This guide outlines how to migrate your store to Shopify from another platform and fully utilize Easy Redirects during this process. Re-platforming changes most, if not all, of your store page URLs. 

This means that if a customer tries to visit one of the old links, they’ll end up on a disastrous 404 error page. 73.7% of visitors that land on a 404 page will leave your site and not return (Source). Easy Redirects is a necessary part of any Shopify migration as it minimize disruption to your customer experience by redirecting visitors away from these 404s.

In this guide,

• Step 1: Import your store content to Shopify.

• Step 2: Export your URLs from your old store.

• Step 3: Export your Shopify URLs.

• Step 4: Import your redirects (connect old and new URLs in the spreadsheet).

• Step 5: Set up automatic 404 management.

• Step 6: Connect your domain to Shopify.

• Step 7: Redirect your domain (optional).

Step 1: Import your store content to Shopify

Before creating any redirects, you need to create your Shopify store and import all of your store content into it. With a TrustPilot rating of 4.9/5, we recommend downloading the LitExtension Shopify app which takes care of this entire process for you in a few clicks, for as little as $49.

Their Shopify App supports migrations from 120 different e-commerce platforms and data types like database dumps, CSV files, and XML files.

Google Analytics (GA) is useful for extracting the URLs from your old store. If you haven’t connected GA to your store, we recommend you do this and wait 30 days before extracting the URLs, or use a site crawler like Screaming Frog. 

Export your URLs from Google Analytics

1. Navigate to your store account to see the master view, which covers all of your website data.

2. In the left sidebar menu, navigate to Behaviour > Site Content > All Pages

3. Set the date range to the last 30 days. This will show all the pages (i.e., URLs) that have been visited on your site recently.

4. Add advanced filters to include your key page types. For example, you could set filters to include pages containing ‘product’, ‘collection’ and ‘blog’. This entirely depends on the structure of your site. Aim to cover all the key URLs that make up your site.

5. Export your filtered data to Google Sheets or Excel. 

6. Clean up the spreadsheet so it contains nothing but the URLs in column 1. All of the other data can be discarded. We also recommend sorting the URLs from A to Z to make the next step easier!

Note❗: You may need to reformat your URLs to be relative URLs. For example:

Full URL: https://yourwebsite.com/product/example-product

Relative URL: /product/example-product

Step 3: Create your redirects

Now it’s time to extract all of the new URLs from your Shopify store and match them up with the old URLs. Unfortunately, Shopify only allows users to export product URLs.

Products > Export > ‘All products > CSV for Excel, Numbers, or other spreadsheet programs’ > Export products

You can use the following native URL structures for reference. If you have a heavily customized theme or have edited the Shopify website's SEO, these structures may not apply to you.

Note❗️: The handles are usually the title of the product, collection, page, blog or blog post turned to lowercase and with any spaces replaced by hyphens (‘-’). For example, ‘Pink Fluffy Socks’ would have a ‘product-handle’ of pink-fluffy-socks.

Now match up the old URLs with the new Shopify URLs, by adding the new URLs into the 2nd column of the spreadsheet you created in step 2. 

For example, if I had an old product URL of /product/pink-fluffy-socks in column 1, I would add the new Shopify version (/products/pink-fluffy-socks) in column 2. When this spreadsheet is imported to Easy Redirects, all the URLs in column 1 will be redirected to the respective URLs in column 2.

Delete any URLs from the spreadsheet if the old and new versions are exactly the same.

Tip💡: You can add a group name for the URLs in column 3. This is optional, but it allows you to filter your redirects in the app later on. For example, you could use a group name of ‘Products’ for your product page redirects. You can use any group name and create as many groups as you like.

Once you’re finished, save the spreadsheet as a .csv file. It must be saved with comma delimiters.

Step 4: Import your redirects

Now it’s time to make sure anyone visiting the links from your old site won’t land on a 404, and instead, be redirected to the brand new shiny version in Shopify!

Note❗: Shopify only supports 301 permanent redirects. 

If you haven’t done so already, install Easy Redirects from the Shopify App Store. You only need the free version for this step!

Once installed, open the app. From the dashboard, click ‘Bulk Upload’, check the overwrite redirects box, upload the .csv file you created in step 3 and then sit back and watch Easy Redirects do its magic. Depending on how many redirects you’re importing, the process could take up to an hour.

Once the import is done, click on the import job on the dashboard to view the details. If you have any ignored redirects, the app failed to import these ones. Click ‘download ignored’ to see a spreadsheet showing the redirects that were ignored and the reasons why.

There are a few reasons why a redirect could be ignored. You can make the required adjustments and re-import these redirects by following steps 3 and 4 again.

It’s highly likely you will have missed some URLs from your upload. It’s also highly likely that you’ll create more than 404 pages on your site over time when you unpublish or delete products and pages from your site. This is why you need the advanced 404 detection and resolution provided by Easy Redirects.

Step 5: Set up automatic 404 management.

If you unpublish or delete a product, any customer that tries to visit the old URL will land on a 404 page and become irritated with their experience on your site. This isn’t good news when 79% of online shoppers who are dissatisfied with website performance say they are less likely to buy from the same site again (Source). This makes it vital to know when a user lands on a 404 page and proactively redirect them.

For only $10/month, Easy Redirects will track when users land on a 404 on your site and automatically fix it for you, helping to optimize your customer experience.

Tip💡: To redirect all 404s to the homepage, create a Redirect Pattern with a path URL of /* and a target URL of /. Redirect Patterns are only available on Easy Redirects Premium.

Step 6: Add a domain or subdomain to Shopify

If you need to buy a new domain through Shopify, connect an existing domain to the Shopify store, or transfer management of your domain from a third-party provider to Shopify, you can follow Shopify’s guide to adding a domain.

If you buy a domain through Shopify or transfer your domain to Shopify, then you can add subdomains from your Shopify admin.

If you own a domain from a third-party provider, you can create subdomains in your third-party provider account, and then connect them to Shopify.

Step 7: Redirect your domain or subdomain (optional)

If you want to redirect your entire domain to another domain, this has to be done outside of Shopify through your domain registrar. In most instances, your domain registrar is also your hosting provider. After you have done this, Easy Redirects is highly effective at improving your customer experience by detecting and managing the 404 errors that occur after your migration.

We have compiled a list of links to the domain redirection guides for the most popular hosting providers:

• Bluehost

• GoDaddy

• IONOS by 1&1

• Hostinger

• Hostgator

• Google Domains

• InMotion Hosting

• GreenGeeks

• Domain.com

• Liquid Web

• Namecheap

• Hostwinds