Inventory the systems and data that must move
One r/shopify poster says their luxury fashion brand is moving from Magento to Shopify and asks what to do or avoid for a smooth migration. This is one self-reported request for advice, not detail of how common migration problems are or demand for 760 Studios. Use it as a prompt to identify which records and business rules need deliberate checking.
List products, variants, images, collections, customers, consent preferences, order history, discounts, gift cards, reviews, pages, blog content, shipping rules, tax configuration and integrations. Mark each dataset as migrate, recreate, archive or intentionally leave behind, with an owner who can approve the decision.
Check which platform or system is authoritative for each field. Two exports may disagree about product stock or customer status. Resolve that difference before building an import rather than allowing whichever file was downloaded last to win.
Map fields and import dependencies
Create a mapping from each source field to its destination, transformation, validation and fallback. Include identifiers that connect products to variants, images to items and historic orders to the right catalogue records.
Import order can be platform-specific. Shopify's migration guide, for example, advises importing products before customers and historical orders so the order relationships can be preserved. Confirm the current instructions for the destination system and test them with a small sample.
- Source field and destination field
- Required transformation or normalisation
- Unique identifier and relationship key
- Data owner and validation rule
- Exception queue for records that do not map
| Source record | Destination mapping | Expected check | Sample result and next step |
|---|---|---|---|
| Product 81; variant SKU M-042-RED | Product 903; variant SKU M-042-RED | One target variant matches the SKU, image and stock record. | Two target variants match. Hold this row, resolve the mapping with the catalogue owner and rerun the sample. |
Protect customer records and operational continuity
Customer exports may contain personal data. Decide which fields are needed for the stated migration purpose, limit access to the people doing that work, use a transfer method appropriate to the information and risk, and assign an owner to remove working copies when they are no longer needed. Keep source and status information for customer preferences intact, and ask the privacy lead to check how those records apply in the destination system; a data import does not settle that decision.
The ICO's current data-protection principles cover data minimisation, storage limitation and appropriate security. Its guidance is under review following the Data (Use and Access) Act, so use the live pages and get case-specific advice where needed. Do not invent a working rule retention period for every customer export.
Pause or coordinate changes that could create conflicting orders, stock updates or customer edits during the final migration window. Document which system accepts live transactions at each stage and how records created during the cutover are reconciled.
Preserve URLs and test redirects
List old product, collection or category, and policy URLs beside their intended ecommerce destinations. Map a discontinued product to a genuinely useful replacement or category when one exists; do not send every old item to the homepage. Shopify notes that page URL structures can change and recommends setting up redirects for bookmarked or third-party links before transferring the domain.
Test representative old links in a browser and confirm that each reaches the intended product, collection or policy page. Use the linked Website Migration SEO Checklist for broader redirect-map, crawl, canonical, sitemap and post-launch monitoring checks.
Reconcile the store before the domain moves
Compare record counts and sample records across important fields: product price, variant, image, stock, customer relationship and order status. Counts alone can hide a field mapping that moved every item into the wrong category.
Run a test order, confirm transactional messages, check delivery rules and review redirects in the destination environment. Keep a rollback and cutover owner. Do not switch the domain until the business can explain how it will recover from an incomplete import or a critical checkout fault.