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Advanced Importer Add-on Guide

Advanced Importer is the paid SmithShop migration add-on for bringing products, images, variants, options, customer accounts, and historical order records from another ecommerce platform into SmithShop by CSV.

Use it when a merchant is moving from Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Wix Stores, CS-Cart, Magento, OpenCart, PrestaShop, Squarespace, Ecwid, Volusion, Square Online, or another platform that can export CSV files. It is meant for practical store migration and large product setup, not for copying a whole old website exactly as-is.

Where to find it

  • Buy and license Advanced Importer from the SmithShop add-ons catalog.
  • Open Admin > Add-ons > Advanced Importer.
  • Enable Advanced Importer in the Sell menu.
  • Open Admin > Sell > Migration Importer.

Supported CSV sources

  • Auto-detect mode for common product exports.
  • Shopify product CSV exports.
  • WooCommerce product CSV exports.
  • BigCommerce product CSV exports.
  • Wix Stores product CSV exports.
  • CS-Cart product CSV exports.
  • Magento / Adobe Commerce CSV exports.
  • OpenCart CSV exports.
  • PrestaShop CSV exports.
  • Squarespace CSV exports.
  • Ecwid CSV exports.
  • Volusion CSV exports.
  • Square Online CSV exports.
  • Universal CSV files with recognizable product, SKU, price, image, option, and variant columns.

Import kinds

  • Products, variants, options, and images.
  • Customer accounts by name, email, phone, and address.
  • Historical orders by order number, customer email, status, totals, and line items.
  • Customer passwords are not imported. Customers use SmithShop password reset or create a new password.
  • Historical order imports do not run payment gateways, create shipping labels, change stock, send order emails, or create new charges.

Product fields it can import

  • Product name or title.
  • SKU or variant SKU.
  • Price or regular price.
  • Product description or body HTML.
  • Category, collection, product type, or similar grouping field.
  • Tags where the source CSV provides them.
  • SEO title and meta description where the source CSV provides them.
  • Stock quantity or inventory quantity.
  • Weight, length, width, and height when the CSV includes those values.
  • Product status defaults to draft unless the merchant chooses active during import.

Images it can import

  • Main product image URLs.
  • Product gallery image URLs.
  • Variant image URLs.
  • Option value image URLs when the source CSV provides them.
  • Existing local SmithShop upload paths if the CSV already points to local uploads.
  • Public remote images can be downloaded into SmithShop during confirmed import so the new store is not dependent on the old platform CDN.

Image safety rules

  • Preview does not download images. Image downloading happens only after the merchant confirms the import.
  • Only public http or https image URLs are considered.
  • Localhost, private network, reserved IP, invalid, oversized, empty, or non-image URLs are skipped.
  • Failed image downloads do not stop the product import. SmithShop keeps the original URL and reports a warning.
  • Downloaded images use SmithShop upload handling, including optimized image output when the server supports it.

Variants it can import

  • Variant rows with unique SKUs.
  • Variant names built from option values such as Size / Color.
  • Variant prices.
  • Variant stock quantities.
  • Variant image paths or URLs.
  • Variant package weight and dimensions when present.

Options it can import

  • Common option columns such as Option1 Name, Option1 Value, Option2 Name, Option2 Value, and Option3 fields.
  • Attribute-style columns such as attribute name and attribute value.
  • Option values such as Small, Medium, Large, Red, Blue, or similar values.
  • Option value images when the CSV provides image URLs tied to those values.
  • Imported options are created as active required select options by default.

Duplicate SKU choices

  • Skip existing SKUs to avoid overwriting current products.
  • Update existing SKUs when the CSV should refresh product data.
  • Update existing SKUs as draft when the merchant wants review before making changes public.

What it does not automatically import

  • Customer accounts.
  • Historical orders.
  • Passwords from the old platform.
  • Payment gateway settings or API keys.
  • Shipping carrier credentials.
  • Tax account credentials.
  • Blog posts, theme layouts, old plugins, old apps, or custom code.
  • Complex platform-specific rules that do not exist as product, variant, option, price, image, stock, SEO, or dimension data in the CSV.

Recommended workflow

  • Export a small product CSV from the old platform first.
  • Upload it to Migration Importer and use Preview import.
  • Review detected platform, row count, product count, variants, options, warnings, and sample products.
  • Import as draft first.
  • Inspect several products in Admin > Products before making them active.
  • Check product images, gallery images, variant images, option values, prices, stock, weights, dimensions, SEO fields, and categories.
  • Test a product with variants and options in the storefront cart and checkout before importing the full catalog.

Practical expectations

  • A clean export with consistent columns imports best.
  • Large stores should test a small batch before importing thousands of rows.
  • Some platform exports use different field names, so a universal CSV may need column cleanup before import.
  • The importer is designed to reduce migration work, but a merchant should still review imported products before selling them live.