Migrate from Etsy

After you have created your store on Shopify, take a look at your existing Etsy store and decide what data and content you want to move over to Shopify. A migration can be a good time to purge old, low-performing content, and give your site and business a fresh look. You might want to migrate the following data from Etsy:

• Products
• Customers
• Historical orders (orders that have already been fulfilled)
• Reviews

Next, choose a method to transfer each type of content. Review the following options, which range from the least technically complex to the most technically complex:

Migration methods and descriptions

Migration method	Description
Manual data copy paste	Copy the content from your existing Etsy store and paste it in your new Shopify store.
CSV import	Export your data into CSV files, and import them to your new Shopify store (some data can't be migrated this way).
Store Migration app	Migrate your Etsy products to Shopify by using Shopify's Store Migration app.
Third-party migration apps	Use third-party migration apps from the Shopify App Store.
Migration expert	Hire a Shopify Partner to manage and complete your migration

Preview your store on Shopify

Before you migrate your data from Etsy, you can preview a version of your Etsy storefront on Shopify. The preview is available only if you select Etsy as your current platform when you sign up for Shopify.

Steps:

1. During the sign-up process, select Existing business, and then select Etsy as the platform that you sell on.
2. After your store is created, on the Home page of your Shopify admin, click Preview your Etsy shop on Shopify.
3. Enter the link to your Etsy shop.
4. Click Generate preview.

After the preview is generated, you can review the themes that are styled to match your Etsy storefront, and choose one for your online store.

Shopify Store Migration app

The Store Migration app is a first-party app that you can use to import your Etsy products to Shopify. You upload the listings CSV file that you export from Etsy without editing it, and the app maps your Etsy listing details to Shopify product fields. Use the app on a desktop device.

Imported products are added to your store as drafts, and their inventory quantities are added to your store's default location. If a listing has 101 or more variation combinations, then it's imported without variants. You can add the variants after the import, or use a third-party app.

Steps:

1. From the Shopify App Store, install the Store Migration app. If you selected Etsy as your current platform when you signed up, then you can also install the app from the setup guide on the Home page of your Shopify admin.
2. Export your listings from Etsy, and then upload the CSV file to the app without making changes to it.
3. After your CSV file is uploaded, click Import products to begin the import process.
4. After the import is complete, review the import report. The report lists how many items were imported and describes any items that had issues.

The rest of this guide recommends using CSV files when available, and notes other options when CSV isn't feasible.

You can export your active Etsy listings as a CSV file, and then use the file to import your products to Shopify. The listings CSV file includes the title, description, price, currency code, quantity, tags, materials, image URLs, and stock keeping units (SKUs) of your listings.

To download the file, from your Etsy Shop Manager, go to Settings > Options > Download Data. In the Currently for Sale Listings section, click Download CSV. For the latest steps, refer to Etsy's How to Download Your Listing Information help article.

If your listings contain variations (known as variants on Shopify), then you need to edit your CSV file before you can import it to Shopify.

Google Sheets is recommended to edit a formatted version of your CSV files, though many other popular spreadsheet applications might also work, such as Microsoft Excel or Numbers.

Editing variants for your listings

In the Etsy listings CSV file, each listing is on a single row, and all the values for a variation are in one cell. A Shopify product CSV file needs a separate row for each variant, and the rows for the same product need to share a URL handle. For example, a t-shirt that comes in small, medium, and large sizes and in red, green, and blue colors needs 9 rows, one for each combination of size and color.

Steps:

1. Insert a column called URL handle. In each listing's row, enter a unique handle for the product. A handle can contain letters, dashes, and numbers, but it can't contain spaces.
2. Insert columns called Option1 name and Option1 value. If your listings have a second or third variation, then also insert Option2 name and Option2 value columns, or Option3 name and Option3 value columns. A product can have up to 3 options.
3. In each listing's row, copy the value from the VARIATION 1 NAME column into the Option1 name column, and enter the first value from the VARIATION 1 VALUES column into the Option1 value column. Repeat this step for any other variations.
4. Below the listing's row, add a row for each additional variant. In each new row, enter the product's URL handle, the variant's option values, and the variant's price and quantity. Leave the TITLE, DESCRIPTION, and TAGS columns empty in the new rows.
5. If your listings have SKUs, then the SKU column lists the SKUs for all of a listing's variants, separated by commas. In each row, keep only the SKU for that row's variant.
6. Delete the VARIATION columns from the file.

