Shopify Migration Go-Live Checklist: What to Check Before You Switch

Most Shopify migration advice stops at strategy. Pick the platform, plan the data, build the theme, done. The part that actually keeps people awake is the 48 hours around the switch, when the old store goes dark and every untested assumption shows up at once. This Shopify migration checklist covers that part.

It is written to be worked through on the day, by area, with a spot-check method for each. It assumes the build is finished and you are deciding whether to flip the DNS. If you are still costing the project, read how much a Shopify migration costs first and come back.

Data: prove it imported, don't assume it did

Every migration tool reports success. That tells you rows were created, not that they are right. Pick 20 products at random (not your bestsellers, which everyone has already stared at) and check each one against the old store: title, description, price, compare-at price, every variant, every image, SEO title, and tags or metafields that drive your filters. Then check inventory by location, not just the total. Multi-location counts are where imports quietly go wrong.

Customers need the same treatment, with one hard limit to plan around. Shopify cannot import passwords from another platform, because they are hashed outside Shopify. Your options are to send account invites after launch, or to switch on Shopify's passwordless login where customers get a one-time code by email. Decide this before go-live and write the customer email now, not on launch morning.

Historic orders are a separate job. Shopify's admin has no native order CSV import, so you will use an app such as Matrixify or a custom API script. Spot-check ten orders across different years and payment states. Confirm totals, discounts, tax lines and fulfilment status match, and that each order is linked to the right customer record so lifetime value reporting survives the move.

Redirects and SEO: the replatform launch checklist that matters most

A full URL map is non-negotiable: every indexed product, collection, page, blog post and image URL from the old site, mapped to its new equivalent. Export the old sitemap, crawl the old site with Screaming Frog or similar, and pull the pages with clicks from Search Console. Union those three lists. That is your map. Collection URLs with filters and pagination are the usual gap.

Test the redirects at scale, not by clicking five of them. Load the map into Shopify's URL redirects (CSV import, with a ceiling of 100,000 redirects on standard plans), then crawl the full list of old URLs against the staging domain and check every one returns a single 301 to the expected destination. Chains and loops are easy to create and easy to catch this way. Google's site move guidance says to keep redirects live for at least a year, so budget for that rather than treating them as temporary.

Before you switch, also confirm canonical tags point to the new domain, the new sitemap is generating and listed in robots.txt, structured data validates on a product and a collection page, and the staging store's password or noindex will be removed as part of the cutover. Add the new domain to Search Console now and verify it, so you can submit the sitemap within minutes of going live. Our guide to preserving SEO when you replatform to Shopify covers the thinking behind all of this.

Domains, DNS and email

Lower the TTL on your DNS records a day or two before launch so the change propagates fast. Have the Shopify A record and CNAME values ready, know which subdomains need to move (shop, www, bare domain) and which stay elsewhere (a blog on WordPress, a B2B portal), and confirm your MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC records are copied over exactly. Email is the record people forget, and losing inbound mail on launch day is a bad look.

Shopify says it can take up to 48 hours for the TLS certificate to issue after you connect a domain. In practice it is usually much quicker, but do not schedule go-live for a Friday afternoon with a Saturday promotion riding on it.

Payments, tax, duties and shipping

Test with the Bogus Gateway on staging (card number 1 succeeds, 2 declines, 3 leaves payment pending), then disable it. On the live store, place one real order with a real card on every active gateway, including Shop Pay, PayPal and any buy-now-pay-later provider, and then refund it. Check the refund lands, the order shows the right status, and the gateway's fraud settings are set the way you want and not on their defaults.

Tax: VAT registration numbers entered, UK rates applied, tax-inclusive pricing set correctly, and a zero-rated product tested if you sell any.Duties: if you ship internationally and want duties collected at checkout, every product needs an HS code and country of origin. Shopify's duty calculation has been available on all plans since early 2025, but it does nothing without that data.Shipping: every zone and rate recreated, carrier accounts reconnected, free-shipping thresholds matching the old store, and a test checkout to each major destination to see the rates a customer will actually see.Markets: currencies, rounding rules and localised domains or subfolders checked against what you had before.

Apps, integrations, notifications and tracking

Go through every app and integration with one question: is it connected to the live store, on a paid plan, and pointing at production data? Reviews, subscriptions, email platform, ERP, 3PL, accounting, search and merchandising. Many apps are installed on a development store during the build and never re-authorised on the real one. Trigger a real event through each: a review request, a subscription renewal, an order pushed to the warehouse.

Open every transactional email template Shopify will send and read it as a customer. Order confirmation, shipping confirmation, account invite, abandoned checkout, refund. Logo, sender name, reply-to address and tone should all match the brand. Then confirm tracking: GA4 and the Meta pixel firing on a purchase, server-side events reaching their destination, and the consent banner blocking what it should. A migration is the most common reason a store's conversion rate 'drops' when in fact the pixel just stopped firing.

Legal, access and the rollback plan

Check the privacy, terms, returns and shipping pages exist and are linked in the footer and at checkout. Run an accessibility pass on the home, collection, product and checkout pages. Confirm every staff member has the right permissions on the new store and that nobody is logging in through the agency's account. Brief customer service on what has changed and give them a one-page answer sheet for the questions that will come: 'why do I need a new password', 'where is my order history', 'why does my saved address look different'.

Finally, write the rollback plan down. Keep the old store running, read-only, for at least 30 days. Define the conditions that would trigger a rollback (checkout failing on a major gateway, more than a set percentage of old URLs returning 404s, orders not reaching the warehouse) and who has the authority to call it. A rollback you have agreed in advance is a calm decision. One you improvise at 11pm is not.

The migration is not finished when the DNS switches. It is finished when a week of orders has gone through cleanly and the numbers in Search Console look like they did before.

The first week after Shopify launch day

Check these every morning for seven days. Search Console coverage and crawl errors, looking for a spike in 404s. Organic sessions and conversion rate by device against the same week last year. Checkout completion rate by payment method. Orders reaching the 3PL or warehouse. Email deliverability and the count of account invites accepted. Site speed on a product page, because new themes often launch with every app script enabled.

Redirect gaps for old URLs with parameters, trailing slashes or capital letters.A product with the wrong variant showing as default, or images in the wrong order.Shipping rates appearing for one zone but not another.Pixels firing twice (duplicate conversions) or not at all.Customers hitting the login page and leaving because they do not realise they need a new password.

Every one of those is cheap to fix in week one and expensive to find in month three.

What a clean go-live buys you

A migration done this way is unglamorous, and that is the point. The reward is not a better launch day, it is the position you are in afterwards: the same traffic you had before, a platform that is easier to change, and no lingering mess to clean up before you can start improving things. Most brands that move to Shopify did not have a traffic problem. They had a conversion problem the old platform made hard to solve. The migration removes the excuse.

We have run migrations for brands across Glasgow, the wider UK and further afield, with a senior team that does the work itself rather than handing it to juniors or outsourcing. If you want a second pair of eyes on your checklist, or someone to run the cutover with you, see our Shopify migration services or get in touch. And once the store is stable, the real work starts: a Conversion Growth Retainer is how we turn a clean migration into a store that converts better than the one you left.