Shopify Admin can transfer some types of store information with CSV files when you duplicate a store, but with Matrixify you can clone or duplicate a Shopify store by exporting its data from the original store to an Excel or CSV file and importing that file into the other store. The same file can copy Products with their Variants and images, Collections, Customers, Orders, Discounts, Pages, Blog Posts, Redirects and Menus, as well as Metafields and Metaobjects together with their Metafield Definitions and Metaobject Definitions. Most store settings cannot be set by the app, so this tutorial starts with what you set up by hand in the new store, such as locations and markets.
A Shopify to Shopify migration, when you move a store’s data to another Shopify store, works the same way: Export from the old store and Import into the new one.
The starting point
As an example, we are starting by having a Pet Shop store with some Products, some Smart Collections, some Custom Collections with Products in them, Customers and Discounts. We are going to clone this store to another store we have.
As most of the store settings cannot be set by the app then there are few things you must do in the new store before migrating your data.
We also recommend going through our Import checklist before migrating as well!
Disable automatic Order fulfillment
(skip if not migrating Orders)
First, we would need to make sure that if we are migrating Orders then Shopify should not send out any emails to the customers automatically.
Go into your new stores Shopify Admin -> Settings -> General. On this page find the section “Order Processing“.
Then make sure that “After an order has been paid” is set to “Do not automatically fulfill any of the order’s line items”
This is needed so that when importing Orders, the app can fulfill orders with details as they are in the file. Otherwise, Shopify can fulfill orders automatically before the app can do that and Shopify would also automatically send out fulfillment notification emails.
Disable Staff Order notifications
(skip if not migrating Orders)
For each created order in Shopify, the store owner and possibly other store staff members receive a notification email.
To disable these Staff notifications go into Shopify Admin -> Settings -> Notifications -> Staff notifications.
Under “Recipients” you can “Turn off” notifications to any of the recipients by clicking on the three dot icon and then clicking “Turn off”. You can then switch the notifications back on after your Orders have been migrated.
Set up locations
Next, you would need to set up locations in your new store to be the same as the location in the original store.
This is needed so that Matrixify can replicate Product Inventory and Order Fulfillments.
Go into your Shopify Admin -> Settings -> Locations in both of your stores. Make sure that the “Locations” section in the new store has the same locations as the original store.
It is important that the Location Name is the same in both stores as the app will be using names to match locations. Address of the location doe not matter.
Note – if the import store has locations that are controlled by third-party Fulfillment Service, then it depends on that Fulfillment Service if other apps will be able to fulfill Line Items in that Location. Unfulfilled Line Items which are set in a Fulfillment Service location might not be fulfillable and might return an error “Shopify does not allow to fulfill the following Line Item” upon importing, indicating that Fulfill action is not possible for the Line Items, only requesting the fulfillment to the Fulfillment Service. If the store has active thrid-party fulfillment service then make sure to disable it for the Import to ensure that it does not start processing these imported historical Orders.
Set up markets
(skip if not migrating Products)
Part of Shopify Products is pricing in specific Markets.
For Matrixify app to be able to set pricing and if the product is included in each market, those markets need to exist in the new store.
Go into your Shopify admin -> Markets page and create markets with the same names as in the source store.
Add store Policies
If you are cloning also your Shopify Online Store navigation Menus, then you need to set up your stores policies in Admin -> Settings -> Policies section.
If policy shows as “No policy set” in Admin then Shopify will not allow to link it in the Menu Item, thus if that Policy is used in a Menu then that Menu will fail to import.
1. Export from your existing Store
Once the Shopify settings are set up you can head back to the Original store to export the data.
In the Matrixify app Home page in the Export section click “New Export” and this will open a New Export page.
On this page select items that you wish to clone to your new store.
It is preferred to select the “Matrixify: CSV” format if exporting a lot of data, but if you know that you will be editing data before importing then select the “Matrixify: Excel” format.
When selecting checkboxes there are many fields that have an “Export Only” tag. Those do not need to be selected as they slow down export and cannot be migrated anyway.
