Move my Shopify shop across
Rebuilding a shop by hand - product by product, size by size - is the chore that keeps people on platforms they've outgrown. On bernard you don't rebuild it: give the shop's address, and the whole catalogue is read from your live store and carried across.
What the move looks like
- Give the address. Your
.myshopify.comaddress or your own domain - either works, and your Shopify login is never needed; the import reads what your shop already shows the world. - Everything arrives as drafts. Products, photos, descriptions, tags, collections, the full variant spread with per-variant prices and sold-out flags (Sell something in sizes or colours - and keep the stock honest explains how variants work here). Nothing is on sale yet.
- Review, then put them on sale. Walk through what arrived, check the prices - they land in your shop's own currency, so a shop that sold in dollars needs a once-over if yours sells in pounds. When it reads right, say so: the products go on sale, their pages render into your site draft, and one Approve puts them live.
Old links survive the move: a product that lived at /products/blue-mug
keeps that address, so old bookmarks, Instagram links and Google results
still land somewhere real.
Keep the old shop up - until the photos are re-homed
One thing to know rather than discover: straight after the import, your product photos still load from the old shop. Closing the old store at that point would leave gaps where pictures should be. So the second ask, right after the import: tell Bernard to re-home the product images. Each one is copied onto your own site - a big catalogue may take a couple of goes, and you're told when there's more to carry - and once the last one is across, the old store can close without your shop going dark. The same "nothing goes dark" principle as Leave Squarespace without breaking my domain or email, applied to a shop.
After the move
Two short jobs finish it: set your postage (How do I charge for postage?) and connect your own Stripe account so checkout can open (My shop says 'opening soon' - why can't people buy yet?). Then tidy at your leisure - real stock counts, the order of the page, which pieces lead the window.
The prompt
“Import my Shopify shop from [your shop's address] - bring everything across as drafts, then walk me through what arrived so I can check the prices before we put anything on sale.”
Press Copy, then paste it into your AI and fill in the [bracketed] parts. First time? Connect your AI to bernard first - a one-time setup in bernard → your site → Use your own AI.
Questions people ask
- What comes across from Shopify?
- Everything on the shop's public shelves: titles, descriptions, photos, tags, the full size-and-colour variant spread with per-variant prices, 'was' prices and SKUs, sold-out flags, and your collections. Old product links keep working too, so bookmarks and search results don't break.
- Will imported products go on sale by themselves?
- No - everything lands as drafts. You review what arrived, confirm the prices read right in your currency, say which products should go on sale, and then approve the result on a preview before buyers see any of it.
- Does my stock count come across?
- Shopify doesn't publish stock counts, so products arrive set to a simple in-stock/out-of-stock switch, with sold-out items already marked. Once they're across, tell bernard the real numbers for anything you'd like counted down sale by sale.
- When can I close my old Shopify store?
- After the photos are re-homed. Straight after the import your product images still load from the old shop; ask Bernard to re-home them and each one is copied onto your own site. Once that's done - and you've approved the shop pages onto your live site - the old store can close without anything going dark.