Resource / Migration
Migration Stakeholder Brief
Use this before a WordPress or WooCommerce to Shopify migration so the owner, developer, SEO reviewer, marketing lead and analytics owner agree what must be protected before launch.
Migration objective
Align the team before the project becomes a design launch.
A Shopify migration can look clean in a preview and still fail commercially if the team has not agreed what must be protected. This brief is for the meeting where vague responsibility becomes named ownership: old URLs, search evidence, redirects, analytics, collections, product data, app decisions and post-launch monitoring.
| Area | Briefing statement |
|---|---|
| Primary objective | Move to Shopify while preserving search equity, revenue pages, measurement continuity and operational clarity. |
| What success looks like | Important old URLs resolve cleanly, key collections/products/content are represented, tracking is trusted and post-launch issues have owners. |
| What failure looks like | Launch goes live with unmapped URLs, homepage fallback redirects, lost metadata, broken tracking or unclear responsibility. |
People in the room
Every critical migration risk needs a named owner.
Keep the meeting small enough to make decisions, but complete enough that no one can say “I thought someone else owned that” on launch day.
| Role | Owns | Question they must answer |
|---|---|---|
| Store owner | Final commercial priorities, launch sign-off, risk acceptance and resource decisions. | Which pages, products, markets and revenue pages must not be sacrificed? |
| Developer or build team | Theme implementation, redirects, apps, tracking installation, Shopify settings and launch changes. | What needs to be built, tested, reverted or escalated? |
| SEO reviewer | Old-site evidence, URL mapping, metadata, crawl/index checks, internal links and post-launch monitoring. | What needs protecting before the new site goes live? |
| Marketing lead | Campaign timing, email/social launch messaging, tracking needs, paid media URLs and content priorities. | Which campaigns or channels could be disrupted by the migration? |
| Analytics owner | GA4, ecommerce events, Search Console, Merchant Center and reporting benchmarks. | Can the team trust the data before and after launch? |
What must be protected
Agree the assets before anyone changes the old site.
Protection does not mean keeping everything. It means knowing which pages, signals and journeys already matter before deciding what to preserve, rebuild, consolidate or retire.
High-traffic organic landing pages
Revenue-driving products, categories and guides
URLs with backlinks or historic redirects
Search Console pages, queries and indexing evidence
Existing titles, descriptions, canonicals, noindex rules and schema clues
Blog posts or guides that support commercial pages
Product media, reviews, FAQs and trust content
Main navigation, footer links, breadcrumbs and high-value internal links
GA4, ecommerce events, Search Console, Merchant Center and campaign tracking
Decision history for retired, consolidated or rebuilt pages
Launch blockers
Do not launch with silent ownership gaps.
These are not reasons to panic. They are reasons to assign owners. If a blocker is accepted instead of fixed, record who accepted it and what will be checked after launch.
| Blocker | Owner | Decision needed |
|---|---|---|
| High-value URLs are unmapped | SEO reviewer + developer | Map to close Shopify destinations or get written sign-off. |
| Collection structure is not agreed | Store owner + SEO reviewer | Freeze priority collection URLs before redirect rules are finalised. |
| Important pages redirect to the homepage | Developer + SEO reviewer | Replace with relevant destinations or intentional retire decisions. |
| GA4 or ecommerce tracking is untested | Analytics owner | Complete test events before traffic/revenue comparisons are used. |
| Search Console access or sitemap submission is unclear | SEO reviewer | Confirm property access, sitemap location and launch-day owner. |
| Important Shopify pages are blocked or noindexed | Developer + SEO reviewer | Fix robots, noindex or canonical rules before launch. |
| App stack is still changing | Store owner + developer | Freeze launch-critical apps and move nice-to-have apps into post-launch review. |
Decisions before build freeze
Use this table as the kickoff record.
| Decision | Question to answer | Owner | Due date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Final Shopify collection structure | Which old categories become collections, which are consolidated, and which are retired? | ||
| Old blog and guide handling | Which posts move, which are merged, and which support commercial pages? | ||
| Discontinued products | Which products redirect to replacements, collections, or return a not-found page? | ||
| Redirect ownership | Who writes, imports, tests and signs off the redirect map? | ||
| Launch date and freeze window | When do URLs, apps, templates and tracking stop changing before launch? | ||
| Analytics benchmark range | Which date range is used to judge post-launch movement? | ||
| Post-launch escalation | Who decides whether a launch issue is P1, P2, P3 or monitor-only? |
Evidence to collect
The old site contains evidence. Capture it first.
Do not wait until launch week to discover that an export needs admin access, an SEO plugin, a developer, a previous agency or an old analytics property. Assign evidence collection before the build work changes the old site.
| Evidence | Likely source |
|---|---|
| Organic landing pages and revenue | GA4, old analytics or server logs |
| Search Console pages and queries | GSC Performance export |
| Full crawl of old site | Crawler export, sitemap crawl and CMS export |
| Metadata and SEO plugin settings | Yoast, Rank Math, WooCommerce and CMS exports |
| Historic redirects | WordPress redirect plugins, host/server rules, Cloudflare or old platform settings |
| Backlink targets | Search Console Links, Semrush, Ahrefs or similar |
| Product/category export | WooCommerce, WordPress, Shopify import sheet or PIM export |
| Analytics and conversion setup | GA4, GTM, Shopify Customer Events, paid media pixels and Merchant Center |
Suggested meeting agenda
Keep the migration meeting focused on decisions.
| Time | Topic | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| 10 min | Objective | Agree the migration is a preservation and improvement project, not only a design launch. |
| 15 min | Protected assets | Confirm which URLs, products, collections, guides and reports cannot be lost. |
| 20 min | Blockers | Assign owners to unmapped URLs, tracking, Search Console, apps and launch freeze issues. |
| 15 min | Decisions | Freeze collection structure, blog handling, discontinued products and redirect ownership. |
| 10 min | Monitoring | Agree launch-day, first-week and first-month reporting owners. |
| 5 min | Sign-off | Record what is accepted, deferred or blocking. |
Week-one review
Make the first week boring on purpose.
The first week after launch should be structured, not emotional. Review by risk area and owner so tracking gaps, redirect issues and normal migration movement do not get mixed together.
Golden URL set, 404s, redirect chains and homepage fallbacks.
GA4 traffic, ecommerce events, test orders and campaign URLs.
Sitemap submission, robots/noindex/canonical checks and Search Console errors.
Priority collections, products and support guides receiving traffic and resolving cleanly.
Important blog posts, images, headings and internal links preserved or intentionally rebuilt.
Launch-critical apps stable; non-critical app experiments held back.
Core rule: the migration is a preservation project before it is an improvement project. Capture what the old site already proved, then improve from a controlled baseline.
Next step
Use this in the kickoff, then move into the working kit.
The brief aligns the people. The Migration Risk Kit and workbooks turn that alignment into sheets, owners, QA checks and post-launch monitoring.