Ecommerce Replatforming and Migration Guide for 2026

Most established retail brands eventually face ecommerce replatforming. Global ecommerce sales are expected to reach $6.88 trillion by the end of 2026, with online transactions now accounting for more than 20% of all retail worldwide. For businesses running into platform limitations, an ecommerce platform migration is often a practical way to remove bottlenecks and keep growing.

The platform you choose will have a direct impact on your site's uptime, user experience (UX), scalability, and ability to make changes quickly. Replatforming isn’t just a technical upgrade. It affects revenue, day-to-day workflows, and how quickly your team can launch new initiatives. 

If your platform isn't keeping pace with your business needs, or if you're spending more time and money on maintenance than you can reasonably afford, it's likely time to make a move.

Ecommerce migration has historically been viewed as a time-consuming and costly burden. And without the proper plan and execution strategy, it can be. But staying on the wrong platform can be just as costly—especially when performance issues, integration gaps, and workarounds start stacking up.

This guide will walk you through a complete ecommerce replatforming and migration process, including a replatforming checklist, a decision framework, and practical steps to protect SEO and revenue during the transition, so you can set your business up for future success.

What is ecommerce replatforming?

Ecommerce replatforming is the process of transferring an entire ecommerce site and the systems behind it from one platform to another. It involves moving product data, customer information, design elements, and other relevant components. This migration is typically done to upgrade from the old platform, enhance features, improve performance, or accommodate business growth.

Some of the most common reasons to replatform include:

• Improving site operation and speed
• Adding new features and functionalities that are not available on the existing platform
• Experimenting with new business models or ecommerce infrastructure
• Adding more elements to the customer experience, such as localization or personalization

Replatforming doesn’t always mean moving your business from one service partner to another. Some brands transition from a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform to their own in-house infrastructure, or vice versa. “Migration” can mean moving data, URLs, or infrastructure, while “replatforming” usually refers to a broader architectural shift that affects how the business operates.

Replatforming vs. platform optimization: How to decide

Not every platform frustration requires a full website migration.

Sometimes, the better move is to optimize what you already have. Replatforming makes sense when the problem is the platform—not the configuration. Before committing to a replatform, identify issues that can be fixed with configuration changes, new integrations, or small upgrades. Other problems might be fundamentally architectural.

Consider optimizing your current platform if:

• Your core issues are related to site speed, SEO, or UX, and your platform supports the fixes
• You have a stable integration ecosystem that works well
• Your platform vendor has a credible product roadmap that addresses your gaps
• The cost and disruption of migration outweigh the expected gains

⠀Consider replatforming if:

• You've hit hard technical ceilings (e.g., checkout customization limits, inability to support new sales channels)
• Maintenance and workaround costs are compounding year over year
• Your vendor's innovation pace has slowed, and competitors on modern platforms are pulling ahead
• You need architectural flexibility your current platform can't offer, such as headless or composable commerce capabilities (more on this below)

Types of ecommerce replatforming and migration

In general, there are three types of replatforms and migrations in ecommerce:

1. Platform to platform: This includes switching from one monolithic ecommerce solution to another that offers more features or integrations. This could be a switch between cloud, SaaS, or on-premise solutions. For example, migrating from Magento (now Adobe Commerce) or BigCommerce to Shopify.
2. Phased migration: This might include transitioning your store in different stages, rather than all at once. For example, you could transition to a different content management system (CMS), while still keeping some elements of your existing tech stack in place.
3. Monolithic to microservices: This approach lets you break apart parts of your ecommerce stack and replace them selectively, rather than migrating everything at once. It’s often associated with headless commerce or composable architectures, where different systems (CMS, search, checkout) are connected via APIs.

Most migrations fall into one of the three types of migration mentioned above, but execution varies by architecture.

When planned and executed carefully, replatforming can deliver measurable gains. For example, fashion and sports brand J.Lindeberg migrated to Shopify in 16 weeks and used the new platform to improve brand presentation and customer engagement—resulting in a 70% increase in revenue and 7% lift in conversion rate.

Ecommerce site migration statistics

This growing sense of urgency to migrate to modern online platforms tracks with the increasing percentage of internet users who purchase online regularly. According to DataReportal, close to 57% of internet users age 16 and over now buy something online every week.

