How categories are migrated from WooCommerce to Shopify

When you migrate from WooCommerce to Shopify, your categories are converted into collections.

This keeps your products organised and easy to find in Shopify.

How it works

WooCommerce uses categories.

Shopify uses collections.

During migration:

• Each category becomes a collection
• Products inside a category are added to that collection

Example

If you have this in WooCommerce:

• Category: Shoes

• Category: T-Shirts

After migration in Shopify:

• Collection: Shoes
• Collection: T-Shirts

Your products will appear in the correct collections automatically.

Important difference

Shopify does not use the same category system as WooCommerce.

Instead, it uses:

• Collections (manual or automatic)

This means:

• Your store structure may look slightly different
• But your products will still be organised correctly

Nested categories (parent / child)

If your WooCommerce store has nested categories (for example: Clothing → Men → Shirts):

• These will be flattened into collections in Shopify
• Shopify does not support deep category levels in the same way

To recreate your structure, you can use navigation menus in Shopify.

For example:

• Create a menu item “Clothing”
• Add “Men” as a sub-menu
• Link each item to the correct collection  

This allows you to keep a similar structure for your customers.

What about filters?

Shopify does not use categories for filtering.

Instead, it uses:

• product tags
• product options (like size or color)
• metafields (for advanced setups)

Good to know

Most stores work well after migration without changes.

If your store has a complex category structure, you can:

• adjust collections after migration
• or contact us for help