Data audits and cleanup for Shopify migrations
Clean your data before migrating to Shopify
Platform migrations are the ideal opportunity to improve data quality. Years of accumulated duplicates, inconsistencies and legacy data do not need to carry forward. Starcodia audits and cleans product, customer and order data as part of every Shopify migration to ensure you start fresh on Shopify.
Why data audits and cleanup matter for migrations
Ecommerce platforms accumulate data quality issues over time:
Duplicate customers. The same customer with multiple records due to email variations, checkout as guest, or data imports. Duplicates fragment customer history and cause confusion.
Inconsistent product data. Incomplete product descriptions, missing images, inconsistent attribute usage and outdated products that should be archived.
Legacy fields. Custom fields and attributes that were used for specific promotions or integrations that no longer exist. This data clutters the catalog.
Structural issues. Broken category hierarchies, orphaned products, misassigned attributes and data that made sense for the old platform but does not fit Shopify's model.
Migrating without cleanup means carrying these issues to Shopify. They are harder to fix once live, and they affect everything from reporting to customer experience.
What data audits and cleanup includes
Product data audit. Review all products for completeness, consistency and quality. Identify missing descriptions, missing images, duplicate products, discontinued items and inconsistent variant structures.
Customer deduplication. Identify and merge duplicate customer records. Consolidate order history under unified customer profiles.
Order history review. Determine which order history should migrate. Often very old orders are not needed and can be archived rather than imported.
Field mapping. Map custom fields and attributes from your old platform to Shopify metafields. Define appropriate metafield types and ensure data will be accessible in Shopify.
Category and collection mapping. Map your category structure to Shopify collections and smart collection rules. Consolidate or reorganize where the old structure does not translate well.
Data transformation. Transform data formats where needed: standardize formats, convert measurement units, normalize text formatting.
Validation. Validate migrated data for completeness and accuracy before launch. Catch issues in staging rather than production.
Data issues Starcodia commonly identifies
WooCommerce migrations. Plugin data scattered across custom tables, product attribute inconsistency from organic growth, duplicate customers from guest checkout.
Magento migrations. Complex attribute sets with unused attributes, multi-store data overlap, EAV model data that needs flattening for Shopify.
Legacy platform migrations. Proprietary field structures, encoding issues, missing relationships between products and images.
How data audits work
- Data extraction. Export data from your current platform for analysis.
- Quality assessment. Analyze data for duplicates, gaps, inconsistencies and structural issues.
- Cleanup plan. Document issues and recommended fixes, prioritized by impact.
- Cleanup execution. Clean data before migration import, applying transformations and fixes.
- Field mapping. Map custom fields to Shopify metafields with proper definitions.
- Validation. Verify migrated data in Shopify staging environment.
Speak with Starcodia about data preparation
If you are planning a Shopify migration and want to clean your data before migrating, Starcodia can assess your current data quality and plan appropriate cleanup work.
Discuss data cleanup