Perform Audits for Hydrogen Migration

Sitemap Audit

Completing a sitemap audit, especially for content pages and blog articles, is the clearest way to determine what content needs to be recreated in Pack.

How to Audit

Assuming it’s a Shopify store, simply append /sitemap.xml to the root URL (e.g., https://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml). For a pages sitemap audit, enter https://yoursite.com/sitemap_pages_1.xml. For blog articles, enter https://yoursite.com/sitemap_blogs_1.xml.

Considerations

The main goal of a sitemap audit is to identify what content needs to be recreated on the new website.
If pages do not need to be recreated, then a redirect should be set up so that the URL does not lead to a 404.

Pixel and Tracking Audit

When transitioning to Hydrogen, it's essential to perform a pixel and tracking audit to ensure all necessary tracking services are included on the new site. Many brands use third-party services like Elevar or Fueled to manage their data performance through a single application. Partnering with experts can be very beneficial due to the increasing technical complexity of marketing.

The Pixel and Tracking Audit Involves:

• Theme.liquid: For brands using a Shopify theme, pixels are often hard-coded in the head of the theme.liquid layout file, providing insight into the pixels being used.
• Google Tag Manager (GTM): GTM simplifies tag and pixel management, so reviewing it gives a clear picture of the brand's tracking services.
• Shopify Customer Events: This newer architecture is becoming the recommended method for integrating pixels with Shopify themes. Ensure you access Customer Events to account for any necessary pixels.
• Sales Channel Apps: Major services like Meta and TikTok have native sales channels in Shopify. Review their implementation to avoid duplicate pixel firing, which can occur with Hydrogen sites using both GTM and native Sales Channel pixels.

App Audit

When transitioning to Hydrogen, it's a good time to review the installed apps on the brand’s Shopify store. Often, you'll find multiple apps that serve the same purpose (like Yotpo Reviews and Junip Reviews), so check which ones are active and consider uninstalling the duplicates.
While many apps only handle back-end logistics and don't affect the front-end experience, understanding all the tools your brand uses is still important.

Documentation

In our experience, using Google Sheets and having a tab for each audit that the brand can review and contribute to is very effective. It provides a single, robust artifact for discovery that helps determine the solution architecture needed for the move to Hydrogen!