Managing multiple Shopify Expansion Stores across different markets might have been the right move when you first expanded internationally. But as your brand scales, the operational cost of maintaining separate storefronts compounds fast: duplicated catalog management, fragmented SEO authority, inconsistent customer experiences, and app costs that multiply with every additional store.
At Thails, we’ve guided Shopify Plus brands through multi-store consolidations, bringing anywhere from 2 to 20 Expansion Stores under a single roof using Shopify Markets. This guide walks through the full process, from pre-migration planning to post-launch QA, based on what we’ve learned works in practice.
What this guide covers:
- Why consolidation makes sense for scaling brands
- What changes architecturally when you move to Shopify Markets
- Key limitations Shopify enforces during migration
- A 19-step migration sequence based on real consolidation projects
- How to maintain SEO continuity throughout the process
- Post-migration QA and the challenges to expect
Why Consolidating Your Shopify Stores Matters
Running parallel Expansion Stores creates overhead that grows with every new market. Consolidating into a single Shopify Markets store addresses the most common pain points we see across international Shopify Plus brands.
Operational efficiency and lower overhead
You stop duplicating work across stores. Apps, themes, workflows, campaigns, and bug fixes are managed once instead of being repeated market by market.
Centralized product and content management
Products, collections, pricing rules, and content are maintained in one place. Regional overrides are applied only where needed, rather than rebuilding and synchronizing entire catalogs across stores.
Stronger international SEO
Consolidation brings all traffic under a single domain structure. You can leverage subfolders with native hreflang handling from Shopify Markets, instead of managing fragmented SEO signals across multiple domains.
Unified analytics and reporting
Sales, conversion data, and customer behavior live in one analytics environment. No more reconciling fragmented data across different stores and currencies.
Lower total cost of ownership
Apps, integrations, and maintenance costs are incurred once instead of per store. The savings become significant as your number of markets grows.
Consistent customer experience
Customers interact with one cohesive brand experience instead of being split across different stores, domains, and inconsistent localization.
Faster market expansion
Adding a new country becomes a configuration step inside Shopify Markets rather than a full store launch with new infrastructure, domains, and integrations.
Simplified compliance and governance
While multi-entity structures still require careful handling, centralization reduces duplicated compliance logic and simplifies global auditing.
What Changes When You Move from Multiple Stores to One
Consolidating from several Expansion Stores into a single Shopify Markets store changes how Shopify models your business. You’re moving from isolated, self-contained environments to one shared system where regional rules are layered on top of a unified foundation.
This shift delivers meaningful long-term benefits, but it introduces constraints you need to plan for during migration.
How Shopify Markets Replaces Expansion Stores
With Shopify Markets, you manage one catalog and one theme instead of maintaining separate versions per store. Analytics, reporting, and integrations live in a single environment. Regional overrides for pricing, availability, currencies, languages, and content are applied at the market level rather than recreated from scratch.
SEO is managed centrally. Subfolders, subdomains, or ccTLDs can all be used, with Shopify Markets handling hreflang signals automatically when the structure supports it.
In practical terms, this replaces the “many stores, many systems” model with one system that adapts by region.
Limitations You Need to Know Before Starting
Shopify enforces strict boundaries on what can and cannot move cleanly into a single store. Understanding these upfront prevents surprises mid-migration.
Customer accounts don’t transfer
Shopify allows you to migrate customer records but not account credentials. Passwords are never transferred between stores. If you use legacy customer accounts, customers must reset their passwords after migration. If you’re using Shopify’s new customer accounts (email-based login), this friction is eliminated since customers authenticate with a one-time code.
Gift card codes can’t be preserved
Existing gift card balances must be reissued as new cards. Original codes cannot be carried over between stores.
Orders require API-based migration
Shopify does not support CSV-based order imports. Historical orders must be migrated via the API, and certain transaction details have limited fidelity in the transfer.
Not all apps support Shopify Markets
Only the Online Store channel fully supports Markets. Many third-party apps assume a single-currency or single-market setup and may break, need workarounds, or require replacement.
Redirects depend on domain consistency
Shopify cannot redirect from subdomains or TLDs to subfolders. If your domain architecture changes during consolidation, URLs will break regardless of redirect rules. Geolocation routing tools can help bridge this gap by directing visitors to the correct market experience at entry.
Historical analytics won’t reconcile perfectly
When consolidating stores that sold in different currencies, historical data will never match exactly. Exchange rates, refunds, and transaction timing can’t be reconstructed with full precision once data is merged.
Pre-Migration Planning
Most consolidation issues don’t come from the migration steps themselves. They come from poor planning. This phase determines whether the rest of the process is controlled or chaotic.
