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According to Forbes Business Intelligence, by 2027, the global e-commerce market is expected to top $7.9 trillion. This means that it makes good financial sense to ensure your e-commerce website is as functional and customer-friendly as possible.
To confirm this, you should verify that you’re currently on the right e-commerce platform and whether or not replatforming can solve any issues you’re currently facing.
Let’s look at how you can benefit from replatforming and how you can migrate your store with minimal inconveniences.
What is E-commerce Replatforming?
E-commerce replatforming implies migrating one or more online store systems from their current system to a new one, usually with the goal of better matching the growing and evolving needs of customers and the business.
The Digital Commerce 360 Report found that nearly half, 46%, of online retailers are considering replatforming to stay competitive, improving their store's speed, reliability, and security. Some other popular motivators for replatforming include:
- Boosting user experience.
- Achieving better integration with marketplaces or other business systems.
- Enhancing customizability.
- Raising scalability.
- Improving cost-efficiency.
Replatforming vs. Migration: What’s the Difference?
Though the industry often uses these two terms as synonyms, a sharp line divides Migration and Replatforming. A clear grasp of this divide is decisive when you plan a project timeline and budget.
- E-commerce Migration is the action—the technical labor of data transfer. It is the process of extracting product catalogs, customer records, and order history from one database and loading them into another.
- E-commerce Replatforming is the strategy—the choice to replace the foundation to gain a capability you do not have today.
Think of it as a physical move:
-
Migration is the act of loading boxes onto a truck. You can migrate data to a new server or a new version of the same software (e.g., Magento 1 to Magento 2).
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Replatforming is the decision to leave the house because the foundation is cracked or the floor plan no longer fits. You move to acquire the benefits of a new location.
Here is a direct comparison of the differences:
| Feature | Migration (The Action) | Replatforming (The Strategy) |
|---|---|---|
| Primary Goal | Keep data intact and limit downtime. | Gain speed, scale, or a superior feature set. |
| Scope of Change | Data moves; the frontend may look identical. | Data moves and the design/functionality shifts. |
| Software Change | Can be an upgrade (same vendor, e.g., Shopify 1.0 to 2.0). | Always a switch (one vendor to another, e.g., WooCommerce to Shopify). |
| Common Example | Relocate a database to a faster cloud server. | Abandon Magento for BigCommerce to shed server maintenance tasks. |
| Technical Lift | Lower to Medium (focus on data maps). | High (Requires new theme development, rebuild of custom apps, and fresh API links). |
Why this matters:
Many merchants ask for a "migration" and think it will make their store faster or sell more. But if you just move old, messy data to a new place, you bring the mess with you. Replatforming means you stop to clean house and build a better setup. That is what actually leads to more speed, fewer crashes, and lower costs.
Pre-Replatforming Considerations
Before starting any e-commerce replatforming project, you should know what your site's current status and performance are, and have a good idea of how you want the site to perform in the future. Think strategically about your goals and objectives.
In the first step, define your business objectives. For example, do you want to serve current customers better? Lower your cart abandonment rate? Or do you want to grow and scale your e-commerce business? Or, you know you need to protect business data better and provide a more elegant and user-friendly customer experience.
After you have defined what you want to achieve from replatforming your store, you can then:
- Assess costs and establish an e-commerce platform migration budget with benchmarks for break-even and profitability.
- Evaluate which platform features and functionality will be needed.
- Locate a team that can perform the desired migration within your budget.
- Ensure that the team has appropriate qualifications and experience.
- Set a timeframe for migration, including milestones and stages.
When choosing a team to perform your e-commerce store replatform and migration, look for replatforming providers who have excellent customer support and provide optimal availability. You can work with the team to determine how the migration will impact your store over time, and how adaptable the new tech and platform will be.
Steps for Successful Replatforming
Replatforming your e-commerce store is much like moving to a new brick-and-mortar facility. The process involves careful planning, thorough preparation, and strategic execution.
Before diving into the technical aspects, make sure to involve all relevant stakeholders. Engage your team, gather their input, and collect ideas about the necessary functionalities your new platform should support. Consider customer and staff pain points, which can inform your decisions and help tailor the platform to meet everyone's needs effectively.
Once you have a clear understanding of your goals and objectives for the replatforming project, you can proceed with the following steps:
1. Research and Choose a New E-Commerce Platform
Start by researching various e-commerce platforms available in the market. Evaluate them based on your specific requirements, such as scalability, ease of use, integration capabilities, and cost. Consider both your current needs and future growth plans, ensuring the platform can accommodate your business's expansion.
2. Back-Up Your Current Data
Before making any changes, it's essential to back up all existing data from your current platform. This includes customer information, product catalogs, order histories, and any other critical data. Ensuring that you have a secure and complete backup will protect you from potential data loss during the migration process.
3. Design and Develop the New Site on the Target Platform
With the new platform chosen, begin the design and development phase. This step involves creating a site layout that aligns with your brand’s identity and meets your customers’ expectations. Pay attention to user experience and user interface design principles to ensure the new site is visually appealing and easy to navigate.
4. Migrate Your Store Data Using Secure Protocols
Data migration is a critical step that involves transferring all your store’s data from the old platform to the new one. Use secure protocols to ensure that the migration process is safe and that no data is compromised. It's vital to verify the integrity of the data after migration to confirm that everything has been accurately transferred.