To keep up with this demand, businesses are looking to cloud and SaaS ecommerce solutions that can help them scale and improve the following factors, which significantly impact customer loyalty and sales rates:

• User experience: According to the Worldpay Global Payments Report 2025, mobile's share of global ecommerce surged from 19% to 57% between 2014 and 2024, with projections reaching 64% by 2030. This means that online businesses need to use a platform that lets them provide an optimal UX on mobile or desktop and makes it easy for users to buy on any device. 
• Payment options: Digital wallets accounted for 53% of global ecommerce transaction value in 2024. If your current online store platform cannot currently accept digital wallet payments, it’s likely you’re missing out on potential sales.
• Checkout and conversion rates: Cart abandonment remains a major issue for ecommerce businesses. As of 2025, the average reported cart abandonment rate is 70.22%. A “too long or complicated checkout process” was cited by 18% of surveyed users as their reason for dropping off, and 15% listed “website errors or crashes.”
• Site speed: Slow-loading websites also increase cart abandonment rates by as much as 75%.

Many of these issues—particularly poor checkout experiences, website uptime, and site speed—are directly influenced by platform capabilities and architectural constraints. In fact, ecommerce sites can gain a 35% increase in conversion rates by optimizing their checkout design.

Ecommerce platform migration can be expensive and time-consuming, but the right planning and execution model can reduce disruption and keep costs under control. For many growing brands, the long-term gains in scalability, performance, and operational efficiency can justify the up-front investment.

What the latest data suggests about buyer behavior and risk 

Taken together, these numbers show a clear path for migration planning. More revenue is coming from mobile-first design, where payment flexibility matters more than ever, with digital wallets now dominant. And the persistent ~70% cart abandonment rate suggests that checkout UX should be a primary evaluation criterion when selecting a new platform. 

For retail and ecommerce teams weighing a replatform, the real risk isn't in migrating. It's in staying on a platform that can't keep pace with these shifts.

Nine things to consider before replatforming your ecommerce business

Whether this is your first time replatforming an ecommerce website or not, there are several factors to consider before getting started. These considerations should help you determine if replatforming is the right move—and what success needs to look like before you begin.

1. Intended business outcome

Most organizations consider replatforming when they’re introducing new products, regions, or payment methods, scaling their businesses, or when they have several issues to resolve all at once. 

Whatever your reason, replatforming won’t be worth investing time, money, and effort in if there’s no significant improvement in terms of design, functionality, performance, and output. 

Replatforming is a long-term investment. So, develop clear migration objectives and choose a replatforming solution that can meet those requirements while supporting your next phase of growth.

Define what success means in measurable terms—whether that’s improved conversion rate, faster site performance, reduced maintenance overhead, or expansion into new channels. 

2. Costs

Ecommerce replatforming and migration costs vary depending on the complexity of the transition. 

Variables that influence the pricing include:

• Ecommerce platform 
• Type of migration and whether you’ll do the job yourself or outsource it
• Downtime during transfer
• Testing and launching
• Performance monitoring
• Maintenance of the new platform
• Staff training 

Before committing, estimate both the up-front investment and the ongoing operational costs. Include infrastructure, development resources, integrations, and long-term maintenance.

3. Platform features and functionality

You’re not just migrating to another platform because of its design, but primarily for what it can do for you. 

Compare the features and capabilities modern ecommerce platforms offer against your current limitations. Focus on features that remove operational friction or spur growth—not just cosmetic improvements. For example, evaluate checkout flexibility, performance during peak loads, and international commerce.

4. Seamless integrations

Your existing ecommerce platform may already integrate with plugins, extensions, and apps that ensure core functions—such as your customer relationship management (CRM) system, marketing, sales, and payments—work properly. 

Your next platform should integrate cleanly into your existing infrastructure and support the integrations in place without introducing performance loss or unnecessary complexity. 

For example, if your sales app works well, the platform you’re shifting to should integrate seamlessly with the app and other core business systems without affecting its performance. 

If changes are needed, audit your tech stack early to understand what needs to be retained, replaced, or consolidated—and how data will move securely between systems.

5. Your team’s technical skills and expertise

Replatforming is a major organizational shift that requires all hands on deck. It isn’t just on developers to execute it. 

From marketing to finance to IT to content, you’ll need to involve your entire team and ensure they have the necessary technical skills to take the process forward. Consider whether your internal team can manage implementation, integrations, and ongoing optimization—or whether external partners will be required.

Choosing a platform should align with your team’s capacity. Selecting a solution that requires heavy custom development may accidentally introduce the need to pay for specialized talent.

