Core platform audit
Custom functionality
A migration audit should identify any bespoke functionality currently powering key customer or operational experiences. Understanding which features are business-critical helps determine whether equivalent functionality exists natively within Shopify, can be supported via apps, or requires custom development. Auditing custom functionality early reduces the risk of missing dependencies, broken workflows, or costly rebuilds later in the project.
Checkout customisations
The checkout experience should be thoroughly reviewed to understand any existing customisations, scripts, or third-party integrations that influence conversion performance. This can include custom payment flows, delivery selectors, discount logic, upsells, tracking scripts, loyalty integrations, or custom fields. As checkout flexibility varies significantly between platforms, it is important to identify which customisations can be replicated, simplified, or replaced. A checkout audit helps ensure the new store post-migration maintains conversion-critical functionality, without unnecessary complexity.
Site speed
Auditing current site performance helps uncover technical issues that may negatively affect user experience, SEO, and conversion rates. Common problems include excessive third-party scripts, JavaScript bloat, unoptimised media, render-blocking resources, and poorly performing apps or plugins. Reviewing metrics such as Core Web Vitals, page load times, and mobile performance provides a benchmark for the migration and helps prevent existing performance issues being carried over to your new Shopify store. A migration also presents an opportunity to simplify the frontend architecture and improve overall storefront speed and stability.
Third-party systems audit
Make sure you list the following integrations and systems:
ERP (enterprise resource planning)
CRM (customer relationship management)
Email platforms
Loyalty platforms
Reviews
Search tools
PIM (product information management)
OMS (order management system)
WMS (warehouse management system)
Analytics tools
Subscription software
Personalisation tools
Now is the time to take stock of all the apps, software and integrations you’re paying for, so you can assess which ones to keep, replace or discard. It’s also important to check whether they integrate with the Shopify platform, so you have alternatives lined up if necessary.
App audit
Catalogue all of the apps and plugins currently in use on your ecommerce store and identify:
Essential apps
Redundant apps
Legacy technical debt
Opportunities to consolidate
Content audit
Blogs
Auditing your blog content before a platform migration is essential for preserving SEO performance and improving content quality on the new site. Before exporting any content, it’s worth reviewing and cleaning your existing blog to avoid migrating outdated, low-value, or duplicate articles.
Start with a full content inventory so you understand exactly what is currently published. From there, categorise articles into groups: content that performs well, content with potential that could be improved, and content that should be removed altogether. This process helps prioritise which articles should be updated, rewritten, consolidated, or deleted before migration.
Pay close attention to metadata, topic tags, featured images, and other media assets, as these are often overlooked during migrations and can impact both SEO and user experience.
Duplicate or overlapping content should also be addressed. In many cases, several similar articles can be consolidated into a single, more comprehensive piece on one URL, while the old URLs are redirected appropriately to preserve SEO equity.
Taking the time to audit your blog in this way results in a cleaner migration, a more focused content strategy, and a stronger foundation for SEO performance on the new platform.
Landing pages
Landing pages should be audited to identify which ones are actively contributing to SEO performance, paid campaigns, or conversion activity, and which are no longer serving a purpose. Review traffic, rankings, backlinks, and conversion data to determine what should be retained, improved, consolidated, or removed. This is also a good opportunity to assess messaging consistency, outdated campaign content, duplicate pages, and technical SEO elements like metadata, internal linking, and URL structure, before migration.
Product content
Product content audits help ensure catalogue data is accurate, consistent, and optimised before being migrated to the new platform. Review product titles, descriptions, specifications, imagery, variants, and metadata to identify gaps, inconsistencies, or duplicate content across the catalogue. This process also helps identify discontinued products, thin content, and outdated merchandising structures that may negatively affect SEO or user experience. Cleaning product data before migration results in a more manageable catalogue and improves long-term search visibility and conversion performance.
Outdated assets
A migration is an ideal opportunity to audit outdated digital assets and remove anything that no longer adds value to the customer experience or brand. This may include legacy PDFs, unused media files, expired campaign assets, obsolete downloads, duplicate imagery, and unsupported scripts or integrations. Removing unnecessary assets will reduce clutter, improve site performance, simplify content management, and ensure only relevant, up-to-date resources are carried forward to your new Shopify store.
