A Shopify migration is not a CSV import followed by a domain switch. It changes product and customer data, URLs, account access, integrations, payments, fulfilment and the daily work of the people running the store.
This checklist is designed for the team buying and governing the project. It helps expose the decisions that are easy to miss in a proposal and expensive to discover during launch week.
1. Define the commercial reason for moving
Write down why the current platform is being replaced. Common reasons include slow development, high operating cost, fragile integrations, limited international capability or a storefront that no longer supports the brand.
Then define acceptance criteria. A useful set might include:
- agreed customer journeys work on the required devices and markets;
- payment and fulfilment methods have passed real test scenarios;
- migrated records reconcile against an approved source sample;
- important old URLs resolve to relevant new destinations;
- orders, inventory and finance data move through the agreed systems;
- the internal team can run products, content and orders after launch.
Without acceptance criteria, a store can be technically complete and operationally unusable.
2. Build a migration data matrix
List every dataset, its owner, its source and why it needs to move. Do not assume the same method works for every record type.
| Data domain | Decisions to make |
|---|---|
| Products and variants | Identifiers, options, categories, media, metafields, translations and archived items |
| Customers | Consent, duplicate profiles, addresses, tags, account model and login communication |
| Order history | Required history, returns, customer visibility and the financial system of record |
| Gift cards and balances | Currency, identifiers, validity, privacy and customer-facing balance |
| Content | Pages, articles, authors, dates, media, metadata and internal links |
| Discounts and loyalty | Rules to rebuild, historical value to retain and application dependencies |
Keep an immutable source export for reconciliation. Document transformations so a changed field can be explained later.
Shopify describes manual entry, CSV files, migration applications and API-based approaches in its official migration guidance. The appropriate mix depends on volume, relationships between records and repeatability.
3. Decide how customer accounts will work
An email address can move as data, but customer authentication is a separate design decision. Confirm which Shopify customer account model will be used and how existing customers will access it after launch.
Define:
- the lawful basis and purpose for moving personal data;
- which historical data is no longer needed;
- how marketing consent maps from the source;
- how customers will be informed about changed login behaviour;
- who can access migration files and when those files are deleted.
Do not infer consent from an empty or ambiguous source field. The merchant remains responsible for its legal assessment and retention policy.
4. Treat URL mapping as a product deliverable
Shopify URL structures commonly differ from other platforms. Create an inventory from the current sitemap, analytics, Search Console, an internal crawl and pages with valuable external links.
Every indexable old URL needs one of three outcomes:
- an equivalent new page;
- the closest genuinely relevant replacement;
- an intentional removal when no useful replacement exists.
Sending every removed URL to the homepage does not preserve page-level relevance. Test the redirect map before cutover and again after the domain switch. Shopify provides URL redirect management and CSV import, but reserved paths and already valid URLs need particular care.
The SEO workstream should also cover canonicals, titles, descriptions, structured data, hreflang, image alternatives, internal links, crawl directives and sitemap submission.
5. Challenge the existing application stack
List every application, script and integration in the current store. For each one record:
- the business process and owner;
- source and destination systems;
- data, direction and required timing;
- replacement application, custom implementation or retired process;
- test scenario and acceptance owner;
- current contract, cost and termination dependency.
A migration is an opportunity to remove duplicated capability. Rebuilding every legacy customisation can reproduce the same technical debt on a new platform.
6. Plan the delta migration
The current store normally continues selling while Shopify is being built. New products, customers and orders therefore appear after the first full migration.
Define the final delta:
- which source changes are frozen and when;
- which records are imported again;
- how duplicates and changed records are identified;
- how totals are reconciled;
- who approves the result before launch.
Test the delta process before launch week. A manual plan that has never been timed is not a reliable cutover plan.
7. Test end-to-end business scenarios
Component checks are not enough. Use scenarios that start with a customer action and finish in the operational system.
Examples include:
- an order using each important market, currency, payment and delivery combination;
- a refund, cancellation, return and partial fulfilment;
- a B2B customer using the correct catalogue and payment terms;
- an out-of-stock or backorder case;
- an integration failure followed by retry and reconciliation;
- analytics and consent behaviour across key journeys.
Record the expected result, actual result, owner and release-blocking severity.
8. Write a cutover runbook
The runbook should state what happens, in which order, by whom and how success is checked. Include DNS, data freeze, delta migration, integrations, redirects, payment checks, analytics, transactional messages and internal communication.
Also define the point at which the team pauses or rolls back. Rollback is not always a simple domain reversal once new orders have entered Shopify, so the decision needs operational and data consequences attached to it.
9. Monitor the first weeks, not only launch day
Post-launch monitoring should cover:
- order and payment exceptions;
- integration queues and rejected records;
- 404 responses and redirect gaps;
- Search Console indexing and coverage;
- conversion funnel changes by device and market;
- customer service themes and account-access questions;
- performance and accessibility regressions.
Agree who triages each signal and how quickly business-critical issues are handled.
The migration decision in one sentence
A responsible Shopify migration replaces the current operating model with a better one while protecting the data, customer journeys and search equity the business has already earned.
If your project includes a complex ERP, PIM or fulfilment environment, read our Shopify ERP integration guide or explore Growly’s Shopify migration service.