Inventory Your Current Architecture
Start by documenting exactly what you’re running today. Create a complete inventory of:
- Number of Shopify stores and their domains
- Installed apps and custom workflows
- Product catalogs, variants, and collections
- Active languages and localized content
- Automations, scripts, and checkout logic
Then map your external dependencies:
- Payment providers and payout flows
- ERP and OMS connections
- Loyalty, subscriptions, and CRM systems
- Analytics, attribution, and reporting pipelines
This gives you visibility into what must be migrated, what can be retired, and what will break if handled out of sequence.
Decide Where to Consolidate
Avoid merging stores into a blank slate unless there’s a strong reason. In most cases, consolidate into the store with the highest historical order volume. Shopify preserves more usable customer and order data from that store.
For example, if you have four stores with varying order volumes (UK at 1M, EU at 4M, US at 6M, Asia at 1M), the US store becomes the consolidation target. You then migrate the other regions into it using Shopify Markets. This minimizes data loss and reduces friction when linking historical customers, orders, and reporting.
Define Your Target Shopify Markets Setup
Before migrating anything, map out how the consolidated store should operate:
- Market groups: e.g., EU, UK, US, GCC, Rest of World
- Domain strategy: subfolders, subdomains, or ccTLDs (align with your existing setup)
- Language strategy: only enable languages actually required per market
- Price and catalog overrides: regional pricing, product availability, or exclusions
Every piece of migrated data needs a clear destination in the new store.
Set a Freeze Window and Cutover Date
Define when migration work happens and when it stops:
- Choose a low-volume sales period to minimize customer impact
- Set a clear freeze window for catalog changes, promotions, and app updates
- Align teams across engineering, logistics, marketing, CRM, and customer support so no one is caught off guard during cutover
A well-defined freeze window prevents last-minute changes from invalidating your migration work.
Step-by-Step Migration Guide: 19 Steps to Consolidate Your Stores
With your architecture documented and your target setup defined, you’re ready to execute. The sequence below follows the order we recommend based on real multi-store consolidations. It’s designed to minimize data loss, reduce rework, and prevent dependencies from breaking mid-process.
No two setups are identical. Apps, ERP connections, custom workflows, and legacy decisions will introduce edge cases. Use this as a framework, not a rigid checklist, and adapt where your specific setup requires it.
Step 1: Disable Customer Notifications
Before moving any data, prevent customers from receiving accidental emails. Disable order confirmations, shipping emails, gift card emails, and any automated flows tied to orders or customer actions. This ensures customers don’t receive messages while the consolidation store is still being built and tested.
If you’re building a new store for consolidation, disable notifications immediately. If consolidating into an existing live store, migrate data exclusively via the Shopify API and structure imports so they don’t trigger customer-facing events.
The rule: no customer should hear from the consolidation store until you explicitly decide they should.
Step 2: Create Custom Data Structures
Once notifications are handled, define your metafields and metaobjects. Create definitions only at this stage. Do not import any values or entries yet.
This ensures that when you later import products, customers, pages, and orders, every piece of data attaches to a predefined structure. Skipping this step and importing data first leads to Shopify either dropping unsupported fields or creating inconsistent schemas that are painful to fix after the fact.
Step 3: Configure the Base Store Infrastructure
Prepare the consolidation store to receive data while keeping everything inactive until launch.
Structural elements:
- Create Markets mirroring your existing regional setup
- Enable only the required languages per market
- Connect domains according to your migration strategy
- Set the base currency
Operational layer:
- Tax configuration
- Shipping zones and rates
- Payment methods
- Legal pages and policies
- Email templates
Nothing should be live yet. The goal is ensuring that every object you migrate has a valid destination the moment it enters the store.
Step 4: Create Locations
Before migrating a single product, recreate your warehouse and fulfillment structure inside the consolidation store. Create one location for each source store or fulfillment center you’re migrating from. These should mirror your existing setup because inventory, orders, and fulfillment logic will depend on them later.
Locations can be created manually (recommended for accuracy) or via bulk tools like Matrixify for large setups. All locations must exist before product import begins.
Step 5: Migrate Products and Variants
This is the most critical phase of the entire migration. Everything downstream, including orders, inventory accuracy, and reporting, depends on this step being executed correctly.
Migrate products and variants first, including product data, variant options, media (images, videos, files), and inventory levels per location.
Use a bulk migration tool such as Matrixify so you can control imports and re-run them if needed. After the initial product import, these tools generate follow-up files that preserve relationships between products, media, and future order imports.
