The internet had long taken the world by storm. Then, e-commerce came and brought with it a revolution in the business world. Well, if you are an online seller, it’s almost impossible you don’t know about Shopify.
If you are reading this, you’re most likely to be running multiple Shopify stores of your own! Once you get a hang of it, the e-commerce business model can truly become an addiction!
You might even consider multiple product-related businesses and open up multiple Shopify stores! Or, your business may expand so much that you decide to explore other markets across the globe!
For all such cases, it’s not really wise to rebuild your store from scratch or to deploy crucial resources. Instead, what if you could use elements from your already existing, fully-functional store? This is possible! And, we will tell you how!😀
With this, you can access all the required elements from your first store and use them to create identical product categories, features, and even product images. However, if you do all of these activities manually, it can be extremely draining!
The only possible solution here is to copy the contents of your current store and paste them into your new store while making custom modifications.
But, even doing a task as simple as this can be very challenging if you are attempting it for the first time. So, to help you out with it, we have created a guide with all the important steps. Read on to find out!
What do you mean by a Duplicate Shopify Store?
To put it simply, duplicating a Shopify store means copying the entire content of the website and creating a new store from it. Shopify duplication allows you to create a similar store with all the existing features of your previous store, including its content, products, and categories!
For instance, let’s say that you own a successful Shopify store selling clothing. Now that you’re enjoying great success in running this store, you plan to take it to the next level by opening a new store.
In such a situation, you can easily copy the content of your primary store and paste it into your newly created store. This sums up the term Shopify duplication!
Remember, Shopify doesn’t allow you to create a duplicate store automatically except if you are a Shopify Plus user. So what you’ll need to do is use a CSV(Comma Separated Values) file format to successfully copy the content of your store. With this, you will be allowed to transfer a considerable amount of data to duplicate your store!
However, there are other limitations to this process. Certain information can only be manually input into your CSV file from your Shopify admin.
Here is a list of such details:
- Shopify doesn’t allow you to import data on visitor traffic. This is because this data will be different for your newly created store.
- You cannot import your store’s orders through the Shopify admin. However, you can do this through the Shopify API.
- Discount codes in your store cannot be duplicated or transferred.
- Gift cards cannot be transferred. However, you can transfer your gift card products via the product CSV file.
- You cannot transfer saved custom reports.
When can a Duplicate Shopify Store be Useful?
You might find other reasons to duplicate your existing Shopify store. Here, we’ve curated a list of the 4 most common reasons you might need to duplicate your store!
- To Create a Test Store
Duplicating your Store can be very helpful when you want to try experimenting with store themes, categories, etc. For this, you can create a test store and run all your trials!
This could be a great way to try new ideas before actually making them live on your website. Moreover, when you create a test store, you need not worry about losing data or anything going wrong on your actual, working store!
- While Creating Stores in Multiple Languages
If you are a store owner and intend to venture beyond national boundaries, this might help you. While going international, you’ll have to deal with entirely new markets. For this, you will need to take into account the local languages widely spoken to sell your products.
While most people across the world communicate in English, there are markets where customers aren’t comfortable speaking in English. In such cases, you might have to switch from English to other native languages to sell products without losing potential buyers.
Duplicating the content of your store might come in as a great tool to save you time! That’s because, once you’ve duplicated your store, all you need to do is translate the primary language to the secondary language of your choice!
- When You Accept Multiple Currencies
Going global also means that the currencies of your customers will vary at each step. To maximize your sales without losing any potential customers, you must accept multiple currencies for payment.
Besides, accepting multiple currencies will make the shopping experience for your clients better as well as easier. Your customers will know exactly how much they must pay without the extra effort to convert the prices to another currency. This will also make them feel more valued and leave them wanting to return!
- To Create a Wholesale Store
Duplicating your Shopify store can be a great idea if you intend to open a wholesale store or expand your lineup. In such a case, you won’t have to spend your time and effort developing a store from scratch.
Having access to all necessary elements, the next step is to access them, modify and paste them as you need!
How Should You Go about Duplicating Your Shopify Store?
Now, you must know that when you think about duplicating your Shopify store, there are some limitations. You cannot just copy and paste the entire contents of your store to a new domain! There are only certain elements that can be completely duplicated.
To help you figure this out, here is a list of all the possible things that you can duplicate from your Shopify store!
