Migration & integrations
Data migration
Data migration is transferring products, variants, collections, customers, orders, and content from the old platform into Shopify. Products are the easy part; the traps are variant models that do not map, historical orders needed for LTV and returns, and customer passwords, which cannot be migrated — customers must reset them. Every migration should be run twice: once into staging, once for real.
Why it matters
Data migration is where a replatform either becomes routine or becomes a crisis, and the difference is decided weeks before the import runs.
The reason it goes wrong is that products import easily and everything else does not. A demo with a thousand products landing cleanly creates confidence that does not survive contact with variant structures that do not map, ten years of orders needed for returns and reporting, and customer records whose passwords cannot come across at all.
The other reason is that data problems surface late. A field mapped incorrectly does not fail the import; it produces a catalogue that looks right and is wrong in ways discovered by a customer service agent three weeks after launch.
How it works on Shopify
Sequence matters. Products and variants first, because collections and orders reference them. Then collections, customers, orders, and content, in that order.
Products are the straightforward part with one significant constraint: Shopify allows three options per product. Catalogues modelling variation more richly need restructuring, and that restructuring is a merchandising decision rather than a technical one.
Customers migrate without passwords. The hashes are incompatible across platforms, so every customer must reset, and that communication needs writing before launch rather than after the first support ticket.
Historical orders are frequently skipped to save time and frequently needed afterwards — for returns within the policy window, for warranty claims, for LTV calculations, and for customer service answering "what did I order last year". Import them.
SKU integrity is the prerequisite for all of it. Duplicates and blanks make inventory mapping unreliable, and the audit belongs before the migration rather than during.
Run the whole thing twice: once into a staging store, where the errors are discovered, and once for real.
Common mistakes
- Skipping historical orders. Cheap to include during migration, awkward to backfill afterwards.
- No password reset communication. Predictable and preventable support load.
- Migrating everything. Obsolete products and dead customer records add work and clutter the catalogue.
- No validation plan. Counts, spot checks, and totals compared between old and new. Imports fail partially and quietly.
- Ignoring inventory timing. Stock moves while the import runs. Freeze it or reconcile after.
- Testing in production. The one rule that removes most of the risk.
When you need help
The planning is worth more than the execution. What comes across, what gets left behind, how variants restructure, and how the data is validated afterwards — those decisions determine whether the launch is uneventful.
The other case is any catalogue that does not fit Shopify's model cleanly: complex variant structures, B2B pricing tiers, or product data currently held in a PIM or an ERP rather than in the old storefront. Those need a data model designed for Shopify rather than a field-by-field export, and the design is what makes the import possible.
Need this done on your store?
Shopify migrationRelated terms
- Staging storeA staging store is a non-public Shopify store used to build and rehearse a migration before it goes live. It is where the data import is tested, the theme is built, integrations are wired, and the redirect map is validated — password-protected, so search engines never see it. Launching without one means testing in production.
- SKUA SKU, or stock keeping unit, is the unique code identifying one sellable variant of a product — a specific size and colour, not the product as a whole. SKUs are the unit inventory is counted in, and how a store's catalogue maps to a warehouse, a 3PL, or an ERP. Clean SKU structure is the first prerequisite of any migration.
- ReplatformingReplatforming is moving a store from one ecommerce platform to another — Magento or WooCommerce to Shopify, most often. It is not a design project: the risk sits in data integrity, URL continuity, and integrations, and the failure mode is a launch that quietly loses a third of organic traffic. A safe replatform is planned around a redirect map and a staging store, not a launch date.