Moving to Shopify from Wix, Squarespace or WooCommerce: A Migration Checklist

Moving a store to Shopify is mostly careful bookkeeping. The products are the easy part. The things people forget, like redirects, customer accounts and tracking, are what cost sales and rankings afterwards. Here's the checklist I use on Shopify migration projects.

Fig. 07 · Migration checklist

1. 01Crawl your current site
2. 02Export data
3. 03Clean before importing
4. 04Import into Shopify
5. 05Rebuild collections and navigation
6. 06Design the theme
7. 07Set up payments, shipping, taxes and checkout
8. 08Create 301 redirects
9. 09Move tracking
10. 10Plan customer accounts
11. 11Switch the domain
12. 12Watch for two weeks

Before you move: decide what's coming with you

• Products: titles, descriptions, variants, prices, SKUs, images, weights.

• Collections or categories, and how they map to Shopify collections.

• Customers: names, emails, addresses, marketing consent.

• Order history: needed for reporting and customer service? Plan for it, since it often needs an app.

• Content: pages, blog posts, policies.

• URLs: a full list of every page that gets traffic.

The migration checklist

1. Crawl your current site and export every URL, including products, categories, pages and posts.

2. Export data from your current platform (CSV exports or a migration app).

3. Clean before importing. Fix duplicate products, broken images and messy variant names now, not later.

4. Import into Shopify using Shopify's import tools, CSV files or a migration app, then spot-check 20 products by hand.

5. Rebuild collections and navigation so customers find things where they expect.

6. Design the theme and build any custom sections you had on the old site.

7. Set up payments, shipping, taxes and checkout, and place real test orders.

8. Create 301 redirects from every old URL to its new Shopify URL. This is what protects your rankings.

9. Move tracking: analytics, ad pixels, conversion events, Google Search Console.

10. Plan customer accounts. Passwords can't be transferred, so prepare an email inviting customers to activate their new account.

11. Switch the domain at a quiet time, then test checkout, forms and redirects again.

12. Watch for two weeks: Search Console coverage, 404 errors and sales.

Platform notes

• From WooCommerce: usually the richest data to move: products, customers and orders. Watch for plugin-based features (bundles, subscriptions, custom fields) that need a Shopify app or custom section.

• From Squarespace: product data exports cleanly, but URLs differ, so redirects matter. Blog posts may need manual formatting.

• From Wix: product exports can be limited, and image quality varies. Expect more cleanup, and rebuild the design rather than copying it.

How long does a Shopify migration take?

A small store with clean data can move in 1 to 2 weeks. Large catalogs, order history and custom features take longer. The design work usually takes more time than the data.

Need help moving?

I handle migrations end to end, including redirects and tracking. See my Shopify work or send me your current store URL for a quote.