Shopify migrations are coming up more and more in retailer conversations. Whatever the driver, the pattern is consistent: platform migrations are a high opportunity, but they are also high risk.
Most performance drops are not caused by lower demand. They usually come from URL changes, broken tracking, feed changes, and campaigns losing the signals they rely on.
Here is how Shoptimised avoided the most common pitfalls for 80s Casual Classics, and what to prioritise if you are planning a similar move.
Shopify is no longer a niche solution. It's now a mainstream eCommerce platform in both the UK and US:
(source: BuiltWith. These are technology detections, not a full census of all retailers.)
Retailers are switching because Shopify:
Takeaway: Shopify enables faster, leaner eCommerce operations.
Tip: Obsess over redirect mapping, crawlability, and content parity.
Common pitfalls include:
Dan, Senior Account Manager at Shoptimised explains:
“The biggest risk is the product ID changing. Your product ID holds the product’s history and influences what Google pushes out. If it changes, you’re starting from scratch.”
Tip: Keep product identifiers stable and validate conversion tracking pre-launch.
One of the most common migration narratives we hear is “we launched and performance tanked”. Often, demand has not changed. Reporting has.
Tip: Set a clear measurement plan, QA across devices, and monitor parity post-launch.
After a platform change, Shopping and Performance Max often change because the feed changes, even when the catalogue looks the same.
Key risks:
Dan shared this insight from 80s Casual Classics’ migration:
“Before launch day, I was in communication with the 80s Casual Classics team, ensuring we had unique identifiers in the feed. This helps protect continuity through the switch. The website migration is only half the job. The other half is making sure Google still understands your products in the same way.”
Ahead of launch, Dan worked with the 80s Casual Classics team to confirm the identifiers needed to maintain stable product mapping.
On migration day, Shoptimised’s Technical Onboarding Manager, Will, switched the feed and began the continuity process. Conversion tracking was monitored immediately post-launch, so any issues could be flagged and resolved quickly with the wider team.
Dan’s advice for any retailer migrating to Shopify:
“Focus on four basics: a stable product identifier strategy, communicate early with partners, validate conversion tracking before launch, and a feed setup that maintains continuity through the switch.”
Shopify migrations do not have to cause performance dips, but they often do when teams overlook the details. Protect URL equity for SEO, protect measurement continuity, and protect product history in the feed. If you are planning a Shopify migration and want a second opinion on feed readiness, measurement, or launch checks, Shoptimised can help you review the setup and validate your data sources in Merchant Centre.
We had 24 hours in Dublin, with a full day at Google’s Dublin office packed into the middle of it.
The goal was simple: spend time with the Google team, have the conversations you don’t get to have over email, and make sure we’re aligned on our 2026 goals together.
It was a full day packed into a tiny window, and it reminded us why relationships matter just as much as strategy.
This was the day, start to finish.
Early start, airport coffee, then a short flight over. We landed and headed straight for a taxi.
By midday, we were at Google’s Dublin office meeting the team.
We like to think Shoptimised HQ is pretty well set up, but Google is on another level. The place is built for people who spend their whole day there, and it shows, with space to focus, space to switch off, and plenty of fun built in.
Then it was time for lunch and a chance to settle in before the afternoon kicked off.
Lunch in the canteen was next, and it immediately put every sad desk lunch we’ve ever called ‘fine’ into perspective.
Ulises popped over to join us, too. He was our Senior Partner Manager in the early Shoptimised days, so it was genuinely great to see him again and have a proper catch up before the afternoon meetings.
We made the mistake of thinking we stood a chance at ping pong. Shubham fixed that quickly.
Two takeaways:
After that, Shubham took us around the office and showed us all the fun stuff, which made our “we’ve got a games room” confidence wobble again. We’re still waiting for them to accept our foosball rematch at Shoptimised HQ.
This was the core of the day.
We spent the afternoon with the Google team talking through where we’re heading in 2026 and what ‘good’ needs to look like for agencies and retailers.
