Shopify migration checklist: moving from WooCommerce, Magento or Wix without losing traffic

Moving an online shop to Shopify is mostly a data and URL project, not a design project. The new theme is the visible part, but what decides whether you keep your sales and search traffic is whether your products, customers and orders arrive intact, and whether every old address still leads somewhere useful. This checklist follows Shopify's own migration guides, with practical checks for WooCommerce, Magento and Wix stores. It is general information based on Shopify's documentation, not legal or tax advice.

What should you audit before you move anything?

Start with a full picture of the store you are leaving. Shopify suggests treating a migration as a chance to drop old, low-performing content rather than copying everything across. Before you export a single file, list:

• Every URL that matters: products, categories, content pages, blog posts and any landing pages used in adverts or emails. Export it from your sitemap and analytics, and mark the pages that bring the most visits and sales.
• Your data: the number of products and variants, customers, historical orders, gift cards and store credit, reviews, blog posts and pages.
• Plugins and extensions: what each one does today, such as reviews, subscriptions, filters or marketplace feeds.
• Integrations: stock, warehouse, ERP, CRM and email marketing systems that read from or write to the store.
• Easily forgotten settings: shipping, tax, payment methods, email templates and legal pages.

This list becomes your migration plan and, later, your test plan.

How do products, customers and orders move to Shopify?

Shopify describes several ways to move content, from least to most technical: copying and pasting, exporting CSV files and importing them, using a migration app from the Shopify App Store, hiring a Shopify Partner, or building a custom migration with the Shopify API. Short pages can be pasted in; a large catalogue usually needs a CSV import or an app.

Order matters. Shopify's guidance is to import products first, then customers, then historical orders, so that each order links to the right product and customer.

• Products and variants: Shopify has a product CSV format, and a product CSV cannot exceed 15 MB, so large catalogues are split into several files. Shopify warns that sorting a product CSV in a spreadsheet editor can separate products from their image links, and that files should be saved with UTF-8 encoding. Shopify's migration guides also note that products can have a maximum of three options, such as size, colour and material, so products with more options need restructuring, an app or metafields.
• Customers: the customer CSV must match Shopify's template headings exactly, because there is no data mapping for customer CSV imports, and each file must be 15 MB or smaller. Carry over each customer's email marketing consent accurately rather than marking everyone as subscribed.
• Historical orders: these move with migration apps or the API rather than a standard CSV. Shopify notes that importing orders can send a new order email to every staff member set up to receive one, for each imported order, so switch those notifications off first.
• The Store Migration app: Shopify's own Store Migration app is in early access, available only for certain stores and on desktop. Shopify's guides say it can import products from WooCommerce, and products and customers from Wix.

Shopify publishes step-by-step guides for WooCommerce and Wix. There is no Magento guide in the same set, so a Magento move usually relies on CSV exports, a third-party migration app or a custom script against the API.

What cannot move across?

Some things do not transfer, and it is better to plan for them than to discover them on launch day:

• Customer passwords. Passwords are encrypted outside Shopify, so they cannot be migrated. After importing customers, you invite them to create new passwords so they can register their accounts.
• Reviews. Shopify's WooCommerce and Wix guides say reviews cannot be exported or migrated directly; they are imported with a third-party reviews app instead.
• Plugin behaviour. A WooCommerce plugin or Magento extension does not come with you. Each job it did needs a Shopify app, a theme feature or custom code.

How do you keep your URLs and search traffic?

Shopify uses fixed URL patterns: products live under /products/, collections under /collections/ and content pages under /pages/. Your old addresses will almost certainly be different. Shopify's own example is a shipping policy page that moves from /policies/shipping-policy to /pages/shipping-policy. Without redirects, every old link from Google, social posts, emails and other websites lands on an error page.

Shopify's URL redirects feature, under Content > Menus > URL redirects in the admin, handles this. Points to know from Shopify's documentation:

• You can add redirects one by one or import them from a CSV file, which is the practical route for a full store.
• A redirect only works from a URL that is broken. If the old address still loads a valid page on Shopify, the redirect will not fire.
• You cannot redirect from fixed Shopify paths such as /products, /collections and /collections/all, or from certain reserved prefixes such as /cart and /apps.
• A store can have up to 100,000 URL redirects, or far more on the Plus plan.
• A redirect applies to all language or market subfolders set up with Shopify's international tools.
• Redirects are cached by browsers and search engines, so think before you remove one.

Map each old URL to its closest new equivalent: product to product, category to collection, article to article. Send a page to the home page only when nothing better exists. Shopify recommends setting up redirects before you move the domain, so visitors with bookmarks never see an error.

What about SEO metadata and the sitemap?

Copy across the page titles and meta descriptions of your best pages, not only the body text. Shopify lets you edit the search engine listing for products, collections, pages and blog posts, and recommends a unique, plain-language meta description for each. Check product image alt text too.

Every Shopify store generates a sitemap.xml file automatically at the root of its domain. Search engines cannot reach it while the store is in private mode, so submit it to Google Search Console once the store is live.

How should you replace apps, payments, tax and shipping?

• Apps: for each plugin on your audit list, decide whether Shopify does the job natively, whether an app is needed, or whether a small theme change is enough.
• Payments: Shopify Payments is available in certain countries, and supported third-party providers are available too. Set up the provider, how payments are captured and your checkout settings, including your store policies.
• Tax: Shopify Tax is available for stores in the UK, and Shopify's UK tax pages cover VAT for stores selling at home and to the EU. Shopify is clear that tax remains your responsibility, so confirm the settings with your accountant or HMRC guidance.
• Shipping: set up shipping zones and rates before launch. Mistakes here mean refunds or awkward requests for more money.

How do you test and launch?

Shopify recommends placing test orders before launch, covering a successful and a failed payment, a refund, a cancellation, and full and partial fulfilment. Each one also shows you the notification emails your customers will receive. Then work through your audit list:

• spot-check product prices, weights, stock levels, images and variants against the old store;
• test your redirect list by loading old URLs and confirming where they land, starting with your top pages;
• confirm every integration sends and receives data.

For the domain switch, Shopify notes that you may need to disconnect the domain from your previous platform first, or you may hit SSL certificate errors.

What should you check after launch?

Re-test your most visited old URLs once the domain points to Shopify. Watch Google Search Console for crawl errors and pages not found, and add redirects for any old addresses you missed. Shopify notes that indexing can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks and is not guaranteed. Send the account invitation email to imported customers, and switch order notifications back on if you turned them off. Keep an export of your old store's data until you are sure nothing is missing.

If you are still deciding between platforms, our guide to Shopify or WooCommerce for a UK online store may help. If you would like a hand with the move itself, see our Shopify migration services.

Sources

• Shopify Help: Migrate to Shopify
• Shopify Help: Migrate from WooCommerce
• Shopify Help: Migrate from Wix
• Shopify Help: Creating and managing URL redirects
• Shopify Help: Importing products with a CSV file
• Shopify Help: Importing and exporting customer lists
• Shopify Help: Taxes