For example, if one of your listings has a VARIATION 1 NAME cell with Size, a VARIATION 1 VALUES cell with S,M,L, and a SKU cell with TS123-S,TS123-M,TS123-L, then add two rows below the listing's row, fill in the following values, and enter each variant's price and quantity in its row:

Example values for a listing with small, medium, and large variants after you edit the CSV file

Row	URL handle	Option1 name	Option1 value	SKU
Listing row	cotton-t-shirt	Size	S	TS123-S
First new row	cotton-t-shirt		M	TS123-M
Second new row	cotton-t-shirt		L	TS123-L

Then delete the VARIATION columns from the file.

For more information about variant columns in your CSV file, refer to Using CSV files to import and export products.

After you have your listings CSV file and have completed any necessary edits, you can import your Etsy products into Shopify.

Steps:

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Products.

2. Click Import.

3. Click Add file, and then select the listings CSV file that you downloaded in step two.

4. Click Upload and preview.

5. Review the details about the import, and then click Import products.

After your CSV file is uploaded, you receive a confirmation email from Shopify to your email account used to set up your Shopify store. Read some solutions to common problems, or more general information about importing products with a CSV file.

After you import your products to Shopify, verify that all your information is imported correctly. Details, such as price, weight, and inventory, can impact your business when they aren't imported correctly.

Review for common importing errors

Types of errors that you can have when you import products to Shopify, and how you can resolve the errors.

Issue	Resolution
Products were imported successfully, but not published.	If the products that you import are marked as hidden, then they aren't published until you make them available to your sales channels.
Details are missing from imported products.	Review the product description on the product page, and then fill in the missing information.
Product variants failed to import.	If a product is missing a variant option, then it won't be imported successfully. You can instead add the product to your Shopify store manually.

Review and organize your products

1. Review your product details, including the product description, images, variants, price, and meta description.
2. Create product collections to organize your products into categories, which helps you group your products both in the Shopify admin and on your external website.
3. Understand product inventory and transfers to keep track of the inventory in your business. Review the available inventory apps to determine if any are necessary for your business.

You can use third-party migration apps from the Shopify App Store to import your order history and customers from Etsy to your Shopify store.

The following apps can help with importing customers and orders:

• Shuttle - Sync with Etsy
• Etsy Integration - ShopList

You can use a third-party app to import your reviews from Etsy to your Shopify store. Browse apps for importing Etsy reviews in the Shopify App Store.

To keep your own copy of your reviews, you can also download them from Etsy. Learn more about downloading your Etsy reviews.

To keep selling on Etsy after you move to Shopify, you can use a third-party app from the Shopify App Store to sync your listings, orders, and inventory between Etsy and Shopify.

The following apps can help with syncing your stores:

• Shuttle - Sync with Etsy
• Etsy Integration - ShopList

To help you get started, the Themes page of your admin has a default theme set up when you open an account with Shopify. You need to customize your theme to get your website looking how you want. If you want to customize a different theme for your online store, then you can add through the Shopify admin.

To add a theme for your online store, choose one of the following options:

• Add a free theme from within the admin.
• Buy a paid theme from the Shopify Theme Store. Although paid themes need to be purchased before you can publish them to your online store, you can try a paid theme before buying.

Add a free theme from the admin

Free themes are developed by Shopify. Help with customizations for free themes is supported by Shopify.

Steps:

Add a theme from the Theme Store

Paid themes are developed by third-party designers. Help with customizations for third-party themes is provided by the theme designer.

