Migrations go wrong for predictable reasons. Redirects are missed. SEO metadata is not transferred. The payment gateway is not fully tested in production. Customer data is incomplete. A brand spends months building their new Shopify store and then loses 30% of their organic traffic in the first month because nobody mapped the old URLs.

This checklist exists to prevent that. Work through it systematically. Do not skip sections because you are confident. Confidence is where migrations fail.

Pre-migration: What needs to happen before you touch the live store?

Data export and inventory

Before anything else, export everything from your existing platform:

Full product catalogue (all variants, SKUs, descriptions, images, prices)
Customer data (name, email, order history, shipping addresses)
Order history (import into Shopify for reference, even if you cannot process refunds for old orders)
Blog content and static pages (About, FAQ, Terms, Privacy)
All existing URLs (every page that has ever been indexed or linked to)

Keep backups of all exports in a named folder with the date. If something goes wrong during migration, you need a clean starting point to restore from.

Redirect mapping

This is the single most important SEO task in any migration. Every URL that exists on your current site that has backlinks, ranking, or traffic needs a 301 redirect to its new Shopify equivalent.

Process:

Crawl your existing site with Screaming Frog (free for up to 500 URLs; £149/year for unlimited) to export a full URL list.
Export your Google Search Console index coverage to identify all indexed URLs.
Map every old URL to its new Shopify equivalent. Shopify URL structures differ from most platforms (products are always at /products/, collections at /collections/, for example).
Upload redirects to Shopify via the URL redirects section in admin (Shopify supports CSV import of redirect lists).
Pay special attention to: your homepage, your top collection pages, your top individual product pages (by organic traffic), and any URLs with external backlinks.

A missed redirect is a broken link, a lost ranking signal, and a 404 page for any visitor who had that URL bookmarked or shared. Shopify's built-in 404 page is better than most, but it does not recover rankings.

SEO audit of your existing site

Before migrating, document what you have:

Your top 20 pages by organic traffic (from GA4)
Your top 20 pages by backlink count (from Ahrefs or Semrush, starting from £99/month)
Your current meta titles and descriptions for all key pages
Any custom canonical tags or hreflang configurations

This documentation gives you a baseline. If rankings drop after migration, you can compare what was there before versus what is live after.

Testing environment

Set up your Shopify store in a password-protected state before going live. Do not launch until you have tested:

All products display correctly with correct images, prices, and variant configurations
All collection pages show the right products
Navigation is complete and all links work
Checkout flow functions end to end (use Shopify's test gateway for payment testing)
All apps are installed and configured
Theme renders correctly on mobile and desktop

During migration: What to check as you build

Product data integrity

When importing products to Shopify (via CSV or migration tool), verify:

Product titles match your SEO-optimised originals (do not use auto-generated titles from your old platform)
Meta descriptions are transferred, not auto-generated from product body copy
All product images are uploaded at full resolution (Shopify will serve them at appropriate sizes)
SKUs are consistent between old and new platform (this matters for inventory reconciliation)
Product URLs are manually set to match your redirect map where possible (Shopify generates /products/product-title by default; adjust where the old URL was different)

Customer data

Shopify does not allow bulk password migration (for security reasons). Import customer records including name, email, addresses, and order history, but communicate to your customer base that they will need to reset their password on the new store. This is best done via a post-launch email.

Tag imported customers appropriately: "migrated-customer" or similar, so you can identify them and communicate with them specifically in Klaviyo.

SEO metadata

For every page type on your new Shopify store, confirm:

Homepage: unique, keyword-rich title tag and meta description
Collection pages: unique titles and descriptions per collection (not auto-generated)
Product pages: titles match your keyword research; meta descriptions are distinct from product body copy
Blog posts: all migrated with original publication dates preserved

Shopify's default SEO metadata (auto-generated from page content) is a starting point, not a finished state. Review and customise the top 50 pages as a minimum.

App configuration

Install and configure all necessary apps in the staging environment before launch:

Email marketing (Klaviyo): connect your Klaviyo account, verify the tracking pixel is firing, and confirm your existing flows are not sending to test customers during staging.
Reviews (Judge.me, Yotpo): import your existing reviews via CSV before launch. Launching without reviews is a trust signal problem.
Analytics: install GA4 via the Shopify Google channel or a Google Tag Manager container. Test that purchase events are firing correctly using GA4 DebugView.