The best meetings are the ones where you get into specifics. Not ‘growth’. Not ‘innovation’. Just practical alignment on things like:
It was a good reminder that most challenges are the same everywhere. The answers are usually not clever campaign tricks. They’re fundamentals you can repeat: cleaner data, cleaner structure, and decisions you can stick to.
Meetings done, heads full, time for the traditional reset.
That first pint of Guinness in Dublin always feels earned, even when you’ve only been there a few hours.
Steak dinner was exactly what we needed after a day of caffeine and conversation.
It’s where the debrief happens without anyone opening a laptop. Just good food, and a proper chance to talk through what we’d covered before the night started.
After dinner, we went out for drinks and let the day wind down.
Next thing we knew, it was late, and the early flight home was starting to feel very real.
We were in Dublin for 24 hours, with a full day at Google’s Dublin office packed into the middle of it. It sounds quick, because it was, but it did exactly what we needed it to do.
It gave us time in the room with the Google team to align on our 2026 goals together, talk through what’s working, what needs tightening, and what we want to push next.
There’s something useful about stepping away from the day-to-day and having those conversations face-to-face. You leave with clearer priorities, fewer assumptions, and a much shorter list of “we’ll come back to that”.
It was a good reminder that the best progress still comes from getting in a room and talking things through. Which explains why at Shoptimised, someone is always pulling you into a meeting room.
#WeMoveTogether
As we approach Q4, retailers start to gear up for the busiest period and begin increasing their investment in Google Ads, particularly Google Shopping Ads. In Q4 of 2022, Google Shopping Ads took the largest portion of spend and resulted in 65% of overall Google Ads spend. Data from Shoptimised.
Although Shopping Ads are growing every year and have evolved from Standard Shopping to Smart Shopping and now Performance Max, retailers still have a lot of questions about how to get their Shopping Ads more visibility.
This isn’t just a question clients put to their agencies. It is also a question we are commonly asked when speaking with agencies that subscribe to Shoptimised.
The Google Academy gives insight into the Shopping Ads algorithm and auction dynamics, including what goes into serving an ad.
Data Quality: This looks at the key components of Shopping and includes unique identifiers such as GTIN, title, brand, MPN and description. It also considers the quality of images in the feed and takes price into account.
Product Relevance: Product relevance works together with data quality, as the quality of the data also needs to be relevant to the product being advertised.
Predicted Click Through Rate: Expected Click Through Rate has been a factor in Quality Score on Search for a long time, and we now have confirmation that this is also a factor in the Shopping auction. Google looks at the historical data of your account and product feed, then predicts a click through rate. The more relevant your product, the better your predicted click through rate will be. More relevant data within your product feed will then increase your predicted click through rate over time. This leads to a better position in the Shopping results, which in turn leads to a better click through rate, and the cycle repeats itself.
Bid: The bid is often thought of as the key component of being shown in a Shopping auction, but it is just one of four key parts. The better optimised your product feed is, the higher your predicted click through rate will become, which results in you having to make a more modest bid. However, if you find yourself having to increase your bid, it could mean you have neglected the other key areas. When it comes to Performance Max, you’re not in control of the bid, but you can influence it via your campaign settings with bidding strategies such as Target ROAS. However, the higher you set your Target ROAS, the more Google will restrict traffic and products if it doesn’t predict you will achieve your Target ROAS in each auction. This is why it is imperative to get your data quality and product relevance right, as it has a direct impact on the Cost per Click you will potentially have. The lower your Cost per Click, the more likely Google is to serve more products, as your Target ROAS becomes easier to achieve.
Titles: Google listing title as one of the key attributes with a high impact on the auction is no surprise, as this, along with the image and price, is what is shown in Shopping results. Google is looking for rich keywords that have high search volume, but adding the brand, gender and age group to the titles gives more long-tail visibility, higher click through rates and conversion rates.
GTIN: Google uses GTINs as a unique product identifier. Products without a GTIN, particularly from well-known brands, can see a significant decrease in impressions or potential disapproval. If the GTIN isn’t in the correct format, this will also lead to a disapproval.
