Before you start: an inventory of what works
The most expensive mistake in a migration is finding out afterwards which pages were bringing in the business. Before designing anything, you need a complete inventory of the current shop: every indexed URL, those receiving organic traffic, those with external links and those generating sales.
That inventory comes from cross-referencing the sitemap, a full crawl, Search Console, analytics and a backlink tool. It is the basis of the redirect map and of the structural decisions: which categories stay, which are merged and which content cannot be lost.
URLs and 301 redirects
Shopify imposes a fixed URL structure: products sit under /products/, categories under /collections/ and pages under /pages/. URLs almost always change, so every old URL needs a 301 redirect to its closest equivalent.
The rule is to redirect one to one, not everything to the homepage. An old product page goes to the new page for the same product; if the product no longer exists, to the most relevant collection. Mass redirects to the homepage are treated as errors, and whatever that page had earned is lost.
- A complete redirect map, reviewed and uploaded before launch.
- No chains: every old URL redirects straight to the final one, with no intermediate hops.
- Titles, meta descriptions and H1s carried over or improved, never left empty.
- Canonicals, hreflang (if there are several languages) and sitemap checked in the new environment.
- Internal links updated to the new URLs, so you don't rely on redirects.
Data: products, customers and orders
Products are migrated with their variants, images, attributes and copy. It's worth using the opportunity to clean up: standardise attributes, fill in missing ones and review titles, because that catalogue is also what will feed the Google, Meta and marketplace feeds.
Customers can be migrated, but passwords don't move between platforms for security reasons. You need to plan the invitation to activate their Shopify account and communicate it well. Order history is migrated so customers can see their purchases and so you don't lose the basis for repeat-purchase analysis.
Integrations and operations
The shop doesn't live on its own: it connects to the ERP, the warehouse or logistics provider, payment methods, invoicing, the CRM and marketing tools. Each integration is documented, tested with real orders in the staging environment and has an owner.
It's also the moment to review analytics: ecommerce events, ad platform pixels and cookie consent, so campaigns don't lose signal on switchover day.
Launch and the weeks after
The switchover is scheduled for the quietest sales period, with the team available and a rollback plan. After the domain change, redirects are checked on a broad sample of URLs, the new sitemap is submitted to Search Console and test orders are placed with every payment method.
Over the following weeks, crawl errors, pages losing rankings, conversion rate and sales by channel are monitored daily. A slight, temporary dip in organic traffic is normal; a sustained one points to redirects or content that need fixing.
Frequently asked questions
Do you lose rankings when migrating to Shopify?
Not necessarily. With a complete 301 redirect map, content carried over and a well-planned structure, rankings hold and often improve thanks to speed and a cleaner technical setup.
Can you keep the same URLs?
Usually not, because Shopify uses a fixed structure (/products/, /collections/, /pages/). That's why 301 redirects are the centrepiece of any migration.
Do customers have to register again?
Their data and orders are migrated, but passwords cannot be transferred between platforms. They are invited to activate their account in the new shop.
Head of technology at Webimpacto. He leads the development teams that build, migrate and maintain shops on Shopify, PrestaShop, Adobe Commerce, VTEX and WooCommerce.