6. Change management and training plan

Replatforming involves shaking up your tech stack and your workflows. Without a deliberate change management plan, your migration can stall during adoption—even if it's technically flawless.

Assign clear ownership for training and internal communications early in the process. Identify which roles will be most affected by the switch (merchandisers, marketers, customer service, finance) and build role-based enablement plans for each. 

Set adoption checkpoints at key milestones: pre-launch, launch week, and 30/60/90 days post-launch. This can ensure teams are confident using the new system and workflows are functioning as expected.

7. Customer support

You might have a fantastic team on board, but it’ll take a responsive, knowledgeable, and friendly customer support team to collect customer feedback and solve errors quickly and properly when they arise, especially during and right after migration.

Ensure the ecommerce platform you choose offers 24/7 support via multiple channels, including email, phone, live chat, knowledge-base articles, and tutorials, so you can get the help and answers you need to keep your store running.

For larger teams, also evaluate how you’ll escalate issues, such as dedicated account management and service-level commitments. When revenue is at stake, response time matters.

8. Replatform and migration timing

The time you choose to replatform and migrate can impact your conversions and revenue.

While there’s never an ideal time to replatform, it’s usually best executed during slow periods, like off-peak hours or when your site experiences low traffic. That way, you can minimize downtime or disruptions and check for any problems or errors that may arise with the least impact on your business’s performance.

9. Long-term impact and future changes

Replatforming is a long-term investment. Think about the potential impact on the business, future market changes, and potential disruptors. 

If your roadmap includes expanding into new markets, adopting headless architecture, or moving toward a composable commerce model, make sure your target platform can support that evolution without another costly migration.

The goal isn’t just to solve today’s limitations. It’s to choose an architecture that won’t create new constraints in two or three years.

12 steps for replatforming your ecommerce site

Ecommerce replatforming and migration are two interchangeable terms that mean the same thing: moving your store from one platform to another. The scope—including costs, resources, timeline, and steps—will vary by business size and complexity.

A successful migration, however, will follow a structured process that follows these steps:

1. Identifying your replatforming needs and priorities
2. Gathering stakeholders
3. Shopping for a new ecommerce platform
4. Planning the ecommerce platform migration
5. Backing up your store’s data
6. Designing and developing the new ecommerce site
7. Migrating store data
8. Optimizing the checkout experience
9. Conducting an SEO audit pre-launch
10. Testing (and more testing)
11. Launching the website
12. Post-launch monitoring

Let’s dig into each step in more detail.

1. Identifying your replatforming needs and priorities

Review your current platform to identify any missing features, gaps, areas to improve, and the benefits and potential drawbacks of replatforming. Then, list the replatforming requirements, including the labor needs, dependencies, and estimated timelines.

Translate business objectives into technical requirements so platform evaluations are grounded in measurable outcomes.

2. Gathering stakeholders

Ecommerce replatforming is a collaborative business process that involves both doers and decision-makers. Bring these people together—representing every group whom the ecommerce site migration impacts—and present your case for why a replatforming project is necessary.

Align on the following:

• What you can’t do with your current platform
• What activities currently cost you the most time
• What could be automated to save time and resources
• Any ongoing issues with the platform that cause lost revenue
• An estimate of internal resource waste caused by these issues
• Barriers to innovation, store growth, and positive customer experience caused by your current system
• Who will own change management, training, and internal adoption post-migration
• How a different type of ecommerce platform can alleviate all of the above
• Potential replatforming and migration risks, what to expect during and after, and why

The goal is shared clarity—why you’re migrating, what success looks like, and who is accountable for each workstream.

If your stakeholders agree that using a different platform is the right solution, the next step is to agree on what you’re looking for in a new solution.

Before evaluating platforms, clarify the following:

• Must-have features, customizations, and integrations
• Existing issues that you need to resolve
• Functionalities required for future growth
• Workflows that could be automated
• Data that needs to be migrated (i.e., products, existing customers, orders, etc.)
• Resource requirements
• Target migration timeline

An external agency partner is a helpful resource throughout this complex process and can help guide your conversations and decision-making from an early stage.

3. Shopping for a new ecommerce platform

Next up is the discovery phase, where you shop around for other platforms. Sites like G2, Capterra, and Gartner are helpful resources when compiling your initial list of vendors. You might also want to consider sending out a request for proposal (RFP) with your list of requirements to help extend your reach and reduce the workload.

