Plan your migration

Assign a migration owner and record what the business relies on today. Include work performed by apps and external services. Agree on what will transfer, what needs rebuilding, and what must remain available as a historical record.

• Count products, variants, collections, images, custom fields, customers, and historical orders.
• List subscriptions, gift cards, discounts, loyalty balances, reviews, and app-dependent data. Confirm each transfer separately.
• Document payments, tax settings, shipping profiles, fulfillment services, analytics, consent, and transactional email.
• Record customer login and account requirements. Confirm the replacement access process rather than assuming passwords can transfer.

Export relevant records before changes and keep a dated, access-controlled copy. A product CSV is one part of a backup. Customer, order, media, and application records need their own review. Protect personal information throughout the process.

• Export products and preserve the original file. Shopify warns that sorting an export can disassociate variants or image URLs.
• Export customer and order records through supported methods. Record record counts and any fields that do not transfer.
• Preserve accessible media and important content. Check that image URLs will remain usable after the old store closes.
• Confirm export and retention requirements for each installed app with its provider.

Test a representative import before moving the entire catalog. Check field meanings as well as counts. Keep old URLs where practical; otherwise map each important URL to the most relevant new destination.

• Compare SKUs, variants, option names, prices, stock, images, and collection membership after a sample import.
• Inventory product, collection, page, and article URLs. Prioritize pages with traffic or external links.
• Prepare an old-to-new URL map and test permanent redirects. Avoid sending every removed page to the homepage.
• Check canonical URLs, internal links, sitemap entries, and genuine not-found responses on the replacement store.

Use a preview or protected test store. Mark each case with the device, country, payment configuration, expected result, and actual result. A catalog that looks correct does not establish that fulfillment or accounting works.

• Test a representative product, unavailable variant, discount, cart update, shipping address, and checkout error.
• Verify tax and shipping calculations against the store’s approved configuration. Confirm payment-provider settings with the responsible owner.
• Run a safe test purchase, confirmation email, fulfillment update, cancellation, and refund.
• Check subscriptions, gift-card behavior, inventory synchronization, analytics events, and consent choices where applicable.
• Verify customer access and support routes on mobile and desktop.

Agree on a launch window and a way to reconcile changes made after the initial export. Keep domain access and rollback ownership clear. A rollback must account for orders received on the replacement store, not only DNS settings.

• Decide when catalog edits pause and how new orders, stock changes, and customers are reconciled.
• Verify domain ownership, DNS records, SSL, sender authentication, and external webhook destinations.
• Set rollback triggers for payment failure, missing orders, broken critical redirects, or unresolved inventory errors.
• Record who can reverse the cutover, how order data will be reconciled, and when that decision must be made.

Search visibility can fluctuate while engines process a move. Monitor orders and errors from the first session, then review search indexing and landing pages over time. Keep the old service available until its remaining responsibilities have been checked.

• Verify production checkout, email delivery, order routing, inventory updates, and support contact details.
• Submit the canonical sitemap in the verified search properties. Use the appropriate site-move procedure if the domain changes.
• Review crawl errors, redirect failures, indexed URLs, search traffic, and conversion rates against the recorded baseline.
• Retain redirects and monitor their use. Agree on data retention and cancellation only after reconciliation and acceptance.

Record one old URL and its intended destination per row. Fill in the actual status after testing the redirect. Keep the map with the migration acceptance record.

This guide is published by Amboras. The checklist is a planning aid; confirm platform capabilities and the agreed scope with the responsible provider.

• Shopify: exporting products and export cautions
• Shopify: customer import and export
• Google: site moves with URL changes

Keep the completed worksheet with your trial results and unresolved questions.

Choose a platform