Ecommerce Migration
Our ecommerce migration service allows you to transition to a new platform, keeping your organic positions and site functionality intact and limiting disruption throughout the business.
When is it time to replatform?
Many businesses at some point decide it’s time to move to a new platform. Your current platform could be limiting you in some way or you may have outgrown its capabilities.
If you are running a WordPress website with WooCommerce you may feel like a Shopify website would be a better platform to expand your ecommerce operation, and you would not be wrong.
Similarly, you could be using Shopify and feel the features and flexibility of an open source platform such as Adobe Commerce may better suit your needs, especially if you’re running point of sale or complex back-end operations and want these integrated straight into the CMS element of the platform.
Migration lab
Migration By Platform
Pick two different platforms
- Crawl the old site and map every URL
- Plan the 301 redirects
- Move products, customers and orders
- Rebuild the templates on Magento
- Check rankings and tracking after launch
Migrating without losing your rankings
One thing you do not want as a business when you replatform is for your rankings to tank. Platform migrations just left in the hands of a developer are dangerous. You also need an SEO to be involved in the process. All your URLs need to be mapped and appropriate redirects put in place if the URL structure is changing.
Similarly, if you rewrite every page on the website during migration or lose all current internal links, this can alter the way in which search engines view your site. A migration is not a one-person job and requires a multi-discipline approach.
You can lose your organic rankings just as easily as you can lose conversion tracking data for Google Ads if Tag Manager is not also migrated.
The process
How we run a migration
- 01
Audit and benchmark
We crawl your current site, map every URL and record where you stand today: rankings, traffic, conversion rate and site speed. That gives us something to measure the new site against.
- 02
Data and URL mapping
Products, customers and order history are mapped to the new platform, and every old URL gets a 301 redirect plan.
- 03
Build and test on staging
Your templates and functionality are rebuilt on a staging site, away from your live store. Before launch we check redirects, schema, canonical tags and hreflang for international stores, and make sure Google Analytics, Tag Manager and Google Ads conversion tracking are all firing.
- 04
Launch and monitor
After go-live we monitor for 30 days: rank tracking, 404 errors and tracking checks, fixing anything that slips.
Real Results. Local Businesses.
Ecommerce brands we've helped grow through connected SEO, PPC, development, and automation.
Direct
Scaling Organic Traffic for Liverpool's Largest Bed Retailer
How we helped Bed Factory Direct, a Liverpool-based bed manufacturer and retailer with over 37 years in business, increase organic visibility and drive ecommerce revenue through a connected SEO and development strategy.
Driving Ecommerce Revenue for Liverpool's Iconic Home Store
How we helped Taskers, an established Liverpool home and furniture retailer with over 60 years of history grow their online revenue through an integrated approach spanning SEO, development, and ecommerce optimisation.
What affects the cost of a migration
Before we help you replatform we have to undertake a discovery phase. Some migrations are relatively simple, but they can also be complex depending on the scope of the project.
If you wish to move your products from one platform to another and implement a new design but keep your brand identity, this is relatively straightforward.
If you are replatforming and wish to move across custom front-end functionality, back-end integrations and new API connections, this adds to the build time and cost, as these features will need to be rebuilt and thoroughly tested before the new site is ready to go live.
Rebuilding your design
In most migrations we perform we take the time to make improvements. This could be in the design, the checkout or through extended back-end modules that improve the operational efficiency of your business.
You may wish to keep the current style of your website, but you could be using a paid theme that is available on one platform, but not on the next. Here we need to rebuild the front-end design, and in most migrations it will not be 100%, and nor should it be.
We know the old platforms as well as the new ones
We’ve been working with Magento since 2013, alongside Shopify, WordPress and WooCommerce. That matters in a migration, because the hard part is usually getting everything out of the old platform cleanly: the custom extensions, the odd URL structures and the data nobody documented.
We also migrate stores to headless setups, where a new React front end runs on top of WordPress, Magento or Shopify as the CMS.
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Frequently Asked
Common questions about ecommerce migration.
It depends on the size of your store and how much custom functionality needs rebuilding. A straightforward product and design move is much quicker than one with custom integrations and API connections. The discovery phase gives you a firm timeline before any work starts.
No. The new site is built and tested on a staging site while your current store keeps trading as normal, so the only disruption is the switchover itself.
Every migration is quoted after discovery, because the cost depends on your catalogue, your integrations and how much of the design and functionality needs rebuilding. Get in touch and we'll talk you through it.
Not if the migration is planned properly. Every URL is mapped and redirected, and we monitor rankings for 30 days after launch so anything that drops gets fixed quickly.
Yes. Customer accounts and order history can be moved across. Passwords can't, because each platform stores them differently. Instead, customers get an account activation email to set a new password, so they can log straight back in.
Yes. We migrate stores to headless setups, where a new React front end runs on top of WordPress or Magento as the CMS.