What you need to consider when migrating

There are a number of considerations you should be aware of when you're migrating your store to Shopify:

• Protocol-independent assets
• URL redirects
• Blog posts and articles

Remove specific protocols from your assets

Make sure that all your store assets (theme files, stylesheets, or images) are always accessible by removing specific protocols such as http: and https: from their URLs.

Set up redirects

Make sure you set up URL redirects for pages that customers might have bookmarked. This will minimize the risk of losing customers who return to a page and find it unavailable after you've migrated to Shopify.

Note

You can import and export URL redirects on the URL Redirects page, which is especially useful if you need to manage a large number of redirects. To learn more about redirects, see URL redirects

Steps:

1. Log in to the platform that you're migrating from.
2. Find the URL redirects section in your account settings. The placement of this varies by platform. If you're unable to find where to add URL redirects, search the Help Center of the platform you're migrating from.
3. Enter your old URL in the from field and a new Shopify URL in the to field.
4. Repeat this process for all the URLs you want to redirect.

Example of setting up URL redirects during migration

Daniel is migrating his online apparel store to Shopify. His best-selling product is a plaid, button-up shirt. A link to the shirt was shared on a popular blog recently and is generating a lot of traffic, but the link is to his old store. To make sure he doesn't lose potential customers, Daniel sets up a URL redirect for this product page by following these steps:

1. He logs into his original e-commerce platform and goes to the URL Redirects section.
2. He clicks Add new URL redirect.
3. In the Redirect from field he adds the original product page URL: http://www.example.oldstore.com/plaid-button-up
4. In the Redirect to field he adds the new Shopify product page URL: http://www.example.shopify.com/products/plaid-button-up
5. He clicks Add redirect.

Customers who click the link to Daniel's best-selling product on his original online store will now be automatically redirected to the same product page on his new Shopify store.

Blog posts and articles

You can use the tools that are included in Shopify to migrate your blog posts and articles. However, you must use a relative path to replace embedded images in blog posts. Consider hosting media files externally or using an app from the Shopify app store to help with the migration.