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In This Article:
What is E-commerce Replatforming?
E-commerce Migration Types
Pre-Replatforming Considerations
Steps for Successful Replatforming
Research and Choose a New E-Commerce Platform
Back-Up Your Current Data
Design and Develop the New Site on the Target Platform
Migrate Your Store Data Using Secure Protocols
Optimize the Checkout Experience
Conduct an SEO Audit Before Launch
Rigorously Test the New Platform
Launch the New E-commerce Site
Post-Migration Strategies
Replatforming Success Story
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.
E-commerce Migration Types
There's no "one size fits all" with e-commerce replatforming. Some stores choose to completely, simultaneously migrate their current platform to a new one, aka "like for like" or platform-to-platform migration.
Other e-commerce businesses may choose to migrate to Magento 2 (Adobe Commerce), or they may find it's more beneficial to move from Magento to Shopify.
Typical types of replatforming are:
- Partial Replatforming. Migrating part of the platform; for example, just the front end or just the back end.
- Platform Consolidation. Merging diverse systems into a single platform.
- Phased Migration. Migrating store components one at a time on a phased-in schedule.
- Monolithic to Microservice Migration. Transitioning a traditional all-in-one e-commerce platform to a group of integrated microservices that work together using APIs.
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.
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
What is e-commerce migration?
E-commerce migration, also known as replatforming, is the process of migrating an e-commerce store's data and functionality from one tech platform to another. You'll probably hear the term “migration” used in reference to a platform-to-platform migration process.
How do I replatform a website?
After you assess your store's current capabilities and work with stakeholders to determine gaps in performance and goals and objectives for new functionality and performance, you can choose a tech platform or a selection of microservices working together for your replatform project. There are several steps involved in replatforming a website, and professional guidance is strongly advised.
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.
What is a website redesign process?
The website redesign process involves an audit of your current site's capabilities and functionality, including the shopping experience, identification and prioritization of essential future capabilities and functionality, setting a budget and timeline, and completion of the redesign. Following the redesign and migration, it's important to conduct quality assurance and rigorous testing prior to the re-launch of the new website.
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.
