Your migration finishing isn’t the same as your store being ready. The data moved, your products are live, and your checkout works. That’s the baseline, not the finish line.

The value of this stage is in catching the things that only show up once you go looking: content that’s there but broken, app data that migrated but didn’t migrate cleanly, and settings that never carry over automatically no matter how good your migration was. Here’s what to check, including two real (anonymized) examples of this kind of thing slipping through.

Do it early. Our terms of service ask you to review your migration results and report any issues within 14 days of the migration finishing, so treat this checklist as a first-two-weeks job, not a someday one.

Check that your content and app data came through clean, not only present

“It migrated” and “it migrated correctly” aren’t the same thing. Two real examples show why it’s worth checking both.

Reviews: check for duplicates and orphaned entries, not only a count

A merchant using a reviews app found, after migration, that some products had duplicate reviews, and others had reviews attributed to “Deleted user” instead of a real name. The cause wasn’t the migration process itself. It was already sitting in the data: when our team reviewed it, the original review file contained duplicate entries for at least one product. The fix was re-running the reviews migration after cleaning up the source duplicates and resolving the orphaned entries.

The same merchant also asked about their Google Business reviews, assuming those had migrated along with their product reviews. They hadn’t, because they’re a separate thing. Product review apps handle reviews left on your product pages. Google Business reviews live on your Google listing, not in your store, so a store migration doesn’t include them. If you want them shown on your Shopify store, check whether your review app can import or display Google reviews, or plan it as a separate step.

The lesson: don’t stop at confirming your review count looks roughly right. Spot-check a sample of products for duplicates or missing attribution, and know up front which review sources are part of your migration and which aren’t.

Embedded images: open your content and check that images load

Images inside your content, such as the pictures in blog posts, category descriptions, and CMS pages, aren’t part of a migration by default. They only come across if you select the Migrate Content Images from Products, Categories, CMS pages, and Blog Posts option. Without it, your content arrives with its image tags still pointing at wherever the images lived before.

Timing matters too. The BigCommerce store from our SEO migration guide moved its blog and category content in a later pass, after go-live. The blog text arrived intact, but the images inside the posts came up broken. At first it looked as if the source image files were gone. They weren’t. The merchant’s own team found the cause: the image tags pointed at the store’s custom domain, and by the time the content pass ran, that domain already pointed to the new Shopify store. The same images still loaded from the store’s BigCommerce platform address (its mybigcommerce.com subdomain), which hadn’t moved.

The fix was re-importing the blog content using that platform address as the image source, so the images could be fetched and re-hosted in Shopify instead of carrying over links to a domain that no longer led to them.

The lesson: if you migrate content after your domain has cut over, point the migration at your old platform’s own address, not your live domain, because your live domain no longer reaches the old platform. It’s the same mechanism as the cutover gap in our zero-downtime migration guide.

This is easy to miss because the post itself looks migrated. The text is there, the title is there, and a broken image only shows up when you open the post and look. Check any content with images embedded in the HTML, not only your product catalog.

Test your checkout and customer experience end to end

Place a real order on your live Shopify store: use a real card and refund the order afterward, or use your payment provider’s test mode. Check that your confirmation email sends and looks right, that your shipping rates calculate correctly, and that every payment method you offer processes. If you have custom checkout logic, discount rules, or gated content, test each one rather than assuming it behaves the way it did on your old platform. Check the tax on that test order too; our tax and pricing guide covers the setting that most often gets it wrong.

Confirm your site performs the way it should

A slow store costs you conversions even if everything on it technically works. Check your page load times with a tool like Google PageSpeed Insights, and pay attention to image sizes and how many apps you have installed, since both affect how fast your theme loads. Do this after you’ve finished setting up any migration-related apps, not before, since your final app count is what your customers will experience.

Set up your analytics and tracking fresh

Don’t assume your analytics and marketing tracking carried over with your data. Tracking lives in your theme or in apps, not in your product, customer, or order data, so it needs to be set up on your new store:

Google Analytics 4 connects through Shopify’s Google & YouTube app.
Ad platform pixels usually come from each platform’s own Shopify app, or can be added as custom pixels under Settings > Customer events.

Confirm your tracking is firing before you start driving real traffic to the new store, so you’re not flying blind on your first few weeks of data.

Also check: the rest of your go-live list

A few post-launch checks are covered in more depth in our other guides:

Redirects and Search Console. Recrawl your site, fix missed redirects, and submit your sitemap. See our SEO migration guide.
Customer passwords. Passwords never transfer, so send account invitations or a password-reset email. See our data migration guide.
The follow-up sync. Pick up any orders placed during the cutover. See our zero-downtime migration guide.

Bring in a Shopify agency for what comes next

The migration moves your store. Growing it on Shopify is a different job: theme design, conversion optimization, marketing, and any custom functionality your developer hasn’t built yet. If you don’t have an in-house team for that, a Shopify agency can pick up where the migration leaves off.

That’s how the brand in our Highly Preppy case study planned it: their agency, STRAT, ran the migration with MigrationPro first, then moved on to the storefront redesign and marketing rebuild.

Our partner directory lists Shopify agencies vetted by MigrationPro. Open any agency to see what they specialize in and how to reach them, and ideally start the conversation before go-live, so they’re ready when your store is.

Your post-migration checklist

Start within the first two weeks, so anything you find can be reported inside the 14-day window.
Spot-check reviews for duplicates or missing attribution, not only a total count.
Confirm your review sources. Know which ones (product reviews vs. Google Business) are part of your migration.
Open your migrated content, especially anything with embedded images, and check that everything loads.
Place an end-to-end test order, checking payment, shipping, tax, and confirmation emails.
Test custom checkout logic and discount rules one by one, rather than assuming they carried over.
Run a page speed check once your final set of apps is installed.
Set up and verify tracking on your new store before you drive traffic to it.
Line up help for growth. If you need design, marketing, or development support, talk to a Shopify agency before go-live.

Common questions about post-migration optimization

How soon after migration should I do this checklist?

Right away, and within 14 days, which is the window our terms give you to report issues. Checkout testing is worth doing the moment your migration completes. Analytics setup is worth confirming before you start any marketing push, so you’re not missing data on your earliest traffic.

If my review count looks about right, do I still need to check for duplicates?

Yes. A count that looks right can still include duplicate entries or reviews with missing attribution, especially if the source data already had that issue before migration. It’s worth a spot-check across a handful of products either way.

Do Google Business reviews migrate along with my product reviews?

No. They live on your Google listing, not in your store, so a store migration doesn’t include them. Some review apps can import or display Google reviews; otherwise, plan it as a separate step.

Why are the images in my migrated blog posts broken?

Usually one of two reasons: content images weren’t selected as part of the migration, or the images were fetched from a domain that no longer points to your old platform. Check the image addresses in your post content, and if they point at your live domain, re-migrate using your old platform’s own address as the source.

Why would my analytics not be tracking on my new store if my data migrated fine?

Analytics and tracking pixels aren’t part of your product, customer, or order data. They live in your theme or in apps, so they need to be set up on your new store rather than assumed to carry over.

Want a second pair of eyes on your post-migration checklist? Talk to our migration team and we’ll help you make sure nothing slipped through.

Post-Migration Optimization: What to Check After Your Shopify Store Goes Live