• Shipping. Recreate zones, rates, free shipping thresholds, local pickup and carrier-calculated rates.
• Taxes. Configure tax settings for every region you sell to.
• Legal pages. Publish privacy, terms, returns and shipping policies.
• Notifications. Review customer email templates and customer account settings.
• Email hosting. Keep a separate email provider, since Shopify doesn’t host business email.

Stage 3: Migrate Your Data

Import data in the right order so records link correctly: products first, then customers, then historical orders. Clean your data before importing, because errors in your old store will carry straight into Shopify.

• Clean product data. Remove discontinued items and duplicates, standardize titles and option names, and check SKUs, barcodes, weights and inventory.
• Prepare images. Make sure image URLs are publicly accessible, and compress large files.
• Turn off order notifications. Deactivate staff new-order notifications before importing orders, and turn them back on afterward.
• Import products. Test with a small batch, then check descriptions, prices, variants, images and inventory before importing the rest.
• Build collections. Recreate categories as automated or manual collections.
• Import customers. Bring in names, emails and addresses, keeping in mind that passwords and saved payment methods can’t be transferred.
• Import order history. Use a migration tool or order import app, since Shopify’s admin can’t import orders from CSV.
• Move content. Rebuild pages and blog posts, and import reviews into your Shopify review app.
• Transfer balances. Plan how gift cards, store credit and loyalty points will carry over.
• Replace apps and integrations. Install only the apps you need, and test ERP, CRM and fulfillment connections with sample data.
• Verify the data. Compare record counts with your old store and spot-check a sample of products, customers and orders.

Product data often needs cleanup or corrections in bulk before and after import. Bulkflow supports bulk import, export and updates to existing product records with field mapping for Shopify, WooCommerce and Wix, which can help when many products need fixing at once.

Stage 4: Protect SEO and Test Everything

Most of your URLs will change, because Shopify uses fixed paths such as /products/, /collections/ and /pages/. Set up redirects and test the full store before your domain points to Shopify.

SEO checklist

• Build a redirect map. Match every valuable old URL to its closest new page in a spreadsheet, avoiding homepage redirects.
• Import 301 redirects. Upload the map to Shopify as a CSV file, and check for chains and loops.
• Carry over metadata. Add saved page titles, meta descriptions and image alt text instead of relying on defaults.
• Rebuild internal links. Update menus, featured collections and blog links to point to new URLs.
• Check crawlability. Make sure important pages aren’t blocked, and watch for duplicate pages created by tags, filters or apps.

Testing checklist

• Checkout. Place test orders covering each payment method, discount code, gift card, shipping option and tax scenario.
• Customer accounts. Sign in as a test customer, check order history and confirm password reset emails arrive.
• Product pages. Look for missing images, wrong prices, broken variants and formatting problems.
• Devices and browsers. Test on mobile, desktop and tablet across major browsers.
• Tracking. Confirm GA4, ad pixels and conversion events fire on test orders.
• Integrations. Confirm test orders reach your fulfillment and ERP systems.
• Speed. Check page speed on top revenue pages, since large images and extra apps often slow stores down.
• Fresh eyes. Ask someone who didn’t build the store to shop it from start to finish.

Stage 5: Launch and Monitor

Launch during a quiet trading period, with someone assigned to watch payments, redirects and inventory in the first hours. Complete these items around launch day:

• Freeze changes on the old store. Stop editing products shortly before launch, then migrate any orders and customers added since your last import.
• Switch your domain. Point your domain to Shopify once redirects and testing are complete.
• Remove password protection. Open the storefront to the public.
• Tell customers. Announce the move and explain how to sign in, since old passwords won’t work.
• Submit your sitemap. Add your Shopify sitemap in Google Search Console.
• Update external links. Change URLs in ads, email templates, social profiles and business listings.

Keep monitoring for the first several weeks. Check Search Console for 404 errors and fix each with a redirect, watch for crawl issues and compare traffic, conversion rate and orders with your pre-migration baseline.

Customer feedback and support tickets often reveal issues testing missed, such as confusing navigation or slow pages. Once results are stable, keep your old platform’s backups for reference and move on to regular maintenance.

Conclusion

A Shopify migration checklist turns a complex move into a series of manageable steps, from backups and setup to data, SEO, testing and launch. Following it in order helps you protect your sales, customers and search traffic while your new store settles in. We hope this Shopify migration checklist helps you plan a smooth switch. If you need to update product data in bulk along the way, you can explore Bulkflow.