Product and variant IDs will change. Shopify never preserves IDs across stores. Every imported product and variant receives a new ID. This is why you must migrate products before orders and maintain an old-to-new ID mapping for all subsequent steps.
Follow Shopify’s language rules. Import products in one primary language only. Enable Markets languages after product import. Add translations using language-specific CSVs once Markets is live. Importing translations too early causes Shopify to discard them.
Treat ID mapping as a first-class concern. If products or variants are incomplete or mis-mapped, every downstream step breaks. Document the old-to-new mapping carefully. You’ll need it for order imports, refund reconstruction, and analytics reconciliation.
Step 6: Migrate Store Assets
Once products are in place, migrate all non-product assets they depend on: PDFs (manuals, size guides, warranties), images, icons, videos, and any downloadable files referenced by products or pages. Missing assets cause broken links and incorrect page rendering.
Step 7: Migrate Collections
With products and assets in place, collections can be migrated safely. Collections depend on product handles, tags, and rules, so importing them before products risks empty or broken collections.
- Manual collections: import directly once products exist
- Automated collections: import with their rules intact so Shopify rebuilds them dynamically
If using Matrixify, always use the “Merge” mode for collection imports to keep existing collection IDs stable.
Step 8: Migrate Pages, Blogs, and Articles
Content migration comes after products and collections. Pages and blog posts often reference products, collections, and assets. Migrating content earlier risks broken links and missing references.
For small or curated content sets, manual copy works well. For larger sites, use API-based migration or a tool like Matrixify. Once pages and articles exist, migrate translations using the translations CSV export/import workflow.
Step 9: Import Metaobject Entries
Metaobjects often power product specifications, size guides, comparison tables, and structured content blocks reused across pages. These entries frequently reference products, variants, or pages by ID or handle.
Import metaobject entries only after products and pages exist in the consolidation store. Importing earlier means Shopify can’t resolve the references, creating broken links that don’t fix themselves later.
Step 10: Rebuild Navigation and Menus
Navigation should be one of the last things you migrate since menus depend on products, collections, pages, and URLs.
Rebuild manually (recommended): gives you full control over UX consistency and lets you clean up legacy menu items, remove dead links, and align navigation with the consolidated store structure.
Import menus: only if all objects exist and all handles match exactly. Any mismatch results in broken or missing links.
Step 11: Configure SEO Redirects
SEO continuity during consolidation depends on whether existing URLs resolve cleanly after migration.
How Shopify redirects work: Shopify only supports redirects where both source and destination are URL paths on the same domain. Redirects cannot move traffic from a subdomain or TLD into a subfolder.
When you connect an Expansion Store domain like eu.store.com to the consolidated store at store.com, Shopify routes traffic to the main domain. It can resolve eu.store.com/products/product-1 to store.com/products/product-1, but it cannot resolve it to store.com/en-eu/products/product-1.
Every legacy URL path must exist on the consolidated store. If an old path doesn’t resolve, redirects fail, users hit 404 pages, and search engines drop indexed URLs.
After redirects resolve, all visitors initially land without market context. Geolocation routing then directs shoppers to the correct market and language experience.
Before launch, validate that:
- Every legacy URL path resolves on the new store
- Redirect targets exist and return a 200 status
- No redirect relies on subdomain-to-subfolder logic
- Geolocation routing directs shoppers to the correct market
Step 12: Migrate Customers
Customer migration determines whether returning buyers recognize themselves in the new store.
Deduplicate by email first. Shopify associates historical orders to customers by email, not account ID. Deduplicating across all source stores using email prevents confusion in reporting and support.
Customer accounts don’t migrate, only records do. With legacy customer accounts, customers must reset their password via email (creates friction and support tickets). With Shopify’s new customer accounts, customers log in with a one-time email code, typically without noticing the migration.
Import all customer addresses. Addresses affect checkout defaults, shipping calculations, tax logic, and post-purchase flows. Missing or partial address data creates issues that only surface after launch.
Step 13: Migrate Orders
Order migration preserves reporting continuity and customer history. This is one of the most sensitive steps.
- Use API-based migration. Shopify doesn’t support CSV-based order imports.
- Import orders as archived or closed. You’re migrating history for reporting and customer context, not reactivating fulfillment workflows.
- Map old product/variant IDs to new ones. Orders won’t attach correctly without referencing the new IDs created during product migration.
- Import in controlled batches. Makes failures easier to identify and correct without re-running the entire import.
- Handle refunds deliberately. Multi-currency refunds often introduce inconsistencies due to exchange rate differences. This is the primary reason historical analytics rarely match perfectly after consolidation.
