Replatforming to Shopify is mostly a project about products, customers, redirects and checkout. Attribution usually gets handled in the last week, which is how brands end up with a two-month hole in their marketing data right when leadership wants to know whether the migration hurt sales.
I want to be direct about one thing first. You will lose some attribution history when you migrate. Touchpoint data collected by a pixel on your old store is tied to that store’s setup, and very little of it moves cleanly to a new one. What you can do is decide in advance what to keep, what to export and how to build a baseline you can trust on the other side.
What moves and what does not
Order and customer records usually move. Most migration tools bring over customers, orders and products, and anything that reads Shopify order history will pick those up afterward. Ad platform data also stays put, because it lives in your Meta, Google and TikTok accounts, not on your store.
Session and touchpoint history is the part that rarely survives. Your attribution tool’s record of which ads and pages each customer saw before buying was collected on the old site. If you switch store connections or tools, ask the vendor plainly whether that history carries over. Do not assume it does. The honest answer is often that you keep the old account readable for a while and start fresh on the new store.
Export before you switch
Before cutover, export the reports you will want to compare against later. I pull 12 months of channel-level revenue, orders, new customer orders and spend by month, plus the same view by campaign for the biggest channels. Save them as flat files somewhere that does not depend on any tool’s login.
Write down your UTM naming rules and your channel mapping too. Half the trouble after a migration is that someone sets up the new store with slightly different source and medium values, and the channels stop lining up with last year.
Run tracking on both stores if you can
If the old store stays live during a staging period, keep tracking running on both. A few weeks of overlap lets you check that the new setup records similar traffic and order volume for the same campaigns. If one channel suddenly drops by half on the new store, that is almost always a tracking problem, not a demand problem.
Check the basics on the new store before launch. Confirm that checkout events fire, that server-side tracking is connected if you use it, that UTM parameters survive your redirects, and that your ad platforms receive purchase events. Redirects are a common silent failure, because a 301 that drops the query string will turn paid traffic into direct overnight.
Pick a tool that supports both platforms
If you are choosing an attribution tool around the migration, one that works on both your old and new platforms gives you the option to install early and get a baseline before cutover. ThoughtMetric connects to WooCommerce, BigCommerce and Magento as well as Shopify. (Disclosure: ThoughtMetric sponsors this site.) That does not mean history from the old store automatically merges with the new one, so ask about that specifically for whichever tool you use. Platform-specific options are covered in WooCommerce attribution tools, BigCommerce analytics tools and Magento analytics tools.
Expect a messy first month
Conversion rate usually dips after a replatform while customers get used to a new checkout and a new site layout. Do not judge your channels during that window. Freeze major budget changes for the first two to four weeks after launch and judge the migration on total revenue and MER rather than channel ROAS.
Your attribution tool also needs time to build history on the new store. Returning customers will look like new visitors until they log in or buy again, and that inflates new customer numbers for a few weeks. I walked through the general process of sanity-checking a fresh setup in validating new attribution tool numbers.
Rebuild the baseline
After 60 to 90 days, compare the new store’s channel mix with the exports you saved. You are not looking for an exact match. You are looking for the same rough shape. If Meta drove 40 percent of new customer revenue before and 38 percent after, the tracking is probably fine. If it went from 40 to 15, look for a broken event or a redirect problem before you touch the budget.
Migration checklist
- Accept that touchpoint history will not fully transfer, and plan around it.
- Export 12 months of channel and campaign results to flat files before cutover.
- Write down your UTM rules and channel mapping so the new store matches them.
- Run tracking on both stores during staging if possible, and compare volumes.
- Test that redirects keep query strings and that purchase events reach every ad platform.
- Freeze big budget changes for two to four weeks after launch.
- Compare the new channel mix with your exports after 60 to 90 days.
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