Shopify Migration Checklist

This is the list we use internally, simplified so you can use it whether you migrate with us, with another agency, or on your own. It is not meant to alarm you. It is meant to stop you discovering a problem once it is already in production.

Before migrating

  • Audit which apps, plugins or modules you genuinely use, not just the ones installed by default.
  • Identify your critical integrations covering payments, ERP, marketing and marketplaces, and check whether each has a Shopify equivalent or needs custom development.
  • Decide what history you want to keep: orders, customers, reviews. Not everything needs migrating, but whatever you leave behind should be a deliberate decision rather than an oversight.
  • Export or document your current URL structure. You will need it for the redirect map.
  • Flag which products have complex combinations or attributes. Those are the ones that will need the most manual review time.

During the migration

  • Always work in a staging environment, never directly against the production domain.
  • Verify that product variants covering size, colour and material mapped correctly, one by one if the catalogue size allows it.
  • Confirm stock and prices match the source platform exactly before closing out this phase.
  • Migrate metadata, meaning titles, descriptions and image alt text, explicitly. Do not assume it comes bundled with the content migration.
  • Build the complete 301 redirect map, prioritising pages with the most traffic and the most inbound links.
  • Reconfigure payment gateways and test them with real low-value transactions before launch.

Before going live

  • Run a full quality pass over internal links, forms, checkout and the customer registration flow.
  • Confirm customers have a clear password recovery path, since passwords do not transfer directly between platforms.
  • Prepare the new sitemap ready to submit to Search Console the moment the domain points at Shopify.
  • Decide who is watching traffic and 404 errors during the first few weeks.

After launch

  • Submit the new sitemap in Search Console and review the coverage report over the following days.
  • Watch the not-found report to catch redirects that came up short.
  • Compare checkout performance against the previous platform. It is where a problem surfaces fastest.
  • If you see organic traffic drops, check the redirect map before assuming the new platform is at fault.

If any of these points raise a question about your specific case, we have dedicated pages on how not to lose SEO when migrating, what moves the price and how long the process takes.

And if you would rather we ticked every box for you, let’s talk about your store.