Migrating to Shopify without losing traffic
Most migration horror stories are the same story: the products moved, the URLs did not, and three months of search traffic disappeared on launch day.
Migration is mostly a mapping exercise. Do the mapping first and the rest is scheduling.
The order that protects traffic#
- Export every URL that currently exists, with its traffic and its rankings.
- Decide the destination for each one: a matching page, a parent page, or gone.
- Build the redirect map as a file, reviewed before anything is built.
- Migrate products, collections and content into the new structure.
- Test redirects on staging with the real list, not a sample.
- Launch, then re-crawl the old URL list to verify every redirect resolves in one hop.
What breaks and what it costs#
| Missed step | Consequence |
|---|---|
| Unmapped URLs | Search traffic lost, sometimes permanently |
| Chained redirects | Slow pages and diluted signals |
| Changed product handles | Every external link and ad breaks |
| Lost customer accounts | Password resets for your entire list |
| Historical orders not migrated | Support and accounting lose their history |
Data that is harder than it looks#
Customer passwords cannot be migrated between platforms, so plan the communication before launch rather than discovering it through a support queue. Historical orders may need to be imported for support and returns. Product reviews usually live in an app and need their own export and import.
Write the migration runbook as a checklist with owners and a rollback point. Migrations fail at 2am because nobody wrote down the order of operations.
After launch#
Watch the old URL list, indexation, and organic traffic weekly for the first month. A small dip that recovers in two to four weeks is normal. A dip that keeps falling means redirects are wrong, and it is much cheaper to find that in week one than in month three.
Frequently asked questions
Will I lose rankings when migrating?
A short dip is normal. A lasting loss almost always means unmapped or chained redirects.
Can customer passwords be moved?
No. Plan a reset communication before launch rather than after.
How long does a migration take?
Six to sixteen weeks for a real catalogue with integrations. Data cleanup, not the storefront, is the long pole.
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