BigCommerce to Shopify Migration Guide

Conduct a thorough audit of your BigCommerce store to identify products with more than 100 variants, as Shopify's limit is significantly lower than BigCommerce's 250. Create a spreadsheet mapping all critical store elements including custom fields, product options, and third-party integrations. Document your current BigCommerce theme customizations and identify equivalent Shopify apps for existing BigCommerce features. Plan your migration timeline during low-traffic periods to minimize business disruption.

Access your BigCommerce admin panel and navigate to the export section to download CSV files for all major data types. Export products, customers, orders, categories, and coupons separately to ensure complete data capture. Pay special attention to product exports, ensuring all custom fields, SEO data, and variant information are included. Verify that image URLs are accessible and properly formatted in the export files.

Create your new Shopify account and select an appropriate plan that supports your expected traffic and feature requirements. Configure basic store settings including store name, address, currency, and time zone to match your BigCommerce setup. Set up your domain preferences and decide whether to use a Shopify subdomain initially or connect your custom domain immediately. Install essential Shopify apps that replicate critical BigCommerce functionality you identified during planning.

Choose a Shopify theme that closely matches your BigCommerce store's design and functionality requirements. Consider themes that support your product types and variant display needs, especially if you're restructuring high-variant products. Customize the theme's colors, fonts, and layout to maintain brand consistency from your BigCommerce store. Configure theme settings for product pages, collection pages, and checkout process to optimize for your target SMB and dropshipping use cases.

Modify your BigCommerce product CSV to comply with Shopify's 100-variant limit by splitting high-variant products into separate products or using apps like 'Infinite Options' for complex variants. Format the CSV according to Shopify's import requirements, ensuring proper column headers and data formatting. Import products in batches, starting with your core catalog, and verify that product descriptions, pricing, inventory levels, and SEO settings transfer correctly. Configure product organization using Shopify's collection system to replicate your BigCommerce category structure.

Clean and format your BigCommerce customer CSV to match Shopify's import requirements, ensuring email addresses, names, and address information are properly structured. Import customer data through Shopify's admin panel, paying attention to customer tags and groups for segmentation. Note that customers will need to reset their passwords as encrypted passwords cannot be migrated between platforms. Set up customer account features and configure email notifications for account-related activities.

Set up Shopify Payments if available in your region, or configure your preferred third-party payment processors that you used with BigCommerce. Ensure all payment methods are properly tested and configured with the same currencies and options as your previous store. Configure payment security settings, fraud analysis, and chargeback protection features. Set up any region-specific payment methods required for your target markets, particularly important for SMB and retail operations.

Recreate your BigCommerce shipping zones, rates, and methods in Shopify's shipping settings panel. Configure shipping profiles for different product types, especially important if you're running dropshipping operations with varying fulfillment locations. Set up carrier-calculated shipping rates and integrate with shipping apps if you need advanced shipping features that BigCommerce provided natively. Test shipping calculations across different regions and product combinations to ensure accuracy.

Set up tax configuration in Shopify to match your BigCommerce tax settings, including tax rates for different regions and product categories. Configure Shopify's automatic tax calculation features or integrate with tax management apps if you need more complex tax handling. Ensure tax-exempt customer groups and products are properly configured, and verify that tax calculations work correctly for your target markets. Set up tax reporting features to maintain compliance with your business requirements.

Manually recreate your BigCommerce pages, blog posts, and content in Shopify's page editor, as these typically cannot be directly imported via CSV. Copy over your About Us, FAQ, shipping policy, and other static pages, ensuring all internal links are updated to reflect your new Shopify URL structure. Migrate blog content if applicable, maintaining SEO-friendly URLs where possible. Set up Shopify's navigation menus to replicate your BigCommerce site structure and ensure proper internal linking.

Create 301 redirects from your BigCommerce URLs to corresponding Shopify URLs to preserve SEO rankings and prevent broken links. Use Shopify's URL redirect feature or apps like 'Tiny IMG' for bulk redirect management if you have many pages to redirect. Update meta titles, descriptions, and alt tags for products and pages to maintain SEO optimization. Configure Shopify's SEO settings including XML sitemaps, robots.txt, and structured data markup to ensure search engine visibility.