When cloning Products and Collections, you also should not select the “Collections” checkbox under Products, as this information will be exported with Smart Collections and Custom Collections details and would otherwise slow down export and later import.
If cloning all information that Matrixify allows then the New Export page should look as in the following screenshot (click on it to view in full length).
If you are using reference Metafields, then you will need to also include those entities being referenced.
For example, if you wish to migrate only Products but they include Metafields that reference Collections, then you will need to also migrate Collections for the reference Metafields to be migrated.
If you are also cloning Metafields or Metaobjects, select also the Metafield Definitions and Metaobject Definitions sheets. In the new store, the app Imports the definition sheets before the other sheets of the file, so the Metafields and Metaobjects already find their definitions. Without the definitions, Metaobjects fail to import, and Metafields are created as “Metafields without definitions”. Shopify does not allow creating “Rich text” or reference type definitions from those afterwards.
To copy the files from Shopify Admin > Content > Files, select also the Files sheet. In the new store, the Import uploads each file from its Link, so the files are added to the Files section of the new store.
When the export has finished, press the Download Exported File button to get your Shopify stores data in a spreadsheet file.
2. Import the Zip or Excel file
If you simply want to copy the contents of one Shopify store to another, you even don’t have to look inside that file.
Just go to your new Shopify store, install the Matrixify app, and in the Import section of the app upload your previously exported file.
When you upload that Zip or Excel file, the app will analyze it, and show you all the Zip file CSV files or Excel Sheets it found inside, and how many items it found in each Sheet.
Then press the blue “Import” button to start the import.
3. Go, Check Your Shopify Store Clone
See?
Notice that the store name is different, URL is different. No joking – everything is there the same as it was in that Pet Shop store.
Good To Know
- That other store can have items there already. When you clone the Shopify store by this method, the additional items will be added, and the ones that have the same Handle (or E-mail, or Discount code) will be updated. Others will not be touched.
- If you open the Excel file you downloaded, you will notice that it’s perfectly human-readable. If you need to, you can change, add or remove data there, and do the import again in all your stores.
- After the import is complete, you can download the “Import Results” Excel file, where the last 2 columns (
Import ResultandImport Comment) will show you the result for each row. This is helpful when something failed in the import – you will see the failure reason there. - You can use this method to translate your store items to whatever other languages you have in your other store. Export it to Excel, give to the professional translator that Excel file, and import the translated file into your new store.
- If you have two stores in separate languages, you can import column updates to both of them, without touching the translated columns (like inventory quantity or price). Only then those items need to have the same Handles, as this is how the app will identify that they are the same ones to update.
- The app is able to also migrate all the Metafield values, including reference Metafields. When importing items with Metafield columns that are reference Metafields – we check that this reference already exists in your store. If that does not exist, we assume that it will probably be imported later with the other sheets in the same file. So we automatically generate a new sheet Generated Metafields and add those Metafields as rows to that new sheet. When all the other sheets are imported, then we again import the Generated Metafields sheet, with the assumption that now when all the data is imported, we will find those references for those particular Metafields.
- Metafield Definitions and Metaobject Definitions created by other apps are exported for reference, but their rows fail on Import.
- Matrixify app does migrate Products with their details, pricing per market, inventory locations and more, but does not export or import Shopify Catalogs or Catalog specific Product pricing.
- If you need to set up the automatic repeated data copying between Shopify stores every day/week/month, you can follow our tutorial – Automatically synchronize your Shopify store with your other store.
Frequently asked questions
How do I transfer my Shopify store to another Shopify store?
Export the store data with Matrixify to an Excel or CSV file in the original store, then Import that file in the other store. Items with the same Handle, e-mail or Discount code are updated, new ones are created. Most store settings, such as locations and markets, are set up by hand in the new store before the Import.
Where To Go From Here?
- Create a second store.
- Install the Bulk Import Export Update with Excel app to your Shopify store. Actually to all of your stores, so that you can clone them back and forth.
- Activate your free additional store in the Matrixify settings.
- Read other Tutorials, to get an idea of what else can you do besides cloning your Shopify store.
- Read the detailed Column Descriptions of all columns (fields) that you can export and import.
