A practical playbook for moving product, customer, and order data into Shopify without breaking SEO, loyalty, or order history. Built from real WooCommerce, Magento, and BigCommerce migrations.
Shopify data migration is the structured transfer of products, variants, customers, orders, content, and metadata from a legacy commerce platform into Shopify — preserving SEO, customer history, and operational continuity through field mapping, redirects, and staged validation.
Data mapping is the highest-leverage decision in any migration: it determines what is preserved, what breaks, and what becomes invisible after launch. Map every source field to a Shopify equivalent before you touch an export — gaps found during import are far more expensive to fix.
The teams that finish on time aren’t faster — they spent two weeks mapping before they exported anything.
| WooCommerce field | Shopify equivalent | Notes |
|---|---|---|
|
post_title |
Product.title |
Direct map. Trim trailing whitespace |
|
post_content |
Product.descriptionHtml |
Sanitize embedded shortcodes. |
|
_sku |
Variant.sku |
Required for inventory tracking. |
|
_regular_price |
Variant.price |
Convert tax-inclusive vs exclusive. |
|
_stock |
InventoryLevel.available |
Map per location. |
|
product_cat |
Collection (smart/manual) |
Manual collections preserve order. |
|
post_name (slug) |
Product.handle |
Preserve to avoid breaking URLs. |
Product data should be migrated first, validated against a sample, then bulk-imported in batches. Treat it as a five-step pipeline:
Use the free transition difficulty calculator.
Customer accounts move cleanly when the loyalty surface area is mapped first. Passwords cannot be ported — plan for a one-time reset email. Loyalty points, tiers, and store credit must be exported via the source loyalty app and re-imported into the equivalent Shopify app.
Order history is the foundation of customer lifetime value, RMAs, and finance reporting. Importing orders as historical records preserves them in Shopify Admin and customer accounts without triggering payment capture, fulfillment, or notifications.
For B2B accounts, also import payment terms, company hierarchy, and approval rules — otherwise repeat-purchase flows break on day one.
A pre-launch checklist isn’t optional. Walk this list before flipping DNS:
Yes — historical orders can be imported via the Shopify Admin API as ‘historical’ orders so revenue and customer lifetime value are preserved without triggering fulfillment or notifications.
Not if redirects are planned per URL pattern, slugs preserved where possible, and structured data re-implemented before launch. Most short-term ranking dips recover within 2–6 weeks.
Passwords are not portable. The standard approach is to send a one-time reset email post-migration. Schedule sends in batches to avoid SMTP throttling.
A standard catalog under 5,000 SKUs typically takes 4–8 weeks including QA. B2B, multi-region, and headless adds scope.
Apps work for small, simple catalogs. For B2B, custom fields, complex tax, or any integration surface (ERP/CRM), an experienced Shopify partner reduces risk meaningfully.
Yes, both require coordinated app-to-app exports. Confirm import support before locking your launch date.
Binary Future will review your product structure, SEO risks, integrations, checkout setup, and launch plan before you move.