Steps:

1. Visit the Shopify Theme Store and choose a theme. If you're still in your free trial period, then choose a free theme to avoid paying any charges.
2. If you've chosen a free theme, then click Add theme or Start with this theme. If you've chosen a paid theme, then click Buy to buy the theme. Paid themes are non-refundable. To be sure that it suits your needs, you can try a paid theme before you buy it.
3. For paid themes, click Approve to approve the payment. The theme will be added to the Themes page of your admin.

Try a paid theme in your store

You can try a paid theme to preview how it looks with your products, brand colors, and style, before making the commitment to buy the theme. When you preview a theme, you can make customizations by using the theme editor. Any changes you make are saved when you purchase the theme. You can preview up to 19 paid themes, which allows you to compare different themes before buying.

Steps:

1. Visit the Shopify Theme Store and choose a paid theme.
2. Click Try theme. A preview of the theme will load for your online store.
3. Do one of the following:
   • To stop previewing the theme, click Close preview.
   • To purchase the theme, click Buy.
   • To modify the theme settings using the theme editor, click Edit theme.

If you choose not to buy the theme, then the paid theme is still added to the Themes page of your admin. Paid themes that you're trying have a Theme trial label.

You need to set up shipping rates and shipping methods correctly before you launch — you don’t want to have to refund customers for overcharging them, or to email customers asking them to pay more because you didn’t charge enough to cover the shipping of their order.

For more information about order shipping and fulfillment, click here.

Steps:

1. Review your store's address to get accurate shipping rates based on your location. If you ship from other places, then add them as locations.
2. Create shipping zones to allow shipping to different regions, states, and countries.
3. If you use carrier-calculated shipping rates, then configure your shipment dimensions. Many carriers use volumetric weight (the height, weight, and depth of a package) to calculate shipping rates.
4. Set up shipping rates for the shipping zones that you create.
5. Pick a shipping strategy that works for your business. You might find it helpful to look through some options to find what meets your needs before making a decision.
6. Decide how you want to fulfill your orders. You can fulfill and ship orders yourself or use a fulfillment service that ships orders for you.

Charging sales tax is an important part of running your business. Depending on your location, there are different rules and regulations about sales tax that apply to your products. To make sure that your store meets those rules, take some time to understand Shopify’s tax setup process.

Charging taxes based on your shipping destinations

When you set up your shipping, you can apply shipping taxes to your products based on the customer's provincial, state, or regional tax regulations. These are calculated automatically by Shopify.

If you need to adjust taxes manually, based on a region with unique tax restrictions or based on a specific collection of products, then you can do so with a tax override.

Keeping track of your taxes

When you configure the tax settings for your products, you need to consider how to keep track of your taxes throughout the year.

If you’re not sure which system to use to keep track of your taxes, then you might want to review some accounting apps in the Shopify App Store.

To make sure that customers can pay you, you need to set up a payment provider. A payment provider lets you accept credit card payments securely. Shopify Payments is available in certain countries and a variety of supported third-party payment providers are available.

Set up a payment provider

1. Select a payment provider from Shopify or from a supported third-party.
2. Activate Shopify Payments or a third-party payment provider in your Shopify admin.
3. Choose how you want to capture and authorize payments when customers buy something from your store.

After you set up your payment providers, you need to configure your checkout page so you can process customer orders.

Set up your checkout

1. Set up your order fulfillment and your payment authorization.
2. Add your store's policies so your customers can view your policies before they complete checkout.
3. Edit your checkout's customer information settings and decide whether you want to collect email addresses to update customers about events and promotions.

Now that you've configured your payment settings, you should try out a few transactions to make sure that everything is working. Running a test order will help you understand the process your customers go through when they buy your products. You can access all the orders that customers place from the Orders page in your Shopify admin.

You can run test orders for a few different types of transactions:

• completing a successful and a failed transaction
• refunding and canceling an order
• fulfilling or partially fulfilling an order
• archiving a successful order

As you create, refund, and fulfill orders, you will see the emails that your customers receive for each action. You can edit the templates for these emails from the Notifications page in your Shopify admin.

