Can I Skip the Product Import?
In most cases, the first thing you'll move from WooCommerce to Shopify is your products. However, if you have already recreated the products in Shopify, you may want to skip importing products and only import orders and/or customers. While it is possible to do so, there are some drawbacks.
In this article, we'll explain the pros and cons of skipping the product import.
In order to follow along, you should have:
URL Redirects
If you're already selling products through a WooCommerce store, people and search engines have already saved links to your site. When you switch your store over to Shopify, many of these links will break because Shopify has a different URL format for products. The app can create URL redirects for your products, but it can only do this for products that it has imported.
Skipping the product import will stop the Ablestar WooCommerce Importer from being able to generate the URL links. You can read more about generating URL redirects here.
Product Reviews
When you move your store from WooCommerce to Shopify, you might also want to transfer your product reviews. Unfortunately, Shopify doesn't have a product reviews feature built-in, but they've provided a free Product Review app that can help.
Once you've imported your products with the Ablestar WooCommerce Importer app, you can download a CSV file that is formatted so you can quickly upload it to the Product Reviews app. The CSV file will include all product reviews from your WooCommerce site and will link them to the correct products on your Shopify store.
However, when you skip the product import, the Ablestar WooCommerce Importer loses the ability to export the product reviews. You can read more about creating product reviews here.
Linked Orders vs. Un-Linked Orders
In order for the Ablestar WooCommerce Importer app to create links between your products and orders, products must be imported via the app first. If you skip this step, orders will list the products but will not show images of the products or be linked back to them.
This is because the app needs to be able to keep track of the exact WooCommerce variant that matches each Shopify variant to link them up properly. In some cases, other apps require the orders to be linked to products to function, and skipping the product import could cause problems within these apps. You can read more about importing orders without first importing products here.