The Complete Shopify Migration Checklist (WooCommerce, Magento & Beyond)

Migrating an ecommerce store is one of the highest-risk projects in digital commerce. Done well, you land on a faster platform with zero data loss and preserved search rankings. Done badly, you lose months of SEO momentum and spend weeks chasing missing orders and broken redirects.

I’ve managed migrations from WooCommerce, Magento, BigCommerce, Wix, and custom platforms. Here’s the checklist I use every time.

Phase 1: Pre-Migration Planning

Before touching a single record, get clear on scope and risk:

• Inventory your data: products (how many variants, metafields, media?), customers, historical orders, blog posts, pages
• Audit your URLs: export every indexed URL from Google Search Console and your platform’s sitemap. These need 301 redirects
• Document your integrations: every app, ERP, CRM, email platform, payment gateway, fulfilment system that connects to your current store
• Set your go-live window: aim for your lowest-traffic day/week of the month, and give yourself a buffer before any campaign launches

Phase 2: Data Migration

Work through each data type systematically:

Products

• Export from your current platform (CSV or via API)
• Map fields carefully — metafields, variant options, and custom attributes often don’t have a 1:1 equivalent in Shopify
• Import using Shopify’s native importer for simple catalogs, or a tool like Matrixify for complex ones
• Verify product count, variant count, and image attachment after import

Customers

• Export customers with hashed passwords if possible (Shopify supports bulk import)
• If passwords can’t be migrated, send a reset-password email campaign after launch — don’t leave customers locked out
• Map customer tags and segments to Shopify customer groups

Orders

• Historical orders are usually imported for records purposes only (not to reopen fulfilment)
• Use Matrixify or a custom script; Shopify’s native importer doesn’t handle orders
• Verify order totals match your source platform before going live

Blog Posts & Pages

• Export HTML content and reformat for Shopify’s built-in blog
• Preserve publish dates and meta descriptions
• Map author fields — Shopify blogs are simpler than WordPress, so some metadata may need to go into custom metafields

Phase 3: SEO Preservation

This is where migrations most often go wrong. Don’t skip any of these steps:

• 301 redirects: every old URL that has inbound links or search traffic must redirect to its new Shopify equivalent. Use Shopify’s built-in redirect manager or import a CSV of redirects
• Canonical tags: confirm Shopify is serving correct canonical URLs, especially for collection/product combinations
• Meta titles and descriptions: migrate these explicitly — don’t let Shopify auto-generate them from product titles
• Structured data: ensure your new theme outputs correct Product, BreadcrumbList, and Organization JSON-LD
• XML sitemap: verify sitemap.xml is being generated and submitted to Google Search Console on your new domain

Phase 4: Theme & Functionality Build

• Finalise your Shopify theme (custom or off-the-shelf) and configure all sections
• Rebuild or replace every integration: payment gateways, loyalty, reviews, subscriptions, live chat, search, returns
• Test the full purchase flow end to end on Shopify’s sandbox (use Bogus Gateway)
• QA on mobile — at least 60% of your traffic is probably mobile

Phase 5: Go-Live

Work through this on the day:

1. Put your old store into maintenance mode
2. Do a final delta export of any orders/customers created since your main migration
3. Import the delta to Shopify
4. Point DNS to Shopify — allow up to 48 hours for full propagation
5. Verify SSL certificate is active (https:// loads correctly)
6. Check all redirects are working using a crawler (Screaming Frog is ideal)
7. Place a real test order and refund it
8. Submit updated sitemap to Google Search Console
9. Monitor Google Analytics / GA4 for traffic drops over the next 72 hours

After Launch

• Watch Search Console for crawl errors daily for the first two weeks
• Check for any 404s appearing in your error logs and add redirects immediately
• Run a Lighthouse audit on your new Shopify store and fix any score regressions
• Send a re-engagement email to your customer list announcing the new store

A migration done right is invisible to your customers and your search rankings. It only becomes visible when it goes wrong — so invest the time upfront.

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Planning a migration to Shopify? Get in touch — I’ll scope the project and give you a realistic timeline and budget.