Product Type: This has no impact on your website. This is how you categorise your products and it displays as a breadcrumb trail in your Shopping feed. It has a high impact on the relevance of your product and is often neglected in non-optimised feeds.
Descriptions: Descriptions have a strong impact on onsite performance and product relevance. Descriptions should be unique and contain rich keywords in a structure that informs the user.
Google Product Category: Google Product Category attributes have a strong impact on relevance. Selecting the wrong Google Product Category can lead to low visibility for products, or cause them to show for incorrect search terms. This leads to a poor click through rate, which then impacts both your predicted click through rate and historical click through rate.
Other Attributes: Size, colour and gender don’t have as much of an impact as the other attributes within search terms. However, depending on the Google Product Category, some attributes are key. For Clothing & Accessories, size, gender, age group and colour are required, and will give warnings in Merchant Centre if they are not in the feed. These attributes also factor more into the filtering of the Google Shopping page. If a potential customer filters by a colour that you’re not passing in the colour attribute, you will vanish from the results.
To help improve data quality and product relevance, these are quick wins we commonly apply and that can potentially benefit all retailers.
1. Duplication of titles
The first check we complete in a feed is looking for duplicate titles. Clients who sell variants commonly have duplicated titles that are generally the name of the parent product. Adding in sizes, quantity and colour where available removes title duplication from the product feed. This gives focus on more long-tail, size, colour, material and pattern-specific searches, which are more likely to convert and improve bounce rate.
2. Building out Product Types
We often see just one product type added to a product, but expanding this to 4 to 5 levels of Product Type allows for better filtering of products within Google Shopping Ads campaigns and can double down on search terms. We can take a basic “Trainers” product type and change that to:
Mens > Trainers > Nike > Black > Size: 10
This can be done using simple rules in the Shoptimised platform.
3. Make sure your Google Product Categories are correct
Google is very good at predicting the correct Google Product Category when missing for common products like clothing, homeware and baby and toddler products. However, for more niche products, or products with titles that contain a common term for another product, Google can incorrectly categorise products.
Taking a look at how this all comes together in an auction, imagine three products: Product A, an optimised product with a below benchmark price. Product B, a well-optimised product with a benchmark price. Product C, a poorly optimised product with a below benchmark price.
We can see how this would be displayed in a Google search for the term “Mens size 9 blue Nike running trainers”. This is a long-tail term with a high chance of conversion if the auction is won. The customer knows exactly what they want, not the exact style, but they are looking for a specific type and colour of trainer.
Product B is the winner in this auction. The titles are well optimised, which is 80 to 85% responsible for the search results. The difference between option A and B is that option B has colour in the title, despite not being as well priced. This allowed it to be the most relevant product to the search and win the auction.
If we tweak the search term to “Mens cheap size 9 blue Nike running trainers”, Product A is the winner. The product is still well optimised and has pricing below the benchmark, just like option C. However, option C is poorly optimised, so it does not win the auction.
Getting your products to show in the right search results, at the right time, for the right cost, is just one part of the challenge. Being chosen once you’re there is the next.
Google recently shared data based on tests they carried out to find what influences customers when selecting a retailer from a Shopping Ad. Price and discount are the main drivers for shoppers, and with the biggest discount and sales period just around the corner, getting your price and discount strategy right can be make or break.
Next, shoppers are focused on the brand of the product they want and are less likely to be concerned about which retailer they buy it from. Studies show that a shopper will choose a lesser-known retailer for the same product if the price is right. Those decisions increased where another retailer offered both a better or same price, but delivery was simpler and free.
Make sure you consider all of these points and where you as a retailer can improve and influence these factors. These genuinely fall outside the remit of your PPC agency or in-house marketing department. They could be doing an amazing job in terms of feed optimisation and campaign management, but if you’re not competitive in these factors, performance can still suffer.
If you have created the perfect product feed, built the best campaign structure and created a pricing and discount model that makes you competitive, don’t fall over at the final hurdle.
