This tutorial explains how to migrate Products from BigCommerce CSV to Shopify. As the BigCommerce Products CSV file does not have the full data, migrating to Shopify with this method will not re-create the full Product details in Shopify as it in BigCommerce.
We strongly recommend following our other tutorial that uses BigCommerce API to migrate data from BigCommerce to Shopify – because this method will migrate Products from BigCommerce to Shopify with all the details.
Use this tutorial ONLY if you cannot provide access to your BigCommerce API.
To migrate full BigCommerce Product details to Shopify follow our other BigCommerce to Shopify tutorial.
Doing the migration to Shopify using the BigCommerce CSV file will have less accurate variants and their details, and also it will lack full descriptions for the Collections, images, and some other details. But still – the data that BigCommerce gives in the CSV file, will all be migrated to your Shopify store.
Migrating from the BigCommerce CSV file also will not generate images from the description content in Products and Collections, so you would manually need to download images from BigCommerce, upload in Shopify Files, and change image links from BigCommerce to Shopify Files links in your Product and Collection descriptions.
1. Create a BigCommerce Export template
In your BigCommerce admin, go into Advanced Settings -> Export Templates under “Bulk Edit” template open the Action dropdown menu, and select “Create a Copy”
Next, you can edit the new template.
Set a new name for the template, for example, “Export for Matrixify“.
The only other option you need to change is to enable exporting product image links.
Open the “Products” tab in this new template.
Scroll down to “Product Images” and select “Product Image URL”
Leave all other checkboxes and settings for the template as they are by default.
Once all that is edited, press the “Save & Exit” button at the bottom.
2. Export products with the new Export Template
Head back to Products -> Export on your BigCommerce Admin. On this page select your newly created template.
The format should be “
Then follow the instruction on the screen to export products and download the exported file.
3. Rename the exported file
For the app to correctly detect what and from where you are importing, you need to give the file the correct name.
When you download your exported CSV file from BigCommerce, it will be called something like this:
products-2020-08-06.csv
For Matrixify to know that this is a BigCommerce file, you need to change that file name so that it contains the words “bigcommerce” and “products”. For example:
bigcommerce_products-2020-08-06.csv
4. Upload the CSV file in Matrixify
Head into the Matrixify app in your Shopify store.
On the app home page, you can see the “Import” section, click on it to select the credentials text file from your computer, or drag and drop it in the import area from your folder.
You should see that the app detects the import format as “Format: BigCommerce“.
After Matrixify analyzed the file, you will see how many “Products” are found.
This is product count not including their variants.
You can also see that the app will create “Redirects” for each product. So that once you switch your store domain to Shopify, then customers that are visiting product URLs with the old BigCommerce paths are redirected to the correct product in Shopify.
Possible errors at this stage:
- If you see that Format is recognized as “Matrixify” or any other format then do not continue the import and make sure that filename is set correctly to include words “bigcommerce” and “products”.
- If you are receiving an error “BigCommerce Products: Required columns not found in your file” then you have either exported to the default BigCommerce export template or have not correctly selected to include the image URL column as per step #1.
Press the “Import” button and the app will generate an Matrixify template Excel file with your data.
Excel XLSX file is a lot more stable than CSV file so if you need to adjust any data, please do it in the Matrixify Excel file not BigCommerce CSV file.
5. Download Dry-Run generated file
Once the dry-run import will be finished, you can click on the “Download Import Results” file button to download the file.
You can check the file to see if the data matches your needs. If needed – do your data cleanup, adjust any data that you need to be different as data in this file will be what actually will get imported.
The app will create simple collections from the “Custom Collections” column in the Products sheet, if needed you can adjust the collection Titles.
In this column, collections are comma-separated.
To see what Redirects will be created, check the “Redirects” sheet/tab in the file.
Good to know:
- If in the file, Products sheet, you are updating Product Handles, make sure to also update Redirects sheet -> Target column and Custom Collections -> Product: Handle column.
- Shopify has a limitation of 100 Variants per product. Because of this, if the product has more than 100 Variants, then Matrixify splits that product into several products by 100 Variants each. For example, if you have 243 variants, then Matrixify will create 3 Products in the file, two with 100 Variants and one with 43. All the Basic Columns and images for those products will stay the same, except for the “Handle” which will have “-1”, “-2”, etc. added to the end of it. In this way, you can then glue them together on your storefront.
- Shopify allows a maximum of 3 Options per Product. If your Product has more than 3 options, then Matrixify will join the 3rd and any more options into one 3rd option.
6. Import your Excel file
Once you have confirmed that the data in your file looks as you need, you can head back into the Matrixify app and upload your file.
Now you will see that the app detects the format as “Matrixify“.
Do not select the “dry-run” option as you now need to actually import the data.
Press the “Import” button to start your import and migrate Products from BigCommerce CSV to Shopify!
7. Enjoy your BigCommerce Products in Shopify
After finishing the import you can go into your Shopify store and see your migrated Products there.
Good to know!
- Create your Shopify store.
- Install the Matrixify app.
- If you have any questions or issues during the migration do not hesitate to contact Matrixify support.
- Migrate Products to Shopify using BigCommerce API to get the most complete Product and Collection data.
- Read other Product related tutorials on what you can do with Matrixify!
