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Migrating to Shopify Plus

It may feel like a hurdle to migrate to Shopify as a platform, however, when it comes to Shopify Plus you get two additional tools to factor in. Firstly they have a team to assist you, with the goal to get you launched within 90days, the second is the ability to migrate you with additional Shopify API capabilities that give you assistance to ensure a smoother transition. Shopify Plus migration approach While the Shopify Help and Support look at starting with just setting up the account to then m
Migrating to Shopify Plus

It may feel like a hurdle to migrate to Shopify as a platform, however, when it comes to Shopify Plus you get two additional tools to factor in. Firstly they have a team to assist you, with the goal to get you launched within 90days, the second is the ability to migrate you with additional Shopify API capabilities that give you assistance to ensure a smoother transition.


Shopify Plus migration approach


While the Shopify Help and Support look at starting with just setting up the account to then migrate the products and content over – we see it differently. Configuring your Shopify Plus administrative settings is of course important for access and security, however, selecting your Shopify Theme should be a key component to understand what you will be importing and what fields should be considered.


With this in mind, selecting your Shopify Theme with a couple of test products and the content will then help you ensure you know what you need to prepare in the data migration. There may be new fields to be filled out in your CSV where your older platform might have omitted, or you might want to add categories of change around the product hierarchy.


Steps to migrate to Shopify can be found here: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/migrating-to-shopify/getting-started


Organizing your data for Shopify Plus


Planning your data migration is important as data from your current store will have to be extracted in a manner it can be imported into Shopify Plus. There are a significant amount of data records that are “tied” to one another and must be respected. For example, a customer’s details are tied to order, to which products are on an invoice that’s been settled with shipping information associated with it. This means you have to have customer data imported first, then products to then import invoices and shipping data. Avoiding invoices that have products that don’t exist, or customers that don’t have details is important to ensure that the financial records are “relational” and error-free.


Shopify Plus Transporter App


This tool is only available for Shopify Plus customers, and can greatly assist you in importing your products, customers, order data via CSV files. The capability is divided into 2 parts – A command-line tool to extract your data, the other is to import it into Shopify Plus. The command-line tool for the extraction supports Magento 1 platforms for a friendly CSV format to import into Shopify Plus.


https://github.com/Shopify/shopify_transporter


The Shopify Plus Transporter App is then found in Shopify Plus to take in the CSV files and is available in the Shopify App Store.


https://apps.shopify.com/transporter


Why is the Transporter App for Shopify Plus only?


Shopify Plus enables additional API capabilities over a regular Shopify Store. Shopify Plus gives you capabilities in Discount API, Giftcard API, Multipass API and gives you an increase in API call limits. All of which is crucial to plan for in migration since you might have these features enabled in your platform.


For more information on the Shopify Plus API capabilities: https://www.thegenielab.co.uk/post/shopify-development-for-shopify-plus


There are some data format integrity rules to ensure that your CSV file must be ready for the import function – clean data is important for things to work smoothly. It has been reported by users that adherence to E.164 formats on phone numbers and ISO8061 on dates is crucial for a successful import.


The Shopify Plus Support team


This is by far the most important benefit of the Shopify Plus offering. Your success in migrating over is on their shoulders and gets you ready in 90-days or less. Yes, your data being in a format that can be imported does depend on your abilities to extract and prepare, however, for the import, the team is ready to apply their expertise for you to succeed. For the former challenge of extraction and preparation, if the technical know-how might be out of reach, we strongly advise exploring a Shopify Expert to perform the data preparation and coordination.


A Shopify Expert for your Shopify Plus migration


As previously mentioned, there are a lot of “gotchas” in exporting, preparing the CSV import, and importing with minimal errors when it comes to data migrations. There are two sources of incompatibilities, the first being human data entry by thousands of customers if the existing platform allowed for varying formats of data entry. The second is the existing platform database and how fields are configured/formatted. When you export your existing data, the flaws are also exported. To the naked eye, it may seem reasonable to re-import into Shopify Plus, only to find out that the import will fail at various levels. A Shopify Expert that also has knowledge of the exporting platform can be invaluable in this instance.


Conclusion


If you are looking to migrate to Shopify Plus, it might feel like a daunting task – but it does not have to be a challenge if it is planned right, correctly supported, and understood through testing to ensure a smooth move. If it makes business sense to move to Shopify Plus from your existing platform, then taking the plunge takes preparation. Feel free to enquire with us at wish@thegenielab.com as we have Shopify Experts that have experience on all major eCommerce platforms and Shopify Plus.


Shopify Expert Resource Centre: https://www.thegenielab.co.uk/blogs/articles/shopify-experts-resource-center


Related Shopify Plus articles:

Integrations with Shopify Plus for your eCommerce business: https://www.thegenielab.co.uk/blogs/articles/integrations-with-shopify-plus-for-your-ecommerce-business

Shopify Development for Shopify Plus: https://www.thegenielab.co.uk/blogs/articles/shopify-development-for-shopify-plus

When to upgrade to Shopify Plus 2021: https://www.thegenielab.co.uk/blogs/articles/when-to-upgrade-to-shopify-plus-2021

Shopify Plus for Black Friday Sales: https://www.thegenielab.co.uk/blogs/articles/shopify-plus-for-black-friday-sales


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