Narrow your list to a manageable set of vendors and set up exploratory calls with each.

During those calls, ask questions like:

• How much does the migration cost?
• How long does migration take?
• What does the migration process entail?
• How does your team support the migration process?
• What type of ongoing customer support do you offer?
• Can you share any stats on your platform’s speed and uptime?
• How effectively does your platform scale as more products, sales, and traffic are added?
• How do you ensure my data is safe during migration?
• What type of security and compliance does your platform have in place?
• Can you share a list of out-of-the-box integrations you offer? What can we do if we need integrations that aren’t currently supported?

Add any questions to this list that relate to your specific business requirements. Track the answers to these questions in a shared document so that your team members can effectively weigh potential vendors collaboratively.

4. Planning the migration

Once you’ve selected an ecommerce partner, the next step is to establish a realistic scope of work (SOW) and timeline for your migration. Map out key milestones, dependencies, and responsible owners for each workstream.

Most migrations will require you to plan sub-projects to tackle the following:

• Creating a new website hierarchy
• Migrating content
• Auditing and deleting existing content
• Front-end design
• Back-end development
• Pre- and post-launch training
• Search engine optimization (SEO) migration planning

Data migration is also a critical element in the planning phase. This is when you’ll determine what data needs to be transferred, and how it will be safely moved from one platform to the other. Data migration can be completed using a third-party service, API, app, or manual CSV transfer. Talk to your agency or solution provider about the best option for your replatforming project.

5. Backing up your store’s data

Moving volumes of data from one platform to another is tricky, and things do sometimes go wrong—even when you’ve got a detailed plan. 

Before replatforming, crawl your store to catalog all your existing content and account for all the data you’re migrating to the new platform. 

Review your content and determine what you need and what to remove, like older, outdated pieces not optimized for search. This prevents unnecessary clutter and reduces migration risk.

Then, back up your current business data, including catalogs, customer profiles and order history, and current ecommerce functionality. Maintain a clean backup so you can restore data quickly if needed.

Note where your data is currently stored and where it will be structured in the new ecommerce platform.

6. Designing and developing the new site

The design and development phase will likely take up the bulk of your time and resources. This is where your designers and experienced development team will go to work and create the front and back ends of your new ecommerce store. It’s also where all of the data that you migrated over will be loaded into your new website redesign.

If there are significant changes you’d like to make to your website’s navigation, content, UX, design, or back-end functionality, now is the time to do it.

Be careful about expanding the project’s scope. Replatforming is an opportunity to modernize—but excessive redesign can introduce delays and additional risk.

7. Migrating store data

If you have the technical skills and experience, you can manually migrate your store’s data yourself. 

Alternatively, use a migration app or hire a third-party migration service to do it for you. Ensure the provider you use has experience migrating the platforms you’re switching from and to, and can handle the entire migration accurately and securely.

Confirm that products, customers, and orders have transferred correctly before launch. Place a few test orders to make sure checkout and reporting work as expected.

8. Optimizing the checkout experience

Depending on your selected platform, you may also have the opportunity to customize and optimize your checkout experience. Connect any third-party checkout apps you may be using in your existing system to another platform, and optimize the user flow as much as possible.

This is a good time to ensure that the new ecommerce checkout flow matches the best practices you laid out early in the planning phase. The goal is to ensure that the new experience is fast, secure, and efficient for your customers.

Because cart abandonment is high, evaluate checkout with the goal of reducing friction—simplified forms, wallet integrations, clear shipping costs, and mobile-first design.

9. SEO migration checklist

Ecommerce replatforming carries SEO risk—but it's manageable if treated as a structured site move. 

Any time you move a website from one platform to another, changes to URLs, site architecture, and performance can impact your search rankings in the short term.

To mitigate that risk:

• Audit your existing content, and remove old and duplicate content.
• Ensure that any new web content is optimized appropriately with your keyword targets.
• Migrate all metadata and schema markups from your old site (and optimize it, if needed).

For a more structured approach, align your SEO migration plan with Google’s guidance on site moves with URL changes:

• Redirect mapping: Create a comprehensive 1:1 redirect map covering every indexed URL. Prioritize high-traffic and revenue-driving pages. Use 301 (permanent) redirects, not 302s.
• Pre-launch validation: Test redirects in a staging environment. Verify canonical tags, hreflang attributes (for international sites), and structured data implementations.
• Search Console setup: Add and verify your new domain (or URL structure) in Google Search Console before launch. Submit your updated XML sitemap immediately after go-live.
• Post-launch monitoring: Check Search Console's coverage report daily for the first two weeks. Watch for spikes in 404 errors, crawl anomalies, or unexpected drops in indexed pages. Monitor Google Core Web Vitals to catch any performance regressions early.

