Can you bulk import products from Shopify, Wix or a CSV into a new store?
Yes. Both Shopify and Wix let you export your product catalogue as a CSV file from the admin panel, and that CSV is the file almost every other store platform accepts as an import source. In Shopify, the path is Products → Export, which produces a CSV where each product variant is its own row and images are referenced as public URLs rather than embedded files. In Wix, the product catalogue page in the dashboard offers an export option that produces a similar spreadsheet. Once you hold that file, migrating is a data-mapping job, not a rebuild.
The part nobody tells you: the CSV is the easy half. A Shopify or Wix export does not contain the fields an Indian store actually needs — HSN code, GST rate, shipping weight in a unit your courier accepts, and pincode-level serviceability assumptions. So the realistic sequence is export the CSV, add the India-specific columns yourself in Excel or Google Sheets, then import. If your catalogue is under roughly two dozen SKUs, entering products by hand is often faster than debugging a mapping error, and you get to rewrite weak product descriptions while you are in there. Above that, the CSV route wins clearly.
How do you export products from Shopify as a CSV?
In the Shopify admin, open Products, click Export, and choose whether you want all products or only the current selection. Shopify offers a plain CSV and a CSV formatted for Excel; the plain CSV is the safer choice for feeding into another system, because the Excel variant is optimised for opening in a spreadsheet app rather than for machine parsing.
Shopify emails the export file to the account owner's address for larger catalogues instead of downloading it immediately. That is normal behaviour, not a failure, so wait for the mail before re-running the export.
The structure matters. A Shopify export uses one row per variant, with the Handle column repeated across all rows belonging to the same product. Fields like Title, Body (HTML) and Vendor appear only on the first row of each product group and are blank on subsequent variant rows. If you sort or filter that spreadsheet carelessly, you orphan variants from their parent product, and that is the single most common way a migration goes wrong.
How do you export products from Wix?
Wix's store catalogue in the dashboard includes an export action that produces a CSV of your products. The column names differ from Shopify's — Wix uses its own handle and option-field conventions — so a Wix export cannot be dropped into a Shopify-format importer without renaming columns first.
If you cannot locate an export option on your Wix plan, the fallback is to rebuild the sheet manually from your product list, or to pull the data from any marketplace or accounting system where the same catalogue already exists. Tally, Zoho Books and Amazon or Flipkart seller panels frequently hold a cleaner version of your catalogue than your website does, complete with HSN codes.
What columns should your import CSV actually contain?
Strip the export down to what a working store needs, then add what India needs. A usable import sheet generally carries:
- A unique product code or SKU per sellable variant
- Product title and description, with HTML tags either kept consistently or stripped entirely
- Selling price, and MRP separately if you display a struck-through price
- Variant attributes such as size and colour, each in its own column
- Stock quantity per variant
- Image URLs, one per column or comma-separated, depending on what your new platform expects
- Shipping weight and, where your courier prices on volume, length, breadth and height
- HSN code and GST rate per product, since GST varies by category
- Category or collection names, so products land somewhere navigable
GST rate is the field people leave for later and then regret. GST invoicing needs a rate attached to each line item, and retrofitting rates across hundreds of SKUs after launch is slower than adding a column while the sheet is already open.
What usually breaks during a bulk product import?
Image URLs expire. Shopify exports link to images hosted on Shopify's CDN. Those links generally work while your Shopify store is live, which means the new store must fetch and copy the images before you close the old plan. Import first, cancel later — not the other way round.
Encoding mangles regional text. Product names in Hindi, Tamil, Bengali or Malayalam turn into question marks if the file is saved as ANSI instead of UTF-8. Save as CSV UTF-8 and reopen the file to confirm the characters survived before you import.
Commas inside fields split columns. A title like "Cotton Kurta, Full Sleeve" or a description containing commas needs proper quoting. Most spreadsheet apps handle this automatically; manually assembled files often do not.
Weights get imported in the wrong unit. Shopify stores grams in some exports and kilograms in others depending on how the product was created. A courier integration quoting on a 500 g parcel that is really 500 kg will either fail or return absurd rates. Spot-check a handful of rows after import.
Duplicate SKUs merge or reject. Decide up front whether your unique key is SKU or product handle, and make sure that column has no blanks.
Should you import everything, or start clean?
Migration is the cheapest moment you will ever get to prune. Products you have not sold in a year, variants that only ever generated returns, and descriptions copied from a supplier PDF do not become better by being carried forward.
A practical filter: import anything you would restock, and leave the rest out. You can always add a product later; you rarely go back and delete one.
Also plan URL redirects if the old store had traffic. Product page addresses change between platforms, and any search ranking or WhatsApp-shared link pointing at the old URL breaks silently. Export the old URL alongside each product so you can map redirects afterwards.
How does this work if you move to HOD Media?
HOD Media provides hosted online stores with your own custom domain, COD and UPI or card payments, WhatsApp and email order automation, courier integrations that work on Indian pincodes, and GST invoicing. There is also a white-label option if you resell stores to your own clients.
On migration specifically, the honest answer is to ask us before you export. Bulk-loading a catalogue is handled case by case depending on how your existing data is structured, and telling you what format to send saves you cleaning the same sheet twice. Send a sample of ten rows first, not the whole file.
How do you verify the import actually worked?
Do not trust the success message. Open five products at random on the live storefront and check title, price, images, variant options and stock.
Then place one real test order end to end, including a GST invoice, and confirm the tax line matches the rate you imported. Finally, check a courier rate for a distant pincode against a nearby one to confirm weights came through sensibly. Five products and one order will surface almost every mapping error a thousand-row import can produce.