Shopify migration checklist

28 steps, from Shopify’s and Google’s own guidance, checked 27 October 2026. centangleglobal.com/templates/shopify-migration-checklist/

Before you start

1.Decide what moves: products, customers, past orders, gift cards, blog posts and pages. Shopify says a move is a good time to drop old content that doesn’t sell.
2.Check your products fit Shopify: up to 3 options and 2,048 variants per product. Products with more need restructuring, or an app.
3.Export your products, customers and orders from your current platform. Some platforms need an extension or app for customers and orders.
4.List the features plugins or apps give you now, such as subscriptions, bookings, reviews and product add-ons, and decide how each will work on Shopify.
5.Note what can’t move as it is. Customer passwords can’t be imported, so customers set new ones. Past orders, gift cards and blog posts come across only through a migration app or Shopify’s API.
6.Put the domain, the Shopify account and any paid theme in your own name from the start.

7.List every old address that matters. Google suggests starting with your sitemap, your most-visited pages and the pages other sites link to. Include images and PDFs that get visits.
8.Match each old address to its new one, one to one: a product to the same product, a category to its collection. On Shopify they sit under /products/, /collections/, /pages/ and /blogs/.
9.Don’t send many old pages to the home page. Google says that can confuse visitors and may be treated as a soft 404 error.
10.Point each old address straight at its final page, not through another redirect.
11.Plan for what Shopify won’t redirect: an address that still loads a page, and addresses beginning /apps, /application, /cart, /carts, /orders, /services or /shop.

12.Import products first, then customers, then past orders, so each order links to its products and customer.
13.Turn off new-order notifications before importing past orders. Otherwise every staff member set to receive them gets an email for each imported order.
14.Check the imported products: prices, weights, stock and variants. A product missing a variant option doesn’t import.
15.Set up shipping, tax and payments, then place test orders.
16.Update the links inside the new store, so they point straight at the new addresses.
17.Load the redirect map into Shopify: Content > Menus > URL redirects > Import, as a CSV with the columns Redirect from and Redirect to. A store can have up to 100,000 URL redirects, or 20,000,000 on Shopify Plus.
18.Plan what you’ll do if the new store isn’t right on the day, and switch over at a quiet time for your traffic, as Google suggests.

19.Take the store out of private mode. A new Shopify store starts in it, and it hides every page from visitors and search engines.
20.Connect your domain. Shopify says this usually takes effect within two hours, but can take up to two days.
21.Type in your most-visited old addresses, and check each one lands on its matching new page.
22.Don’t cancel the old platform yet: keep it until the new store has settled.

23.Submit the new sitemap in Google Search Console. Every Shopify store makes one at /sitemap.xml, and Google can’t read it while the store is in private mode.
24.If the domain changed too, use Search Console’s Change of Address tool. It’s only for a move to a new domain or subdomain.
25.Watch Search Console for a rise in “Not found” errors, and add a redirect for each old address you missed. Shopify’s redirects work as soon as they’re saved.
26.Expect rankings to move for a while. Google says a medium-sized site can take a few weeks or more to settle.
27.Update the links you control: your social profiles, email signature and ads.
28.Keep the redirects for at least a year, as Google advises, and for visitors with old bookmarks, for good.