Once your site is launched, continue to monitor your organic traffic, search rankings, and technical SEO profile through tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs. Keep an eye out for things like 404 errors, site speed issues, and any other red flag that pops up that might indicate compromised performance.

10. Testing (and more testing)

Before you launch, run multiple tests of the site navigation, checkout experience, front- and back-end website functionality, and product selection process. Test critical user journeys end to end to surface issues before customers do.

When doing so, run your site through a performance auditing tool like Google PageSpeed Insights to ensure all of your pages are loading and behaving as expected.

Have internal teams review the site from both a business and customer perspective. Ask stakeholders to work in the back end and simulate transactions on the front end. Gather all feedback and work it into final adjustments before launch.

11. Launching the website

The actual launch of your website should be fairly straightforward. Plan your launch window to minimize disruption to your customers. If possible, work with your agency or solutions partner to create a launch checklist in advance so that you can work through tasks in sequential order.

Case study: Morrison increased conversions by 15% and physical sales by 10% after migrating to Shopify

12. Post-launch monitoring

Finally, a structured monitoring plan helps you catch any subsequent problems before they affect revenue.

First 72 hours: Monitor checkout completion rates, payment processing, email confirmations, and redirects in real time. Have your technical team on standby to address any issues immediately. This is when the most critical bugs surface. 

First two weeks: Review organic traffic trends and search rankings daily. Check Google Search Console for crawl errors, indexing issues, and Core Web Vitals regressions. Compare revenue, conversion rates, and average order value (AOV) against your pre-migration benchmarks. 

First 60 days: Conduct a full performance review. Audit site speed, checkout abandonment rates, and revenue against your migration objectives. Gather internal feedback on workflows and address adoption gaps. Complete any required delta data migration to capture any orders or customer records created during the transition period.

Why do ecommerce businesses replatform?

Ecommerce businesses replatform for a wide variety of reasons, most of which are determined by the company’s growth stage and operational needs. In most cases, the motivation is either to resolve existing limitations or unlock new functionalities (or a combination of the two).

Ecommerce businesses may be looking to avoid or find a solution to:

• Poor site performance
• Website speed and responsiveness issues
• Functionality gaps in their existing platform
• Poor admin or back end
• Time-consuming and costly maintenance
• Poor UX
• Mounting technical debt
• Lack of platform innovation
• Lack of scalability
• Unreliable ecommerce infrastructure

Additionally, those same online businesses may be looking to gain the following:

• Improved scalability
• Better customer experience
• Modern integrations and apps
• Convenience, security, and affordability
• Customized and optimized checkout experiences
• Better tracking and analytics
• Easier site maintenance and upgrades
• Better site and data security

“Ecommerce companies may shift their online presence to a different platform to scale their business and create a better user experience,” says Alexandra Fennel, cofounder and CEO of Attn: Grace. “They choose to replatform when their current provider experiences regular technical issues that harm conversion rates, or when it cannot develop fast enough to keep up with the competition.”

By doing so, says Monte Deere, CEO of Kizik, the business also expands their credibility in the eyes of their customers. “Who’s not impressed with a company—and trusts it more—if an ecommerce platform is just as stylish and intuitive as Apple’s?” asks Monte.

Compromised website speed leading to lost sales was precisely the motivation that Bombas needed to kickstart their own migration to Shopify.

Having grown their revenue from $300,000 in 2013 to $4.7 million in 2015, Bombas founders David and Andrew Heath landed a deal with Daymond John on Shark Tank. Because of that success, their website received far more traffic than it could handle—4,000 transactions per day, up from just 500.

Product images broke, customers couldn’t check out, and losses climbed to $15,000 in just a few minutes. The incident made it clear their platform needed to scale. The process was time-intensive, and cost about $150,000, but the effort has paid off. The migration to Shopify saved an estimated $108,000 in platform costs in the first year alone. 

For the team at Bombas, the catalyst for replatforming was unreliable infrastructure leading to lost revenue, and the payoff was scalability, innovation, and near immediate positive return on investment.