- Validate order integrity. Spot-check imported orders to confirm products, customer records, totals, currencies, and statuses are correct.
Step 14: Migrate Gift Cards
Gift cards cannot be transferred between Shopify stores. Customers keep their balance but receive a new code. Reissue gift card balances as new cards in the consolidated store, disable original gift cards in all legacy stores, and communicate the change clearly to affected customers.
Step 15: Migrate Discounts
Ensure all promotional logic applies correctly in the consolidated store, especially for discounts tied to specific products, collections, or regions.
- Export discount data from legacy stores using CSVs or API access
- Recreate or import discounts in the consolidated store
- Update Shopify Scripts and custom logic to reference new product and variant IDs
- Test discounts across markets, currencies, and checkout flows before launch
Step 16: Migrate Draft Orders (Optional)
Draft orders rarely need to be migrated in full. Review existing drafts and only recreate those tied to live quotes, B2B negotiations, or carts customers are actively waiting to complete. Validate that recreated draft orders reference the correct products, prices, and currencies.
Step 17: Run Final Delta Migration
Between your initial imports and launch, new orders, inventory changes, and product edits will occur. This step closes that gap:
- Reimport orders created after your initial cutoff
- Sync last-minute inventory changes across locations
- Apply product updates made during the freeze window
- Validate that all redirects and URL paths still resolve correctly
Step 18: Domain Migration and Store Shutdown
This is where the migration becomes visible to the outside world.
- Point all domains to the consolidated store. Update DNS settings so each legacy domain resolves to the new store. Only do this after all data, redirects, and routing logic are in place.
- Validate redirects end-to-end. Confirm every legacy URL resolves to a valid path and returns a 200 status. Test high-traffic pages, top backlinks, and category URLs manually.
- Ensure correct market routing. Once domains point to a single store, visitors land without market context. Use geolocation routing to send shoppers to the correct country and language experience immediately.
- Shut down legacy stores. After traffic and orders flow correctly through the consolidated store, close Expansion Stores to avoid duplicate operations and reporting noise.
Step 19: Re-Enable Notifications
Only restore customer communications once the migration is fully verified. Re-enable order confirmations, shipping emails, and automated flows gradually. Place test orders in different markets to confirm emails, language, currency, and content render correctly.
After this step, the structural migration is complete. What remains is ongoing monitoring and optimization.
Maintaining SEO Continuity During Migration
SEO continuity in a store consolidation depends less on generic best practices and more on respecting your existing architecture. Most issues occur when the new setup doesn’t match the structure of the old stores.
Match your domain strategy to the existing setup. If your Expansion Stores used subdomains or separate TLDs, your Markets setup must use the same structure. Shopify cannot redirect from subdomains or TLDs to subfolders, so changing architecture mid-migration breaks URLs.
Create and validate redirect mappings before going live. Every URL that existed on your Expansion Stores must resolve to a valid path on the consolidated store. Missing pages result in 404s after domain cutover.
Preserve high-value backlinks. Identify pages with strong inbound links and confirm their redirect targets are correct. These URLs often drive a disproportionate share of organic traffic.
Maintain hreflang consistency. Shopify Markets generates hreflang tags automatically when using subfolders. If you’re using subdomains or ccTLDs, verify that hreflang signals are correctly implemented for each market.
Monitor Google Search Console closely post-migration. Watch for crawl errors, indexing drops, and redirect chains. Submit updated sitemaps promptly and track keyword rankings for your highest-value pages during the first 90 days.
Avoid changing URL structures unnecessarily. Keep product handles, collection slugs, and page paths identical to their legacy equivalents wherever possible. Every unnecessary URL change is an additional point of failure.
Post-Migration QA Checklist
Before declaring the migration complete, validate the following across all markets:
Storefront and Content
- Homepage loads correctly in every market and language
- Product detail pages display correct pricing, currency, and availability
- Collections are populated and filtered correctly
- Content pages render without broken links or missing assets
- Navigation menus point to valid destinations
- Search functionality returns relevant results
Checkout and Payments
- Checkout flow works in every market with correct currency
- Payment methods are active and functional per region
- Shipping rates calculate correctly by location
- Tax rules apply accurately per market
- Discount codes work across applicable markets
Customer Experience
- Customer account login works (test both legacy and new accounts)
- Order history is visible for migrated customers
- Email notifications trigger correctly (order confirmation, shipping, etc.)