5. Optimize the Checkout Experience
The checkout process is one of the key parts of your e-commerce site. Optimize it to reduce cart abandonment and improve conversion rates. This might involve simplifying the checkout process, offering multiple payment options, and ensuring that the checkout is secure and mobile-friendly.
6. Conduct an SEO Audit Before Launch
Before going live, conduct a comprehensive SEO audit of your new site. Ensure that all your existing SEO efforts, including meta tags, keywords, URLs, and backlinks, are properly transferred and optimized on the new platform. This will help maintain your site’s search engine rankings and prevent any loss of traffic post-migration.
7. Rigorously Test the New Platform
Testing is an indispensable part of the replatforming process. Perform extensive testing to identify and fix any issues before the official launch. This includes testing for functionality, performance, security, and compatibility across different devices and browsers. Ensure that the site is fully operational and provides a seamless user experience.
8. Launch the New E-commerce Site
After all tests are complete, and the site is functioning optimally, you can proceed to launch the new e-commerce site. Monitor the site closely during the initial phase after launch to quickly address any unforeseen issues. Communicate the changes to your customers, highlighting new features and improvements to encourage engagement with the new platform.
Post-Migration Strategies
After completing data migration and relaunching your store, it’s crucial to monitor performance metrics closely. Your replatforming team, along with other stakeholders, should focus on continuously optimizing the user experience.
Strong customer support and effective ways to gather customer feedback are essential in this phase. Once your replatformed store is stable and thriving, it’s time to think about the future.
Even though the idea of replatforming again might be the last thing on your mind, “future-proofing” your store is a vital part of the process. During your replatforming planning, your tech team can help implement strategies to ensure your e-commerce store can easily handle future upgrades, changes, and adaptations.
Get in touch
with our expert
Discuss your project requirements and get a free estimate.
Get in touch
with our expert
Discuss your project requirements and get a free estimate.
Replatforming Success Story
Is all of this worth it? Replatforming can indeed have a transformative impact on your business, as several success stories demonstrate.
Beardbrand, an e-commerce brand specializing in men's beard and grooming products, experienced significant growth after replatforming to Shopify Plus. This move resulted in a 57% increase in average order value and a 69% boost in revenue. By redesigning its site's appearance and functionality, Beardbrand was able to enhance the user experience, streamline the customer journey, and significantly increase daily sales.
Similarly, Capital One moved from an outdated mainframe system to a modern, cloud-based platform. This migration not only enhanced their customer-facing e-commerce services but also simplified future updates and innovations. With the help of cloud technology, Capital One improved security, reduced operational risks, and gained the flexibility needed to adapt to changing market demands.
In other words, whether you’re a small business or a large enterprise, upgrading your e-commerce platform can lead to significant growth, improved customer satisfaction, and a stronger competitive edge in the market.
Request E-commerce Migration Services: Replatform with Experts!
Transform Agency offers a secure, efficient, and seamless migration of any e-commerce store from platform to platform: any platform. When it's time to replatform, don't hinder your business by staying with technology that's inconvenient for customers as well as your business. Transform Agency's replatforming and migration services include:
- Personalized Migration Roadmap – A full audit of your store's functionality and extensions, and a plan of activities required to migrate your store to a new platform.
- Essential Data Migration – Move your key data securely and accurately from one platform to another, including products, customers, and orders. Transform Agency can offer a smooth transition with disruption kept to an absolute minimum.
- Migrating Extensions – You will get a full list of extensions used by your platform and will install all necessary functionality.
- Quality Assurance and Testing – Your site will not go live without thorough testing for compatibility with devices and other systems, an excellent user experience, proper security, and optimal performance.
- Theme migration – Whether your store needs a new theme or not, Transform Agency can migrate your current theme or install and test a new store theme, optimizing and adjusting your theme for improved speed and user experience.
- Post-migration support – For two months following your migration, Transform Agency will provide support to ensure your store runs as fast as possible and works the way you want it to work.
Contact Transform Agency to start the migration process and create the e-commerce solution you and your business need!
FAQs
How much does replatforming cost?
There is no single price. Costs range from a few thousand dollars for a small shop on a basic template to over $100,000 for a large enterprise build with custom code. The total depends on three things: the platform license fee, the cost to design and build the new site, and the cost to move and clean your data.
What is an example of replatforming?
A common example is a business that outgrows WooCommerce and moves to Shopify Plus. They do this because they no longer want to handle server updates or security patches. Another example is a brand that leaves Magento for BigCommerce so they can connect more easily to Amazon and Walmart marketplaces.
How long does it take to replatform a website?
Replatforming can take anywhere from a few weeks to six months or up to a year, depending on the size and scope of a project. Experienced professionals in e-commerce solution development can help to minimize downtime and speed up the process. Replatforming doesn't need to be time-consuming, but it does require sufficient time to ensure a secure, stable, and user-friendly e-commerce website.
How do I migrate a website without losing SEO?
To protect your rankings, you must keep the same URL structure or set up proper 301 redirects from every old page to its new match. You also need to move your metadata (titles and descriptions) and keep your site architecture similar. The biggest mistake is forgetting to submit a new XML sitemap to Google Search Console after the move.
Alex excels in creating and approving customization architecture, ensuring robust and efficient solutions for e-commerce platforms. His expertise in Magento allows him to effectively manage tech resources and drive technical projects to successful completion.
Alex excels in creating and approving customization architecture, ensuring robust and efficient solutions for e-commerce platforms. His expertise in Magento allows him to effectively manage tech resources and drive technical projects to successful completion.