Ecommerce platforms and types to consider

Ecommerce platforms can be broken into three key types, each of which has its own benefits and challenges. The type of platform you choose will have a significant impact on your ongoing expenses, maintenance requirements, and scalability.

SaaS

SaaS ecommerce platforms are subscription-based solutions built and maintained by a third-party provider. Businesses essentially rent the software from the service provider, without the need to build or develop any of their own infrastructure.

Growing ecommerce stores, or those that prioritize ease-of-use and reliability, should often consider a SaaS solution. SaaS models typically shift infrastructure, uptime, and security responsibilities to the provider, reducing your overhead.

The benefits of SaaS ecommerce platforms include:

• Predictable subscription-based pricing
• No full-time technical staff required to maintain servers or security
• Access to ongoing support and success management
• Dedicated infrastructure that scales as your business grows
• Extensive integrations and third-party apps
• Automatic software and security updates
• Faster store launches

On the security front, it's worth noting that PCI DSS v4.0.1 is now the active compliance standard, with new requirements effective from March 2025. SaaS platforms like Shopify handle this compliance out of the box, which can simplify compliance requirements during migration planning. For teams using on-premise or cloud setups, meeting the updated standard adds another line item to your migration checklist.

On-premise

On-premise (or on-prem) ecommerce platforms are built with the company’s own resources and hosted in an internal storage facility. Internal or third-party development and engineering teams conduct all of the development and ongoing maintenance, and are responsible for a technical and security infrastructure.

The benefits of on-premise ecommerce solutions include:

• Complete control over and direct access to the website code and hardware
• Complete control over platform and network security
• The ability to make highly customized and granular optimizations to the site

While on-premise legacy systems are a great option for teams with deep technical bench strength, they require significant internal resources. Between infrastructure, employee salaries, security, and third-party assistance, ongoing expenses can add up quickly. Costs tend to scale with traffic and complexity.

The performance, backups, uptime, security, and scalability of the site also rests on the internal team’s shoulders, meaning it can be hard to quickly pivot to account for peak seasons and new market opportunities.

Cloud

Cloud ecommerce platforms are a hybrid between the SaaS and on-premise solution, and use an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) model. That is, the business hosts its ecommerce website in the cloud through a provider like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure.

While cloud ecommerce platform vendors rent the storage and hardware infrastructure from a third-party provider, they are in charge of developing and maintaining the core ecommerce platform.

The benefits of cloud ecommerce solutions include:

• Avoiding the need to buy or lease expensive infrastructure
• Easy data backups and scalability during peak times
• Leveraging the security capabilities of major IaaS providers
• The ability to modify and optimize the platform’s source code
• Complete customizability over features, user experience, and back-end functionality

While cloud ecommerce platforms are less resource-intensive than on-premise, they still require an engineering and infrastructure investment. Companies will need to pay licensing fees for IaaS infrastructure, and will still need a highly technical team to develop and maintain their ecommerce website. Costs also tend to spike during peak traffic periods, when additional compute resources are required.

The composable / headless approach

A growing number of enterprise brands are looking at composable commerce and headless architectures as part of their replatforming decision. Rather than adopting a single monolithic platform, composable commerce lets you assemble best-of-breed components like CMS, search, checkout, and order management systems (OMS) and connect them via APIs.

This approach offers great flexibility, but the cost is added complexity. You'll need a strong technical team to manage multiple vendor relationships and handle integrations.

Composable is worth considering if you have highly specialized front-end requirements. It’s good if you operate across many regions with different tech stacks, or need granular control over individual components of the customer experience. 

For many brands, however, a modern SaaS platform can offer the flexibility of composable without the operational overhead. Shopify's headless framework, for example, provides headless capabilities alongside a fully managed stack.

Creating your ecommerce replatforming plan

Planning your ecommerce replatforming is the most important part of the entire project. Without proper planning, you run the risk of missing important steps, running beyond your time and budget constraints, and making costly mistakes that can harm your business.

“The biggest risk with ecommerce migration is not planning properly,” says Nathan Lomax, cofounder of Quickfire Digital. “Trying to replatform in too short a period of time causes problems further down the track, valuable data is in danger of being lost, search visibility can be hit hard, and you end up in an extended period, post-launch, of trying to fix what should have been dealt with easily in advance,” he says.

To avoid costly mistakes, make sure to focus your planning around these five key considerations.

Look at your business needs

Much of this planning builds on the considerations outlined earlier. Here, clarity on business objectives should guide every planning decision.

