Shopify migration: how to move without losing rankings or revenue

What is a Shopify migration, and what can go wrong?

A Shopify migration moves your products, customers, orders, content and URLs from another platform, such as WooCommerce, Magento, BigCommerce or a custom build, onto Shopify, usually with a redesign at the same time. Done well, customers notice a faster site and nothing else. Done badly, rankings drop, tracking breaks and returning customers cannot log in.

Almost all of that damage traces back to three decisions made before launch: how old URLs are redirected, what happens to customer accounts, and whether tracking on the new store matches the old one on day one. This is the order we work in on every Shopify build, whether it is a migration or a full rebuild like the one we did for The Snus Life.

Why do URLs change when you move to Shopify?

Shopify uses a fixed URL structure. Products live under /products/, categories become collections under /collections/, content pages sit under /pages/ and blog posts under /blogs/ followed by the blog's name. You cannot change those prefixes, so almost every URL from another platform changes at least slightly, and every changed URL needs a permanent redirect.

Magento and custom builds vary more than this table suggests, which is exactly why the next step matters.

How do you build a redirect map that protects rankings?

Build the redirect map before anyone designs a page. Google's own guidance on site moves is to use permanent server-side redirects and to map every old URL to its new equivalent, starting with the pages that matter most (Google Search Central). In practice, that means pulling URLs from four places:

• The old site's XML sitemap, for every page it claims to have.
• Analytics landing pages from the last 12 months, for every page people actually arrive on.
• Search Console's top pages and queries, for every page Google sends traffic to.
• Your backlink report, for every page other sites link to, even ones that no longer appear in navigation.

Map each old URL to its closest new equivalent, one to one. Never send everything to the homepage: Google treats a mass redirect to an unrelated page much like a missing page. Shopify imports redirects from a CSV, allows up to 100,000 on standard plans and 20 million on Shopify Plus, and only redirects paths that would otherwise return a 404 (Shopify Help Center). Test the full list on a staging domain before launch.

What data moves to Shopify, and what does not?

Products, variants, collections, customers, historical orders, blog posts and pages can all be imported, with tools or a migration app. Two things need a plan of their own.

Customer passwords do not move. Shopify states that you cannot migrate customer passwords (Shopify Help Center). With Shopify's newer customer accounts that matters less, because customers sign in with a one-time code sent by email. With classic accounts, imported customers need an invite to set a new password, so send it in a planned email, written in your brand's voice, rather than letting customers discover the problem at checkout.

Subscriptions, reviews and loyalty points live in apps, not in Shopify itself, so each needs its own export and import through the new app provider. Agree the order of these moves early, because billing dates and points balances are what customers notice first.

How do you keep tracking identical on launch day?

A migration is the easiest time to break attribution without noticing. If the new store fires purchase events differently, your ad platforms lose the signal they bid on, and a dip in reported performance gets blamed on the new design.

Before launch, list every tag and event on the old store: GA4, the Meta pixel and Conversions API, Google Ads conversions and enhanced conversions, TikTok, Klaviyo and any affiliate tracking. Rebuild each one on Shopify, then compare purchase counts in every platform against Shopify's own order count for the first week. They should agree to within a few orders. If they do not, fix tracking before anyone judges the new site.

What is the right run order on launch day?

A calm launch day is the result of a written run order. Ours:

1. Freeze content and product edits on the old platform.
2. Import the final set of orders and customers created since the last test import.
3. Upload the redirect CSV and spot-check the highest-traffic URLs.
4. Point the domain at Shopify and confirm SSL is live.
5. Place real test orders with every payment method, including express checkouts.
6. Submit the new sitemap in Search Console and request indexing of the key collections.
7. Crawl the old URL list against the live site and fix any 404 within the hour.

Launch early in the week and well away from your peak trading period, so problems surface while the team is at full strength.

What should you watch in the first 30 days?

Expect some movement in rankings while Google recrawls the site. Google's own guidance is that a medium-sized site can take a few weeks for most pages to move, and larger sites longer. If the domain itself is changing too, use Search Console's Change of Address tool as well as the redirects. Watch Search Console's page indexing and performance reports daily for the first fortnight, keep an eye on 404s from real visitors, and compare organic landing-page traffic against the same pages on the old site.

Use the same window to check speed on real devices. A new theme with a stack of apps can easily be slower than the store it replaced, and load time changes what every other channel is worth.

Where RedPxl fits

Our web development team designs and builds Shopify stores in house, from wireframe to launch, then keeps improving them with monthly conversion work. Because paid media, retention and creative sit in the same team, the migration plan covers the ad accounts, Klaviyo flows and campaigns that depend on the store, not only the store itself.

If a migration or rebuild is on your roadmap, tell us where you are starting from and we will give you an honest view of the risks and the order of work.