How to move your online shop without losing sales or SEO

To move your online shop without losing sales or SEO, keep your domain, keep your page addresses the same where you can, and set up a 301 redirect from every old address that changes to its new one. Move your products, customers, reviews and order history, test the new shop fully on a temporary address, switch over at a quiet time, then watch Google Search Console and your sales closely for the following weeks.

Most migration problems come from rushing. Here’s a plan you can follow.

Before you start: take stock

Make a record of how your shop performs now, so you can spot problems after the move.

• Weekly sales, orders and conversion rate for the last few months.
• Your top pages by visits and by sales (from your analytics).
• Your top search terms and pages in Google Search Console.
• Any pages with links from other websites (Search Console’s Links report shows these).

Step 1: Make a full list of your URLs

Every page that exists today needs a home after the move. Build a spreadsheet with every address on your current shop:

• Product pages.
• Category or collection pages.
• Blog posts and guides.
• Information pages: about, delivery, returns, contact, FAQs.
• Any old pages that still get visits or have links pointing to them.

Your sitemap is a good starting point (often at /sitemap.xml). Add anything from analytics and Search Console that isn’t in it. A crawler tool can also list every page it finds.

Step 2: Map old addresses to new ones

Next to each old URL, write its new URL. Different platforms use different patterns (one might use /products/blue-mug, another /product/blue-mug or /blue-mug), so many addresses will change.

• Map each old product to the same product on the new shop.
• Map each category to the matching category.
• If a page has no equivalent, send it to the closest relevant page, not just the home page.
• Keep the same addresses where the new platform allows it. Fewer changes means fewer risks.

Step 3: Move your data

Export from your old platform and import into the new one. Check each type carefully:

• Products: titles, descriptions, options, prices, sale prices, SKUs, barcodes, stock, weights and images.
• SEO details: page titles, meta descriptions and image alt text. These are easy to lose.
• Customers: names, emails and addresses. Only bring over marketing consent where you have it.
• Orders: at least recent history, so you can handle returns and questions.
• Reviews: export them with dates and star ratings. Losing years of reviews hurts trust and sales.
• Discount codes and gift cards that are still valid.

Step 4: Rebuild and match the essentials

You don’t have to copy your old design exactly, but keep what’s working. Make sure the new shop has:

• The same (or better) content on your top pages. Don’t trim descriptions that rank well.
• Your delivery options, prices and cut-off times.
• Your legal pages: terms, privacy, returns and cookies.
• Order emails, abandoned-basket reminders and any marketing emails.
• Tracking: analytics, Google Ads and Microsoft Ads conversion tracking, and your Google Shopping feed.
• Connections to your warehouse, courier and accounting tools.

Step 5: Test on a temporary address

Build and test the new shop on a temporary address before you touch your domain. Block search engines from the test address so it doesn’t get indexed alongside your live shop.

1. 1Place real test orders with each payment method, on phone and computer.
2. 2Check order emails, stock levels and that orders reach your warehouse.
3. 3Process a refund.
4. 4Test discount codes, delivery options and any country-specific prices.
5. 5Check your 50 most important pages look right and load quickly.
6. 6Get someone who’s never seen the shop to try buying something.

Platforms that give you a free address while you set up make this much easier. Merchella does, so you can build and test fully before connecting your own domain.

Step 6: Set up 301 redirects

A 301 redirect tells browsers and search engines a page has moved permanently. It sends visitors to the right place and passes most of the old page’s search value to the new one. Add every mapping from your spreadsheet to your new platform’s redirect settings before you switch.

• Redirect each old URL directly to its final new URL, not through a chain of redirects.
• Don’t redirect everything to the home page. Search engines may treat that as a missing page.
• Keep the redirects in place long term, not just for a few weeks.

Step 7: Choose a quiet time to switch

Avoid your busiest weeks, sale periods and major ad pushes. A mid-week morning is often a good choice, with time to fix anything before the weekend.

1. 1Pause big promotions and tell your team.
2. 2Take a final export of recent orders and customers from the old shop.
3. 3Point your domain at the new platform by updating your DNS records.
4. 4Check the padlock (https) works on all versions of your address.
5. 5Remove any search-engine block from the new shop.
6. 6Submit your new sitemap in Google Search Console.
7. 7Place a real order on the live site straight away.

Step 8: Watch closely afterwards

For the next few weeks, check daily at first, then weekly:

• Search Console for crawl errors and pages “not found” (404s). Add redirects for any you missed.
• Sales and conversion rate against your “before” numbers.
• Ad conversion tracking, to make sure sales are still being recorded.
• Google Merchant Center, to make sure your products are still approved.
• Customer emails, for anything confusing or broken.

Some movement in search rankings after a migration is normal, even when it’s done well. If you’ve kept your content and redirected properly, things usually settle. Sharp, lasting drops usually point to missing redirects, lost content or pages blocked from search.

In short

List every URL, map each one, move all your data including reviews and SEO details, test properly on a temporary address, set up 301 redirects, switch at a quiet time and watch your numbers afterwards. Done carefully, a move can leave your shop faster and easier to run, without losing the customers and rankings you’ve built.