Things to duplicate in Your Shopify Store
1. Theme files
You can easily duplicate the theme file of your store. Shopify allows users to duplicate theme files as it is one of the significant parts of your store. Further, having a theme saves you most of the time as testing and setting up themes is usually very time-consuming.
2. Products
Shopify also allows you to back up your products with minimal effort. You can easily duplicate the products of your store and carry them over to your new domain. This way, the platform saves you from the hurdles of listing your products one by one all over again!
3. Customers
Customers are the essence of any store, and Shopify understands this very well. The platform allows you to create a backup of all the customers that your business has interacted with previously. This ensures that whenever an old customer comes back to your newer store, they are remembered and navigate with ease.
4. Collections
Collections of a store are major elements that make up the category page of your store. The number of collections in your store can be easily copied and placed on some other platform.
5. Images
Shopify also allows you to duplicate the images that are present in your original store. This way, the platform ensures that you don’t have to look around your database for all the product images stored in your Shopify store.
6. Apps
Shopify allows users to carry over the applications present in your platform. So, you won’t face any issues running your new store when every element looks and feels the same way!
Things You Cannot Duplicate from Your Shopify Store
- Your Visitors
When you duplicate your Shopify store, you are basically making a separate domain, different from your previous store. Thus, you cannot carry over the visitors to your existing website. This is obvious as such pieces of information are only limited to the domain of your original store.
- Your Orders
While Shopify allows users to carry over customer data, you cannot carry over the orders of their initial store. This is similar to how you cannot copy visitor data.
The reason is simple, orders are placed over one specific domain and cannot be placed over another store by copying.
- Discount codes and Gift Cards
Users cannot carry the discount code from one store to the other. Every Shopify store has its own, separate discount code. Same way, you cannot duplicate gift cards in a new store.
- Custom Reports
As the name suggests, custom reports specific to a store, are customized as per requirements. Therefore they cannot be carried over to any other platform.
Now that you know everything that can be duplicated and what cannot be, let’s dive deep to understand how this process works!
Duplicating Your Shopify Store, Step By Step!
Before we get into the process, you should note that there are not just one but two ways by which you can duplicate the contents of your store. So pick the one that you like!
Option 1. Duplicating Your Shopify store using CSV files
If you would like to explore the content of your Shopify store manually, you’ll have to do it using CSV files. Using this file format, you can easily copy all the elements of your store such as themes, orders, customers, products as well as financial data.
Here is a step-by-step guide to duplicate your Shopify store:
- Log in to your Shopify stores (both primary and new) as the admin of the stores. Ensure that your new store uses the same subscription plan as your primary store.
- Double-check the subscription plan of your new store and ensure that it has the same plan as your primary store.
- Select the file which contains the same backup theme as your primary store. You can also upload the theme file from your local database or cloud.
- Export the required CSV files to back up all the data around customers and products. Now, in case you want to back up the information in a more convenient manner, you can add a collection column to your products in the CSV.
Remember, you can export your CSV files to create a backup on both, products and customers. Once done, your Shopify store is ready to be exported!
The step requires you to import the CSV files in the following ways:
- You can reinstall all your apps in your secondary store, or
- You can manually reconfigure the settings of your store. For example, checkout, taxes, shipping, and payments!
And, you are good to go!
Now, let’s look at another method to duplicate your store.
Option 2: Duplicating Your Shopify store using a 3rd Party Tool
Using third-party applications saves you from the burden of manually copy-pasting individual elements of your store. When using such tools, all you need to do is select the categories of products that you want to create a duplicate CSV file.
Once done, all you need to do is click on the export button and the tool gets the task done in real-time.
This way, you can easily create a duplicate store, without having to worry about the hurdles in the process when done manually.
Team Goshu.io can help you in this process to guide you. You can then understand the best tools for duplicating your store.
Duplicating Your Store Without Losing Any Data
As you have read, duplicating your store manually can be a tedious process. That’s the reason so many Shopify store owners prefer to choose a third-party tool to get the job done with ease.
Here we are at Goshu.io to help you with any such problems!
And one wise piece of advice from experts at Goshu is that you should always back up your data before you duplicate your store! Doing so will ensure that you never lose out or misplace any crucial data!
So, here you go! Test, experiment and have a happy experience on Shopify with team Goshu 🙂