Pre-launch: The final checks before DNS change

Complete every item on this checklist before changing your DNS:

Launch day: DNS change and immediate monitoring

DNS changes are not instant. Allow 24 to 48 hours for full propagation. Steps on launch day:

Change your DNS A record and CNAME record to point to Shopify's servers. Your DNS provider (Cloudflare, GoDaddy, etc.) handles this.
Verify your SSL certificate is provisioned in Shopify admin (Settings, Domains).
Place a real test order as a customer on the live domain.
Check that your email confirmation is sending correctly (with correct from name and domain).
Communicate to your team: launch day, who is monitoring what, and how to escalate issues.
Check your real-time GA4 report for live traffic. If traffic drops to zero and stays there for more than an hour after propagation, investigate immediately.

Post-launch: The 30/60/90-day monitoring window

Immediate (days 1 to 7)

Submit your new sitemap to Google Search Console (Settings, Search Console in Shopify, then submit sitemap.xml via the Search Console interface).
Resubmit your sitemap to Bing Webmaster Tools.
Monitor Google Search Console daily for crawl errors, 404 spikes, and manual actions.
Check for 404 errors in Shopify admin under Analytics, then look for "top online store searches" for clues, and use GA4's page path report to identify 404-heavy pages.

30-day check

Compare organic traffic to your top 20 pre-migration pages against their pre-migration 30-day average.
Check Google Search Console's Coverage report for any increase in "Not Found" (404) or "Redirect error" pages.
Verify your ranking positions for your 10 most important keywords. Small fluctuations are normal; a sustained drop of 30% or more on a key page needs investigation.

60-day check

Compare total organic sessions against the same period in the previous year (seasonality-adjusted).
Review Core Web Vitals in Google Search Console. A migration often changes theme, which changes CWV scores.
Check that all automated Klaviyo flows are performing at their pre-migration benchmarks.

90-day check

Overall ranking trajectory should be positive or stable. If rankings have not recovered by 90 days, conduct a full technical SEO audit.
Review your conversion rate against pre-migration baseline.
Pull a Shopify analytics report on top landing pages and compare to pre-migration top entries.

A well-executed migration typically sees a temporary organic traffic dip of 5 to 15% in the first 30 days as Google re-crawls and re-indexes. Traffic should recover to pre-migration levels by 60 to 90 days and begin to grow beyond them if the new store's SEO is better than the old one.

Key actions to take now

Export your full current site URL list using Screaming Frog and begin mapping old URLs to new Shopify URLs before any migration work starts.
Document your top 20 pages by organic traffic and top 20 by backlinks. These are your highest-priority redirect and SEO checks.
Build your redirect list in a spreadsheet, upload it to Shopify via CSV, and test 20 high-priority redirects manually before launch.
Do a full checkout test on mobile with a real payment before going live.
Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools on launch day.
Set a calendar reminder for 30, 60, and 90 days post-launch to run your traffic and ranking checks.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it typically take to recover rankings after a Shopify migration? With a complete redirect map and correctly transferred SEO metadata, most sites see ranking fluctuations in the first 2 to 4 weeks as Google re-crawls the site. A full recovery to pre-migration levels typically takes 60 to 90 days. Sites that rush migration without redirect mapping can take 6 to 12 months to recover, if they recover at all.

Do I need to redirect every URL, or just the main ones? At minimum, redirect every URL that has backlinks, organic ranking, or significant traffic. For large catalogues (1,000+ products), you can set up category-level redirects that catch old URLs at the collection level even if individual product URLs are not all mapped. Use Google Search Console and Ahrefs to identify which URLs are worth mapping individually.

What should I do if I see a sudden 404 spike after launch? Investigate immediately using GA4's page path report and Shopify's built-in URL redirect section. Identify the most-visited 404 pages first. For each one, create a redirect to the closest relevant live page. A 404 spike in Search Console that persists for more than two weeks will start to affect rankings for the pages that have lost their redirect.

Should I keep my old platform live during the migration window? Yes, until DNS has fully propagated and you have confirmed the new Shopify store is handling traffic correctly. Most platforms allow you to keep a site live on its IP while DNS changes propagate, giving you a safety net for the first 24 to 48 hours after DNS change.

Shopify Migration Checklist: What to Verify Before, During, and After Going Live