by Fatema Mulla

Moving your eCommerce store from one platform to another involves a lot of careful consideration, planning, queries and concerns. Many merchants are quite wary of migrating their store, and have their fair share of concerns regarding the risks they could face.

Moving your eCommerce store from one platform to another involves a lot of careful consideration, planning, queries and concerns. Many merchants are quite wary of migrating their store, and have their fair share of concerns regarding the risks they could face.

While there may certainly be a number of risks involved when replatforming your store, there are many ways you can work around it to ensure that your replatforming process runs as smoothly as possible.

Here are some of the most common replatforming risks eCommerce merchants tend to have, and how you can avoid them:

Delays and timeline changes

When it comes to replatforming, all eCommerce stores will have different timeline requirements. Timeline majorly depends on the scope of your project in general, and the nature of your store.

The key to avoiding any delays and timeline issues is ensuring you have a solid plan in place. Whilst plans tend to change along the way for projects of such nature, having a detailed plan and schedule in place to follow can make a huge difference and keep things moving.

As eCommerce consultant Paul Rogers of Vervaunt mentioned in our guest blog “Your Replatforming Questions Answered”:

“As long as you scope out your project carefully, cater for any integrations and 3rd parties and bare your long-term requirements in mind, replatforming can be a transformative moment for your eCommerce business”.

Budget Constraints

Moving your store from one platform to the next requires investment, and so can only work if you have the appropriate budget. Working together with your agency will help you collectively scope out the project and be fully honest about what is achievable and what isn’t the best idea for your store.

Work closely with your agency as they will be aware of your budget, and so will be able to give you the best recommendations regarding apps, plugins, themes etc that will best fit both your needs and budget.

Your agency will be best positioned to helping you allocate your budget evenly and where it is best needed or required. Make sure to liaise with them so that you can prioritise requirements and ensure you’re investing the right amount into the right elements.

Data Migration Challenges

For stores which have large inventories and a lot of data and content, migration of data can be challenging. This can be one of the more demanding aspects of replatforming for many merchants.

However there are large variety of secure and safe apps and plugins eCommerce merchants can use when replatforming to simplify data migration processes.

For example, we worked with thelabwarehouse.com to replatform their store from Magento 1 to Shopify, and used an app called Excelify to mass migrate their products. Despite their large number of SKU’s and product data, using the app made the process much more simple and easy.

Indecision

Indecision can be a major factor affecting replatforming projects. The project as a whole requires plenty of thought and planning, and so finding the best fit for your store can be a challenge.

If you’re working with your wider team, there can be a wide range of different ideas, concerns and queries that are brought forward, which can certainly cause some confusion and indecision.

It’s important to identify key decision makers who are responsible for signing off any aspects of the project. Implement a process in which everything is finalised by the chosen key decision makers to ensure everything is kept running smoothly.

Impact on SEO

Most eCommerce merchants are aware that replatforming can have a direct impact on their SEO. This, consequently, is another key reason why they may be reluctant to replatform their site.

However, there are a number of different techniques that can be carried out to ensure minimal impact on SEO. This can include implementing cart API migration services to reduce 404 page errors, or auto-adding URL redirects to maintain rankings and ensure SEO is not affected.

Summary

Replatforming brings with it many concerns and queries for eCommerce merchants who may be unsure about moving their store to a different platform. Whilst these concerns are valid and understandable when embarking on a project of such nature, they can easily be avoided and worked on to ensure the migration runs as smoothly as possible.

If you want to know more about our replatforming projects, or how we can help you replatform your store, just get in touch with our friendly team and we’ll be happy to help.

Picture of the author

Sign up to our newsletter for the latest ecommerce goings on and site launches.

By providing my email I agree for Statement to contact me via email with eCommerce advice, events and Shopify launches. Your data is stored securely and we never pass it on to third parties.