It’s critical that you have a thorough understanding of your business’s needs and requirements for the new platform. That understanding should reflect both current constraints and future requirements for your company.

“Typically, successful ecommerce programs involve numerous departments,” says Kevin Patel, CEO of Convrrt. “Ensure that every requirement has been captured by reaching out to all collaborators in your organization. You should compose a list of today’s essentials and wants, and a list of features that may be required in the future.”

Take stock of platform limitations, maintenance overhead, and revenue impact. Translate those findings into prioritized goals and timelines.

If ecommerce replatforming is the right decision for your company, it’s also important to go into the process with clear expectations.

“It’s often a costly process, since you’re giving up your investment with the original platform,” explains Fennell. “It requires new training for your employees, and it impacts customer data, which could lead to a confusing and frustrating user experience. If you have to switch platforms, map out what areas of your business will be adversely impacted to optimize operations and avoid going offline.”

Develop an RFP

A request for proposal can help formalize your requirements before starting conversations with vendors. 

Your ecommerce RFP can be as detailed or as general as you like. The more specific your requirements, the more tailored vendor responses will be. Keep in mind, however, that RFPs can also cause some vendors to drop out of consideration, even if they may be a partially suitable contender.

When creating your RFP, consider:

• Why are you migrating and how soon do you want to relaunch?
• What are your goals?
• At peak volumes, what volume of traffic, checkouts, and sales do you experience?
• How do you currently implement design, product, and UX changes?
• What sales channels do you use?
• What is your current approach to international commerce?
• Do you have any specialized customization or product configurations?
• What are your current operating costs?
• What brands do you admire or benchmark against?
• What third-party tools, in-house software, and outside partners would you consider “must-keep”? Which are you looking to either replace or begin implementing?

Use a shared scorecard to objectively evaluate responses.

Know your total cost of ownership

Evaluating the total cost of ownership (TCO) for all ecommerce platforms you’re evaluating is critical to ensuring that you make the right business decision for your company.

When calculating TCO, account for both the up-front migration investment and the ongoing operational costs of your new platform. Key cost categories include:

• Migration costs: Data migration, platform licensing, agency or partner fees, employee retraining, and downtime during the transition
• Ongoing platform costs: Hosting, security patches, maintenance, custom development, performance testing, and user acceptance testing
• Hidden costs: Surcharges during traffic peaks, custom checkout development, additional licenses for feature upgrades, content management overhead, and app or integration fees that weren't part of the original quote

This is where understanding the nuances of each type of ecommerce platform is important. On-premise and cloud platforms may have additional expenses that increase your total cost of ownership, beyond the initial licensing fees. Cost structures vary by platform model, especially around infrastructure and staffing requirements.

Some SaaS platforms bundle infrastructure and security into the core licensing agreement, which improves cost predictability. Shopify, for example, removes entire cost structures from the equation by ensuring that most of the mission-critical features you need are built into the platform.

Make sure that you clearly map out all additional and ongoing costs associated with each platform provider you’re considering. The cost of migration, plus licensing and ongoing maintenance fees, equals your total cost of ownership.

Understand which integrations are necessary

Before selecting another ecommerce platform, it’s also helpful to take stock of all of the technologies you currently use, and which ones need to integrate with your new solution.

For example, you may need to integrate your existing enterprise resource planning (ERP, CRM, or marketing automation software. Each prospective ecommerce partner should clarify what is possible out of the box, and what might require additional work and investment. In some cases, there may be an alternate ecommerce app that could be a cost-effective alternative to your current solution.

If you've already audited your tech stack earlier, use it here to validate integration requirements rather than repeating the exercise.

Determine how data will be transferred

Transferring data is one of the most important and sensitive parts of the ecommerce replatforming process. You want to ensure that all mission-critical customer and product data is transferred safely, accurately, and in the correct format.

There are four ways that data can be transferred from one ecommerce platform to another.

1. Manual, in-house: Your team (or agency partner) can import products and customer data via CSV. This is typically suitable for smaller sites.
2. Apps: Migration tools can automate product, customer, and order transfer between platforms. Shopify Store Importer apps, for example, helps you import products, customers, and order history to your store. Shopify customers can also use Transporter to accelerate the data migration process. Other popular data transfer apps include Cart2Cart, WooCommerce Importer, and Next-Cart Store Migration.
3. API: If you work with an agency partner, proprietary APIs can enable more customized data transfer processes. Ask your agency partner and solution provider about what API support they can provide.

