Website migrations are a pain, but Shopify provides a CSV format that allows you to bulk upload products from a spreadsheet. Best of all, it can automatically upload images if you specify an image URL.
Here are the fields. You can find a Google Spreadsheet that you can use as a template for your product CSV here. When you're done, download as a CSV and then upload to your Shopify store by going to the Products tab and clicking the 'Import' button.
A note on variants: Any lines with the same handle will be treated as variants of the same product.
Handle - this identifies the product and consists of only letters, dashes and numbers. No other puncuation or characters can be included. This is also what you see in the URL for a product
Title
Body (HTML)
Vendor - typically the brand name of your product
Type - you can set up various types of product in Shopify
Tags - a comma-seperated list of tags
Published - TRUE or FALSE. Lines with FALSE will be hidden.
Option1 Name - can be used to specify options if relevant.
Option1 Value - the value for the option
Option2 Name
Option2 Value
Option3 Name
Option3 Value
Variant SKU - ID that you use to track the product for inventory purposes
Variant Grams - the weight of the product, should be a number only so do not include the unit
Variant Inventory Tracker - which software is tracking the inventory, could be "shopify", "shipwire", "amazon_marketplace_web"
Variant Inventory Qty - a value to set the inventory quantity to
Variant Inventory Policy - the options are "deny" or "continue". "deny" will stop selling when inventory reaches zero, "continue" will allow sales to carry on.
Variant Fulfillment Service
Variant Price - price, don't add currency
Variant Compare At Price - a compare at price is used to show the previous price if the item is in sale
Variant Requires Shipping - TRUE or FALSE. Most products will be true.
Variant Taxable - TRUE or FALSE.
Variant Barcode
Variant Weight Unit - can be "kg", "g", "oz" or "lb"
Image Src - the URL to the product image. If this image is external, Shopify will download it and upload the image to your store. This makes moving over to Shopify from another store much quicker. You can only include one image here, but note that Shopify does support multiple images per product when editing via the web interface.
Image Alt Text - for SEO reasons you typically want to specify 'alt' text to describe your image.
Gift Card - whether or not this product is a Gift Card. Note that you can not create a Gift Card using the CSV, this must be done via the admin web interface.
Google Shopping / MPN
Google Shopping / Age Group
Google Shopping / Gender
Google Shopping / Google Product Category
SEO Title - the title that will appear in the "title" tab of your page, may be different to the main product title for SEO purposes.
SEO Description - a meta description can be used to boost the click through rate for your product.
Collection (optional) - The name of the collection you want to add this product to. If the collection does not already exist, one will be created. You can only specify one collection here, even though in Shopify a product can belong to multiple collections.
Alex is Co-founder at We Make Websites, the go-to Shopify agency for global commerce. We Make Websites design, develop and optimise e-commerce websites for the fastest growing brands on the planet, with teams in London and New York. Alex is an international speaker on ecommerce, brand and business growth.
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