Concepts referenced in this article, defined.
Run rigorous A/B tests and personalize every visit on Shopify or any storefront โ no engineers required.
Migrating to Shopify from WooCommerce, Magento, custom platforms, or even between Shopify themes carries significant CRO risk โ SEO rankings built over years can drop overnight from URL changes, product reviews can be lost, A/B test learnings can disappear, and accumulated analytics context can break. The brands that execute migrations successfully treat CRO preservation as a first-class concern, not an afterthought. This checklist covers every step of the migration process with specific attention to what Indian D2C brands need to protect during the transition.
Before touching anything, document what you're protecting.
Export from Google Search Console:
This is your recovery benchmark. If post-migration organic traffic drops more than 20%, the redirect implementation has issues.
From Google Analytics 4, document:
You need these numbers to verify the migration didn't harm conversion performance.
Export a complete URL inventory from your current platform:
You'll map each of these to new Shopify URLs in the redirect implementation.
Document all active and historical A/B test winners โ CTA button colors, copy variants, layout choices. These winning variants must be implemented in the new Shopify theme from day one.
Export all product reviews from your current platform. Judge.me, Loox, and other Shopify review apps can import from CSV โ but only if you exported the data before migration.
Export customer account data: email addresses, order history, addresses, loyalty points. Import into Shopify and your email marketing platform before launch.
This is the most commonly skipped step with the highest CRO cost. Products that go live with zero reviews (even after years of review accumulation) lose 30โ50% of their conversion rate.
The 301 redirect from old URL to new Shopify URL preserves ~90% of the SEO value. Missing redirects means permanent ranking loss for that URL.
Match every old URL to the corresponding Shopify URL:
| Old URL | New Shopify URL |
|---|---|
| /product/vitamin-c-serum | /products/vitamin-c-serum |
| /category/skincare | /collections/skincare |
| /blog/skin-care-tips | /blogs/news/skin-care-tips |
For large catalogs (500+ products), use Matrixify to bulk-import redirects to Shopify's redirect manager.
A redirect from /old-url โ /intermediate-url โ /final-url loses additional link equity at each hop. All redirects should be single-hop 301s.
If migrating customers who have loyalty point balances:
After migration stabilizes (2โ3 weeks post-launch), restart A/B testing with CustomFit.ai to re-validate your winning variants in the new Shopify environment. Consumer behavior can shift after a platform change โ confirm that your documented winners still win on Shopify before treating them as permanent.
Related reading: Shopify CRO Audit | Shopify SEO Checklist | Shopify Store Architecture SEO CRO | Conversion Rate | Bounce Rate