After feed optimisations have been put into place, refresh your feed in Merchant Centre and check for warnings or disapprovals that can hamper your performance. These warnings will limit your visibility, lower your data quality and, in the worst-case scenario, could have your account suspended.
Inaccurate price or availability: The landing page does not match the price or availability in the Shopping feed. This can lead to an email from Google with a 30-day warning to fix the issue before suspension. Common reasons for this are recent price drops or the product going out of stock. If this is the case, a review can be quick, and turning on automatic updates for price and availability can prevent this matter occurring. Other reasons include currency updates depending on IP address, which can cause discrepancies in the feed and landing page, as Google will review a feed from their location. Using multi-currency URLs can prevent this.
Inaccurate shipping costs: If the shipping costs on your website change, make sure this is updated in the Shopping feed or in Google Merchant Centre. This is a preventable issue, but one that is often forgotten.
Invalid GTINs: These will result in a disapproval. GTINs are the barcode of the product and a unique identifier of the product. To solve this issue, either remove the incorrect GTIN or provide the correct one.
Limited performance due to missing GTINs: This carries a warning rather than a disapproval. This will only affect certain products. If other retailers have the GTIN for the product, then it is likely this warning will show if you do not have it.
Unavailable desktop or mobile landing page: This means the product in the feed has a broken URL to the landing page. Remove all old products from the Shopping feed if they no longer exist, and make sure to fetch your feed daily so the feed is up to date.
Incorrect value: identifier exists: Identifier exists has two options: yes or no. If you do not have two of the three identifiers, MPN, GTIN or Brand, this must be set to no. If you have at least two of the three, this should be set to yes.
Missing attribute: gender, age group, colour or size: If your product has a Google Product Category that begins with “Clothing & Accessories”, your products are recommended to have size, age group, gender and colour.
Promotional overlay on image: The product image must only show the product on a plain background with no logos or text overlay. Automatic image improvements can fix this issue, otherwise you will need to upload a new image.
Sexual interests in personalised advertising: Throughout October, we have seen more and more products get flagged for this issue. Google looks to be increasingly sensitive on this, with anything remotely sexual, or anything that can be interpreted as sexual in the description or title, potentially being flagged. Request a review if your products have been incorrectly flagged, or contact a Google rep if you have a lot of warnings.
Once you have cleared your warnings and disapprovals, your feed and Merchant Centre will be in the best possible shape for the busiest period of the year. The final step for success in this period is to be proactive with your promotions.
Make sure all promotions are set up in advance and bear in mind that this is the busiest time of the year, not just for sales but also for retailers creating promotions. Because of this, the process to get promotions approved can take a little longer, especially for first-time users of promotions.
If you are going to run a promotion, particularly over Black Friday, here are a few tips.
Make the promotion title clear: The title of the promotion must be clear. Customers may see the title in the search results, so use clear wording such as “20% off Selected Brands” or “£20 off Armani Jeans”, rather than a vague “20% Off”.
Check all products in the filter are eligible: Make sure all of the products in the filter are applicable to the promotion. If you set the filter to Brand and some products of that brand are not in the promotion, and they are tested, the promotion will be disapproved.
Match your Promotion ID: If applying to products that have a Promotion ID, the Promotion ID in the feed attribute and in Merchant Centre must match, or the products will not be in the promotion. A common issue occurs when recycling codes. The Promotion ID must not have been used before. The promo code and the Promotion ID do not have to match.
Set your promo code: Set your promo code correctly. There is a drop-down box for this optional code that can be missed. If no promo code is stated and you need a promo code, the promotion will be disapproved.
Allow time for approval: During busy periods, promotions may take a bit longer to be approved. Once they go live, promotions need to be checked by Google. If you are doing an hourly price drop or a sale over a short window of time, by the time the promotion is reviewed, it may be over. It can take between 12 to 24 hours for promotions to be reviewed.
We have covered the key aspects of the Merchant Centre and Google Shopping as we go into Q4, however every retailer has their own objectives.
If you want more information on how we can help you with product feed optimisation, CSS or incremental sales, book a demo with us today.
