If you are questioning, “Why is there a numeric string added to my collection after the Shopify migration?”, here’s your ultimate answer.
Reasons for the numeric strings added
From our experience, there are two reasons:
- During your migration to Shopify, your existing categories will be converted into Smart Collections.
- By default, our tool will add a condition when migrating smart collections: the product tag must match the smart collection’s name.
For example, products tagged with “CollectionA” will automatically be linked to a collection titled “CollectionA.”
If your source store has multiple categories with identical names, our migration tool might incorrectly link products to the corresponding Smart Collections in Shopify.
E.g.:
- Category ID 1: Titled “CollectA” and linked to Product 1.
- Category ID 23: Also titled “CollectA” and linked to Product 2.
Since both categories share the name “CollectA,” our tool creates two Smart Collections with that name. However, because Smart Collections rely on exact tag matches, both Product 1 and Product 2 will be linked to “CollectA” Smart Collections. This results in an incorrect migration as products appear in collections they weren’t originally associated with.
Top solutions to troubleshoot
Here’s the solution for the issues.
- For our tool: We added numeric strings behind the collections to minimize the errors caused by duplicated names.
- For clients:
- Choose Smart Collections if your source store has unique category names and you want a simplified migration.
- Avoid Smart Collections if you have duplicate category names and want to maintain precise product organization. In this case, you should consider renaming duplicate categories before migrating or other migration options.