What you need to clarify before moving to Shopify falls under nine headings: the scope of the data to be migrated, how well your product structure fits Shopify, a record of your old URLs and SEO data, integrations (payment, shipping, e-invoicing, marketplaces and ERP), customer accounts and gift cards, measurement and ad tracking, your domain and business email, legal texts and your team, and finally the launch timeline. Whether you're coming from Ticimax, ikas, WooCommerce, T-Soft or IdeaSoft doesn't change this list; what varies by platform is how the data is read.

This post complements our platform-specific migration guides: it's a checklist you can go through with your team after deciding to migrate and before any data is moved. At Booster Wizard, an official Shopify Partner, we start migration projects by answering these questions together.

1. Define the Scope of the Data to Be Migrated

The first decision is what will move to the new store and what will stay in the old system as an archive. According to Shopify's migration guide, products, customers and URL redirects can be imported with a CSV file, while historical orders, gift cards, blog posts and pages are migrated using migration apps or Shopify's APIs. Your list should include:

  • Products, variants, images and SEO fields (page title, meta description, image alt text).
  • Categories and category descriptions.
  • Customer records and commercial message consents; make sure the consents stay consistent with your records in İYS (Türkiye's Message Management System).
  • Historical orders, and which period will be migrated.
  • Blog posts, company pages, product reviews, active coupons and loyalty points.

So that records link up correctly, Shopify recommends importing products first, then customers, and historical orders last.

2. Check Your Product Structure Against Shopify's Model

On Shopify, a product can have up to three options (for example colour, size and material) and 2,048 variants. Review the products on your old platform against this model:

  • For products with more than three options, you may need to split the product or offer one of the options as a separate product.
  • Before migrating, bring inconsistent option values such as “S”, “Small” and “Küçük” (Turkish for “small”) into a single standard.
  • Your categories become collections on Shopify. Decide from the start which collections will be managed manually and which will fill automatically based on a tag, product type or price condition.
  • Plan metafield definitions for the custom fields you've added to products, such as material, origin or ERP code.

3. Record Your Old URLs and SEO Data

Because Shopify's URL structure is fixed, most of your product, category and page URLs will change. Before migrating, record every URL in your sitemap, the pages with the most clicks and external links in Search Console, and the titles and meta descriptions of your important pages. This list is the foundation of your 301 redirects.

For the mapping table, redirects and launch-day SEO checks: our guide to SEO in a Shopify migration

4. List Your Integrations

Some Turkish platforms include payment, shipping and e-invoicing connections in the package. On Shopify, each of these connections is set up with an app or an integration. Answer this question for every system: is there a ready-made Shopify app, or will custom development be needed?

  • Payments: Shopify Payments isn't available to stores based in Türkiye; payments are collected through payment providers such as iyzico and PayTR. Confirm instalments, 3D Secure and the refund flow with your provider, and include in your budget the transaction fee Shopify charges on third-party payments, which varies by plan.
  • Shipping: Creating shipments from orders, printing labels and writing the tracking number back to the order.
  • E-invoicing and e-archive invoices: Your integrator's Shopify connection and writing the invoice details back to the order.
  • Marketplaces: Product, stock and order synchronisation with Trendyol, Hepsiburada and n11.
  • ERP and accounting: Transferring products, prices, stock and orders to and from systems such as Logo, Mikro or Nebim.

Our decision guide on which route is right for systems without a ready-made connection: When do you need a custom app on Shopify?

5. Customer Accounts, Gift Cards and Promotions

  • Customer accounts: Shopify retired password-based legacy customer accounts in February 2026; on new stores, customers log in with a one-time code sent to their email address. Since customer passwords can't be migrated anyway for security reasons, this makes the migration easier. Even so, send your customers a short email after launch explaining the new way to log in.
  • Gift cards: According to Shopify's migration guide, gift cards are migrated not by CSV but with migration apps or the GiftCard API. Because balances spent on the old store after the transfer won't be reflected in Shopify, migrate gift cards just before launch.
  • Coupons: Recreate your active discount codes in Shopify with the same names, so the codes your customers already have keep working.
  • Loyalty points, subscriptions and reviews: On Shopify, these functions are provided by apps. Decide in advance which app you'll use and how the existing data will be migrated.

6. Prepare Measurement and Ad Tracking

  • Record your pre-migration traffic, conversion rate, average order value and sales by channel; you'll compare the new store against these figures.
  • Set up the Google Analytics 4 connection with Shopify's Google & YouTube app; prepare the connections for Meta and other ad platforms before launch as well, and verify them with test orders.
  • Decide on your cookie consent set-up from the start. Shopify states that sessions in Analytics are counted for visitors who give consent through the cookie banner, so your consent set-up directly affects the figures you see.
  • Because platforms can calculate sessions differently, compare old and new figures as trends in the first few weeks rather than like for like.

Our article on which metric to track where: Shopify store performance metrics

7. Domain, DNS and Business Email

Shopify doesn't offer email hosting. When you connect your domain to Shopify, the root domain's A record is pointed to Shopify's IP address (23.227.38.65) and the www subdomain's CNAME record to shops.myshopify.com. The MX records that carry your business email must not be touched in the process.

  • Before launch day, confirm who has access to your domain provider's control panel, and with which account.
  • Take a copy of your existing DNS records (MX, SPF, DKIM and verification records).
  • Complete Shopify's email authentication steps (CNAME records for DKIM and SPF, and a valid DMARC record) so that order notifications are sent from your own domain.

8. Legal Texts, Team and Operations

  • Prepare your KVKK (Turkish data protection law) privacy notice, privacy policy, distance sales contract, preliminary information form and return conditions in Turkish; we recommend having the texts reviewed by a legal adviser.
  • Decide how many people will manage the store; the number of staff accounts varies by Shopify plan.
  • Before launch, try out your order, cancellation, return and stock processes in the Shopify admin with your team. Details such as which panel a refund is started from can vary depending on the payment provider.

9. Timeline and Launch Plan

  • Schedule the launch outside busy sales periods.
  • Between the final data transfer and launch, limit product and price changes on the old system, or set up the transfer so that it can be re-run.
  • Place test orders using cards from different banks, with both single payments and instalments, as well as cash on delivery and bank transfer; try cancellations and refunds too.
  • Don't end your old platform subscription before your data has been archived and the new store has settled in.

Platform-Specific Guides

This checklist applies to every platform. We cover how the data is read and the platform-specific details in separate guides:

Conclusion

A smooth move to Shopify depends largely on the decisions made before the first data is migrated. When every item on this list has an owner and a date, launch day brings not surprises but the final ticks on the checklist.

To see your current store's speed, SEO and tracking set-up before you migrate: Start your free store audit