Products, variants, options, customers, selected historical orders, pages, posts, files, and other records can often move. Custom fields, modifiers, price lists, customer groups, promotions, app-owned data, and relationships need field-level mapping, transformation, and reconciliation.
Give options, relationships, and history explicit destinations
Separate catalog records, customer profiles, order history, content, and app-owned information. Product options, custom fields, images, and category membership need more detail than a single product count. Decide which data must remain editable, searchable, visible to customers, or accessible only to staff.
Run representative records through the proposed import method before agreeing complete coverage. Include products with modifiers, a customer with several addresses, and an order that was partially refunded. Reconcile relationships as well as individual fields, and record any historical information that will be retained outside Shopify so customer service can still find it.
What to check before deciding
- Define the scope of catalog, customer, order, content, and app data.
- Map modifiers and custom fields according to their actual use.
- Preserve identifiers needed by integrations and support.
- Approve sample records and exception handling before bulk transfer.
