eCommerce Migration and Replatforming

Web Development Scalable Secure Performance Reliable Long-Term Support

Web Development

A replatform goes wrong in one of two places: the data, or the addresses. The data, because a product on one platform is not the same shape as a product on another. The addresses, because a store that changes every URL without redirecting starts again from nothing in search - months of traffic gone in a week, and it is the part nobody budgets for.

Neither is difficult. Both are unforgiving if they are left to the end.

What moves

Products, variants, options and the media that goes with them
Categories and the navigation built on them
Customers, addresses and - where the platform allows it - their password hashes, so nobody is forced to reset
Order history, which is what your support team will need on day one
Content pages, blog posts and everything else that has an address people link to

The addresses, which is where stores get hurt

Every URL that exists today either exists on the new platform or redirects to the page that replaced it. Not to the home page - to the page that replaced it. A redirect to the home page tells a search engine the page is gone, which is exactly what you were trying to avoid.

A full inventory of the current addresses, taken from the site, the sitemap and the server logs, not from the CMS alone
A mapping of old to new, reviewed rather than generated and hoped for
301 redirects in place before the switch, tested against the inventory
Canonical tags, hreflang and structured data carried across rather than rebuilt from memory

The day itself

A rehearsal on a copy first, with the real data, timed. Then the switch, in a window you choose, with the old store still standing and a way back that has been tested rather than assumed.

A dry run that produces a number: how long the freeze has to be
A final delta import, so the orders taken during the rehearsal are not lost
DNS and certificates prepared in advance rather than on the night
The first week watched deliberately - error rates, checkout completion, and the search console

Frequently Asked Questions

Will we lose our search rankings?

Not if the redirects are done properly, which is the single largest reason to take a migration seriously. Expect a wobble of a few weeks while the new addresses are recrawled; expect a collapse only if the old addresses were left to 404.

How long does the store have to be frozen?

We give you a number rather than a promise, and it comes from the rehearsal: we run the real migration against a copy and time it. For most stores the freeze is hours, not days.

Can customers keep their passwords?

Sometimes. If both platforms use a hashing scheme we can carry across, yes. Where they do not, we plan a reset campaign as part of the launch rather than letting people discover it at checkout.

Which platform should we move to?

That question comes before this service, and we will answer it honestly - including when the answer is that your current platform is fine and the real problem is the theme, the hosting or an integration.

Tell us what you are moving from and to

Even a rough answer - the platform, roughly how many products, whether the order history has to come with it - is enough for a realistic first estimate of the freeze and the redirect work.

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