- Address autocomplete and validation function properly
SEO and Redirects
- All legacy URLs resolve (no 404 errors)
- Redirect chains are single-hop (no chains or loops)
- Hreflang tags are correctly implemented per market
- XML sitemaps are submitted and indexed
- Google Search Console shows no critical errors
Data Integrity
- Product count matches expectations across all markets
- Inventory levels are accurate per location
- Customer records are deduplicated and complete
- Historical orders are attached to correct customer profiles
- Gift card balances are reissued and verified
Recommended Tools for Shopify Store Consolidation
Matrixify
The go-to bulk data migration tool for Shopify. Handles products, customers, orders, collections, and metafields through CSV-based imports and exports. Essential for large-scale consolidations where you need control over import order and the ability to re-run batches. Generates follow-up files that preserve ID mappings across migration steps.
Shopify Admin API
Required for order migration (Shopify doesn’t support CSV order imports) and any custom data transfer logic. Also used for metafield definitions, customer imports with specific tags, and anything that needs programmatic control beyond what bulk tools offer.
Excel Export Import App
Useful for smaller-scale data transfers and quick validation of exported data. Works well for collections, pages, and discount code transfers where the dataset is manageable.
Translate and Adapt
Shopify’s native localization app for managing translations across Markets. Use it for translating product content, pages, and theme strings after your primary language import is complete. Pairs directly with Shopify Markets language settings.
Geolocation Routing Tools
Critical for post-consolidation visitor routing. Once all domains point to a single store, geolocation tools ensure international visitors are directed to the correct market and language experience. Without this, shoppers may land in the wrong currency or language after migration.
Shopify SimGym
A testing and sandbox environment for Shopify. Useful for validating migration logic, testing checkout flows, and training team members on the consolidated store setup before going live.
Challenges to Expect After Migration
Even well-planned consolidations surface issues in the weeks following launch. Knowing what to watch for helps you respond quickly.
Analytics Discrepancies
Historical analytics will not match perfectly between your old stores and the consolidated environment. Different currencies, exchange rate fluctuations, refund timing, and data mapping limitations mean that exact reconciliation is effectively impossible. Establish a new baseline from launch day and treat pre-migration data as directional rather than exact.
Legacy Data Gaps
Some data points simply don’t survive migration. Transaction-level details, certain custom fields, and app-specific data may be lost or incomplete. Document known gaps before launch so your team isn’t chasing phantom discrepancies post-migration.
App Incompatibility
Not all third-party apps fully support Shopify Markets. Apps that assume single-currency, single-language, or single-market setups may break or behave unexpectedly. Audit your app stack before migration and identify replacements or workarounds for anything that won’t function correctly in a Markets-powered store.
Customer Reactivation Friction
If you’re using legacy customer accounts, expect a wave of password reset requests and support tickets. Proactive communication (email campaigns explaining the migration and how to access their account) reduces friction significantly. Switching to Shopify’s new customer accounts before migration eliminates this issue entirely.
SEO Volatility
Ranking fluctuations during the first 30-90 days after migration are normal. Google needs time to recrawl, reindex, and reassess the consolidated domain. Monitor Search Console daily during this period, fix crawl errors immediately, and resist the urge to make additional URL changes while rankings stabilize.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does a multi-store Shopify consolidation take?
The timeline depends on the number of stores, catalog size, and integration complexity. Most consolidations take between 4 and 12 weeks from planning to launch, with the data migration itself representing roughly half that timeline.
Will I lose SEO rankings when consolidating Shopify stores?
Short-term ranking fluctuations are common and expected. With proper redirect mapping, domain strategy alignment, and hreflang implementation, most brands recover and often improve their rankings within 60-90 days as SEO authority consolidates under a single domain.
Can I migrate customer passwords between Shopify stores?
No. Shopify does not allow password migration between stores. If you use legacy customer accounts, customers must reset their passwords. Switching to Shopify’s new customer accounts (email-based one-time code login) avoids this issue entirely.
What happens to my existing gift cards during consolidation?
Gift card codes cannot be transferred between stores. You must reissue balances as new gift cards in the consolidated store and disable the originals in legacy stores. Communicate this proactively to affected customers.
Do all Shopify apps work with Shopify Markets?
No. Only the Online Store channel has full Shopify Markets support. Many third-party apps assume a single-market or single-currency setup. Audit your entire app stack before migration and plan replacements or workarounds for incompatible tools.
Ready to Consolidate Your Shopify Stores?
Store consolidation is a complex migration, but with the right preparation and execution sequence, the result is a single-store architecture that’s easier to scale, easier to manage, and better aligned with Shopify’s international commerce roadmap.
At Thails, we specialize in Shopify Plus migrations and international store architecture. If you’re managing multiple Expansion Stores and considering consolidation, we can help you plan and execute the transition without disrupting your operations or losing hard-earned SEO authority.
