Beads & Craft Supplies Migration with Shopify Collection Mapping

Based in the Netherlands, our client sells beads and craft supplies to hobbyists and jewelry makers. Their catalog spans thousands of items in countless materials and colors, so clear product organization is key to helping shoppers find what they need.

As the catalog grew, the client wanted a platform that was easier to manage day to day, so they decided to replatform from PrestaShop to Shopify. With nearly 150 categories and thousands of products, however, their catalog structure had to carry over without breaking product associations.

Their website team also planned to refine the catalog before launch, so timing and communication mattered as much as the data itself. Our PrestaShop to Shopify migration experience and clear, step-by-step updates gave the client confidence to work with LitExtension.

The client’s brief covered four key points:

• Migrate the full catalog, along with customers and orders, from PrestaShop to Shopify.
• Convert existing categories into Shopify collections without losing product associations.
• Create 301 redirects from old product URLs to their corresponding Shopify pages.
• Allow the website team to edit products and collections after the initial migration, with only customers and orders included in the final update.

Catalog structure was the biggest difference between the two platforms. In PrestaShop, products sit in a nested category tree. Shopify instead groups them into collections, and its automated collections pull in products based on conditions such as product tags. Converting PrestaShop categories to Shopify collections therefore needed careful mapping, so every product appeared in the right place.

The website team’s plans added another layer. They intended to modify the migrated catalog before launch, even though new customers and orders would keep arriving on PrestaShop in the meantime. Because a standard final update could overwrite their catalog changes, the update needed a clearly defined scope that left out products and collections.

The migration kicked off with the full catalog and store data, and each PrestaShop category was converted into a Shopify collection along the way. During the Demo Migration, we then reviewed the sample collections and product tags together with the client.

Beyond the data itself, we guided the client through collection management on Shopify, explaining how collection conditions decide which products appear in each collection. Once the migrated data had been reviewed, we also confirmed that the website team could go ahead with their catalog changes.

To protect SEO, our team set up 301 redirects from the old PrestaShop product URLs to their new Shopify product pages. We also shared a working example, so the client could verify the redirects themselves.

Finally, we agreed on a selective final update plan. At the client’s request, the update was scoped to customers and orders only, using our Recent Data Migration service. This way, the website team could keep preparing the catalog on Shopify without any risk of their changes being overwritten.