A Shopify migration is not a Shopify project. It's a redirect-engineering project with a theme bolted on at the end.
Migrations from Magento, WordPress / WooCommerce, BigCommerce and custom PHP into Shopify and Shopify Plus. Redirect-engineering first, SEO preservation always, Cloudflare-layer rules for the URLs the platform can't handle.
Before · old platform
store.example.com/widget.html
Magento URL shape: ambiguous, .html-suffixed, no native handler in Shopify
After · Shopify
store.example.com/products/widget
Canonical product URL · 301 from the Cloudflare layer · ranking equity preserved
What you get
Six capabilities, sequenced as one playbook.
Treat any of these as optional and the migration becomes a coin flip. We sequence them the same way every time because the failure modes have already taught us.
Source platforms we've moved
Magento 1.x and 2.x. WordPress / WooCommerce. BigCommerce. Custom PHP storefronts. Volusion. Headless setups with the storefront pulled out.
Cloudflare-layer redirect engineering
Single Redirect Rules and Bulk Redirects with layered fallbacks for ambiguous URL shapes the platform-level redirects can't handle.
SEO preservation
16-month URL inventory, title / H1 / meta rebuild, schema migration, sitemap reset, slug freeze. Not a deliverable bullet, a phase plan.
Catalogue & metafield mapping
Categories to collections, attributes to metafields, variant logic, multi-warehouse splits, B2B price tiers and tax zones.
Customer + order history
Password resets done so existing customers can log in on day one. Subscriptions migrated where applicable (separate engagement, but we coordinate).
Liquid theme work
Online Store 2.0 sections, no page-builder bloat, performance tuned for mobile networks. Doesn't read like a $19 theme.
Runbook
Seven phases, D-30 to D+30. Same sequence every time.
- 01
Audit
D-30
Source-platform map, 16-month URL inventory from GSC + Ahrefs + GA4, catalogue shape, app dependencies, current rankings frozen as the baseline. - 02
URL inventory & redirect map
D-21
Every URL with organic traffic in the last 16 months exported. 1:1 mapping into Shopify URL Redirects (up to 100K supported). Edge cases routed to Cloudflare. - 03
Catalogue & data migration
D-14
Categories to collections, attributes to metafields, variants to option sets. Customers + order history. Password resets handled cleanly so logins don't break. - 04
Theme & checkout
D-10
Liquid theme that doesn't read like a Shopify default. Online Store 2.0 sections, mobile-first, Core Web Vitals tuned. Checkout extensibility on Plus. - 05
Slug freeze + sitemap reset
D-3
Hands off the URLs until the redirect map stabilises. Fresh sitemap submitted. GSC change-of-address (only when valid). - 06
Go-live
D-0
DNS switch. Cloudflare rules active. Real-time monitoring of 404s, GSC errors, and rankings. The first 72 hours decide the next 12 months. - 07
30-day watch
D+30
Tail the GSC error log every morning. Patch missing redirects within hours, not weeks. Compare rankings against the D-30 baseline.
The migration traffic risk curve
Two lines. One choice.
Indexed organic traffic from D-30 to D+90. A good migration dips 5 to 10% at launch and recovers within 30 days. A bad one loses 40 to 60% and never fully comes back.
Good migration
Recovers to baseline within 30 days and trends past it by D+90. Redirect map carries the ranking equity through the cut-over.
Bad migration
Sheds traffic at launch with no recovery curve. Missing redirects and slug churn bleed rankings the business never gets back.
Evidence
Two migrations. Two distinct failure modes solved at the edge.
Magento to Shopify · UK retailer
Ambiguous .html URLs solved at the Cloudflare edge.
Source platform served products as /slug.html and collections-or-pages as /a/b/c.html, genuinely ambiguous by URL shape alone. Solved with layered Cloudflare rules: explicit per-URL overrides on top, generic wildcard fallbacks below, and long-term Bulk Redirects from an exported sitemap.
concat("/products", regex_replace(
http.request.uri.path,
"\.html$",
""
))Client name changed due to confidentiality: whitelabel engagement.
WordPress to Shopify · Tierfutterpro
Post-launch SEO collapse, recovered.
Inherited migration with no redirects built. We diagnosed the bleed: missing /produkt/{slug}/ to /products/{slug} map, missing category map, broken sitemap, weak titles (the homepage title was literally just "Tierfutterpro"), and slug churn eating rankings.
Recovery: pull every URL with organic traffic in the last 16 months from GSC + Ahrefs + GA4, bulk-import to Shopify (up to 100K supported), and freeze slug changes until the redirect map stabilises.
Related engagements: Shopify development for what happens after the migration, technical SEO for the ranking-equity audit, and the case study on skindays (Shopify + WordPress in production).
Good fit if
A fit when there's real equity to protect
- Stores migrating from Magento, WordPress / WooCommerce, BigCommerce, or custom PHP into Shopify or Shopify Plus
- Merchants who care about preserving organic traffic and rankings through the cut-over
- Catalogues with ambiguous URL shapes: .html slugs, deep nested categories, multi-segment collections
- Teams that already tried a migration once and saw traffic fall off a cliff
Probably not a fit
We'll tell you when the redirect work won't pay off
- Brand-new stores with no SEO equity to protect: a fresh Shopify build is cheaper
- Storefronts with under 200 indexed pages, where the redirect engineering doesn't pay off
- Teams looking for someone to do a CSV import and call it a migration
Stack we ship on
Source, target, edge, data, SEO.
Ritesh · Founding Partner, Appycodes
A decade replatforming serious stores onto Shopify and Shopify Plus across the UK, US, Germany and India. The focus on a migration is the unglamorous part: the 16-month URL inventory, the Cloudflare rules for the URLs Shopify can't handle, and the 30-day watch that keeps rankings intact through the cut-over.
If a migration is coming
Bring the source platform, the catalogue size, and the rankings you can't afford to lose.
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