Before starting the transfer, be sure to make a backup and turn off customer notifications on the receiving platform to avoid confusion.

For high-volume ecommerce sites, a delta migration is also a good idea. This is a secondary data import that you do right before launching your new site to account for new orders and customers that were added to your previous site after your initial data transfer.

Meet with all of the right people

While it can be tempting to bring on a large team of people to help with an ecommerce migration, this can create ambiguity around ownership.

Instead, define clear roles and responsibilities from the outset. For a large scale ecommerce replatforming project this might include:

• Internal stakeholders
• Platform partners
• In-house marketing teams
• In-house IT teams
• Search and marketing agencies
• Ecommerce agencies
• A migration consultant

“When multiple agencies and internal teams are involved, it increases the chances for tasks to slip through the net. Get your very best project manager on the case to keep everything—and everyone—on track,” says Nathan Lomax from Quickfire Digital.

Depending on your chosen ecommerce partner, they may have in-house experts to help with project managing your migration. If not, consider partnering with a migration consultant to help you determine who should be involved, and everyone’s role.

Ecommerce replatforming and migration checklist

Ecommerce replatforming is a time-intensive process with a lot of moving parts and stakeholders. To make the process easier to follow, here is a condensed ecommerce migration checklist aligned to the steps above.

• Audit your current ecommerce site and take stock of all issues.
• Gather your key stakeholders and align on migration objectives.
• Define your business needs, platform requirements and long-term goals.
• Create a request for proposal (RFP), or evaluate potential ecommerce solutions.
• Plan your migration and create a pre-launch plan that includes:
• Data and content migration
• Data organization
• New page and content creation (if needed)
• Site navigation and hierarchy updates
• Front- and back-end design
• Responsive design
• Integrations mapping
• Staff training
• Develop an SEO migration plan that includes:
• Technical SEO considerations
• Redirect mapping (301 redirects)
• Traffic and KPI benchmarking
• Traffic and KPI monitoring post-launch
• How you’ll measure issues like 404 errors, traffic drops, and ranking changes
• Create a launch plan that includes:
• Extensive testing of all website functionality, links, checkout experience, etc., prior to launch
• The exact time the new site will be going live
• Who will be on call to initiate the site launch and troubleshoot issues
• Logging into your domain registrar and changing the time-to-live (TTL) setting to the lowest value possible to ensure fast propagation on launch day
• Launching your site via your domain name system (DNS) on launch day
• Locking down your old store when making DNS changes
• A contingency plan if anything breaks in the process
• Create a post-launch plan that includes:
• Monitoring and testing checkout functionality
• Monitoring and testing email confirmations and notifications
• Monitoring and testing analytics and reporting functionality
• A technical audit to ensure the XML site map is transferred and that your analytics and tracking codes are working
• Ongoing traffic and search rankings monitoring
• Double check that email links and downloadable assets are still working
• Ensure that user flows for downloads and newsletter signups are still working
• Back up your existing store data before migration.
• Migrate store data and confirm accuracy.
• Optimize the checkout experience.
• Conduct functional and performance testing.
• Launch your site and verify DNS, payments, and tracking.
• Monitor performance post-launch:
• First 72 hours: Orders, payments, analytics, redirects
• First two weeks: Traffic, rankings, revenue benchmarks
• First 60 days: Performance review and workflow adoption

Data migration services and ecommerce replatforming

As mentioned, ecommerce data migration is a critical component of the replatforming process. Depending on complexity, you may need specialized tools or external support to help to complete this process.

Here are some tools and options available to businesses looking to migrate to Shopify.

Third-party migration apps

The Shopify App Store offers a variety of apps to transfer data from one ecommerce platform to your Shopify store. These apps move product listings, customer data, order history, and other relevant information. 

Third-party migration apps from the Shopify App Store can reduce manual effort for stores with standard data structures.

APIs

If your ecommerce business is large enough to have internal developers—or if you have the budget to hire some externally—then you can create and use an API to transfer your data. This approach is often used by large stores with lots of data that require custom data mapping or integrations.

Agency partners

Third-party agency partners via Shopify Partners can support companies with limited internal resources or specialized migration needs. These agencies can create a custom ecommerce migration plan that accounts for your current and future needs.

For example, Great Little Trading Company enlisted ecommerce expert Underwaterpistol to help them manage the migration of everything from user experience and design to SEO optimization, and the data for 800 products and 1.1 million customer records.