WooCommerce to Shopify Migration: The Product Data Checklist You Actually Need

The Part of Shopify Migration That Actually Takes Weeks

Most WooCommerce-to-Shopify migration guides spend 80% of their time on themes, payment gateways, and redirects. The part that actually causes launch delays — and surfaces as problems weeks after go-live — is product data. A 500-product outdoor apparel store can be re-themed on Shopify in a single day. Getting the product catalog clean and accurate after migration? That's where the real work is.

This checklist covers what to audit before you export from WooCommerce, what breaks during import, and what to fix immediately after your catalog lands in Shopify.

Step 1: Audit Your WooCommerce Catalog Before You Export

Don't import messy data into a new platform. Before you touch the export button, run an honest audit of what you have in WooCommerce. The time you spend here saves twice as much on the other side.

Check for:

• Missing SKUs — WooCommerce doesn't require SKUs, so many stores have large portions of their catalog without them. On Shopify, missing SKUs break inventory tracking, fulfillment integrations, and third-party apps. Identify the gap before migration.
• Inconsistent product titles — If "Men's Hoodie," "Mens Hoodie," and "Hoodie - Men" all exist in your WooCommerce catalog, they'll migrate as-is and create SEO and filtering problems on Shopify from day one.
• Incomplete descriptions — Products with one-sentence descriptions or no description will hurt your Shopify SEO immediately. Tag these for post-migration cleanup.
• Missing product images — WooCommerce makes it easy to publish products without featured images. Run a product report filtered by "no featured image" and fix what you can before exporting.
• Overlapping categories and tags — WooCommerce categories become Shopify collections, but the mapping isn't automatic. Overlapping categories ("Jackets," "Men's Jackets," and "Outerwear") need to be resolved before or immediately after migration, or you'll end up with redundant collections.

Step 2: Understand What WooCommerce Exports (and What It Doesn't)

WooCommerce's built-in CSV export includes product title, SKU, description, price, stock status, images, and categories. It omits several fields that Shopify relies on heavily.

What doesn't export cleanly from WooCommerce:

• Cost of goods (COGS) — Unless you used a WooCommerce cost-tracking plugin, this data simply doesn't exist in your export. Without cost data in Shopify, you can't calculate margins, use formula-based pricing rules, or analyze profitability by product. This is the single most impactful data gap for merchants moving platforms.
• Custom attributes and metafields — Any custom product data built with ACF, WooCommerce custom fields, or similar plugins doesn't automatically map to Shopify metafields. These need to be handled separately after import.
• Variant-level images — WooCommerce handles variant images differently than Shopify. Expect to reassign variant images manually for products with multiple options.
• Review data — Product reviews don't transfer without a dedicated migration tool or app.

Step 3: Reformat the CSV for Shopify's Import Template

Shopify's product CSV has a specific structure with required column names that differ significantly from WooCommerce's export format. Key differences:

WooCommerce field	Shopify equivalent	Notes
Regular price	Variant Price	Direct map
Sale price	Variant Compare At Price	Reversed logic — see note below
Product categories	Collections	Not in import CSV — must be assigned post-import
Product tags	Tags	Pipe-delimited in Shopify format
SKU	Variant SKU	Goes on variant row, not product row
Stock quantity	Variant Inventory Qty	Requires location assignment post-import

One detail that catches nearly every migrating merchant: WooCommerce sale prices work inversely in Shopify. If your Lodge cast iron skillet is normally $45 but is on sale for $38, your WooCommerce export has $38 as the active price. In Shopify, the original price ($45) goes in "Variant Compare At Price" and the sale price ($38) goes in "Variant Price." Import without adjusting this and every sale-priced product will appear as a lower regular price with no strikethrough — and you'll have no record of what the original price was.

For catalogs over 200 products, use Shopify's CSV import guide as your formatting reference and run a test import of 20–30 products first to surface mapping issues before bringing in the full catalog.

Step 4: The Post-Migration Audit Checklist

After your import completes, don't just click around and call it done. Run a structured audit before the store goes live.

1. SKU coverage — How many products imported without SKUs? This is critical for inventory, fulfillment, and any 3PL integrations. Bulk-adding missing SKUs should be the first thing you address after migration.
2. Price accuracy — Spot-check 20–30 products against your WooCommerce prices, with particular attention to variant-level pricing. These are the most common import errors.
3. Cost per item — If cost data was missing from your WooCommerce export, add it now. A Yeti Rambler tumbler priced at $40 with a $16 cost gives you a 60% margin — but only if Shopify knows the $16 cost. Without it, you're flying blind on every pricing decision.
4. Images — Check for products with no images or broken image URLs. These often fail silently during import with no error in the import summary.
5. Product status — Confirm products you intended to import as Active aren't sitting in Draft. Shopify defaults vary by import method.
6. Variant structure — For products with multiple variants (size, color, material), verify the variant matrix came through correctly. Collapsed or duplicated variants are a common import artifact.
7. Collections assignment — Since WooCommerce categories don't auto-map to Shopify collections, verify products are assigned to the right collections. A Carhartt workwear store migrating from 12 WooCommerce categories needs every product in the right Shopify collection before launch.
8. SEO meta fields — Shopify imports don't reliably carry over WooCommerce SEO titles and meta descriptions. Audit your top 50 products and fill in missing SEO fields before going live.

For catalogs of 300+ products, doing this audit product-by-product through the Shopify admin isn't realistic. A structured catalog audit process surfaces gaps across the full catalog systematically, so you find problems before customers do rather than after.

BulkOps flags exactly these issues automatically: products missing cost data, products without images, SKU gaps, description voids — all surfaced on the dashboard so you can see the full scope and fix in bulk rather than hunting for issues one at a time.

Step 5: Handle What WooCommerce Couldn't Give You

Migration is the best opportunity you'll have to fix data problems you've been living with for years. The gaps most merchants address immediately post-migration:

• Add COGS to every product — If your WooCommerce store never tracked cost per item, add it now before any pricing decisions get made in Shopify. This data underpins everything: margin calculation, formula pricing rules, profitability analysis by product.
• Standardize product descriptions — Thin descriptions that survived in WooCommerce will hurt Shopify SEO. Migration is the moment to identify and upgrade the worst offenders before Google indexes the new store.
• Clean up tags — CSV imports frequently create duplicate and inconsistent tags. Audit your taxonomy and standardize it before launch, or you'll spend months untangling collection filters and search results.

Related reading

• How to Bulk Import Products to Shopify: CSV Guide for Large Catalogs
• Shopify Catalog Audit: How to Find and Fix Product Data Issues
• 37 Products with Missing SKUs: How to Find and Fix Shopify SKU Gaps in Bulk

---

After migration you're almost certainly looking at a catalog with missing cost data, unreviewed SKUs, and products that need cleanup before they're retail-ready. BulkOps's Data Insights dashboard surfaces every gap across your full catalog in one view — so you can see exactly what needs fixing and handle it in bulk. Install BulkOps →