If you have staff that helps you manage and run your store, then you can add staff members to your Shopify store. Each staff member has personal login credentials. You can also set permissions for each staff member to restrict access to certain areas of your store and keep sensitive information secure.

Learn more about managing staff.

When setting up your Shopify store, you can buy a new domain or transfer the domain associated with your existing store to your new Shopify account.

Get a new domain

You can buy a new domain directly from Shopify.

Steps:

1. Purchase your domain through Shopify.
2. Set your Shopify domain as your primary so it becomes the domain that's displayed to customers in their browser, in search results, and on social media.
3. Set up email forwarding so that email messages that customers send to your custom domain email address are redirected to your personal email address.

Connect or transfer an existing domain to Shopify

If you have an existing domain, then follow these steps to point your domain to your Shopify store.

You can use your existing domain, but Shopify's link structure for individual pages is likely different from your previous service, meaning that old links to specific pages likely won't load for customers. For example, your old page about your shipping policy might have had the URL example.com/policies/shipping-policy, but on Shopify that page might now be example.com/pages/shipping-policy.

To help customers avoid landing on error pages, before you transfer your domain, you can set up URL redirects in advance for any pages that your customers might have bookmarked, or links from third-party sources. This way, if they visit the old link after you transfer the domain, then they're redirected to the new link instead of receiving an error page.

You can set up your Shopify store for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) success to maintain your rankings in search results.

Set up redirects

You can set up redirects for all your important pages to help preserve your SEO ranking. After your store is live, you might want to review what pages on your site get the most traffic and make sure that those pages redirect to your Shopify store. You can also use a CSV file to import your redirects.

Steps:

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Content > Menus.

2. Click View URL Redirects.

3. Click Create URL redirect.

4. In Redirect from field, enter the old URL that you want to redirect visitors from.

5. In Redirect to field, enter the new URL that you want to redirect visitors to. If you want to redirect to your store's home page, then enter /.

6. Click Save redirect.

Confirming your redirects are working

After you set up your redirects and launch your store, ensure they're working correctly by entering the original URL in a web browser and confirming that it redirects to the target URL. Any pages that were most visited in your other store should be checked to ensure they redirect to your Shopify store.

Editing your meta descriptions

A meta description is the brief bit of text that is displayed in search engine results. The meta description can be set for webpages, product pages, collection pages, and blog posts in Shopify. Make sure each page has a unique meta description that uses plain, direct language. A good description encourages more people to click the link to your store.

The Shopify admin has various areas where you can edit the meta description. Consider editing the following meta descriptions to help optimize your store for search engines:

• Set a title and description for your online store.
• Edit the way your product displays in search results.
• Edit the search engine listing for your blogs.
• Edit the search engine listing for your pages.

Verify and submit your sitemap with Google

All Shopify stores automatically generate a sitemap.xml file that contains links to all your products, primary product image, pages, collections, and blog posts. This file is used by search engines such as Google and Bing to index your site so that your store's pages display in search results. Submitting your sitemap files to Google Search Console helps Google find and index pages on your site.

Sitemap files are generated automatically. You can find them at the root directory of your Shopify store's domains, such as johns-apparel.com/sitemap.xml.

The generated sitemap files link to separate sitemaps for your products, collections, blogs, and webpages. Sitemap files are automatically updated when you add a new webpage, product, collection, image, or blog post to your Shopify online store.

The process of crawling and indexing your site can take time, and Google doesn't guarantee how long it will take.

After your site is launched, it can take Google anywhere from a few days to a few weeks to index your site. To check the status, you can search Google to check your index status by typing site: followed by your domain into the Google search bar—for example, site:shopify.com.

Learn more about finding and submitting your sitemap to Google.

Using an app for SEO

You can use an app to help your site's SEO. SEO apps can help optimize your images, boost site speed, and monitor broken links.

Browse SEO apps on the Shopify App Store.