The Atelier Perspective
A replatform is the only project in ecommerce where doing nothing is a legitimate outcome. Sometimes the platform is not the constraint: the catalog structure is wrong, the checkout is fine, the real problem is a merchandising rule nobody has revisited since 2023, and a migration would carry all of it across at considerable expense. So the first question we answer is whether you should move at all, and we answer it in the first two weeks.
Proof, because the only way a brand can be sure a migration went well is to have measured what it was before. We take the baseline on day one: organic sessions and revenue by template, ranking positions for the top two hundred commercial queries, conversion rate by device, page speed on the product and collection templates, and the revenue of the twenty pages that matter most. Ninety days after launch, we read the same numbers against it. Very few agencies will agree to that in writing, which is the reason to ask.
01
Strategy Before Migration
A platform move begins with three lists: what is changing, what must be preserved exactly, and what is being fixed because the move gives permission. Without them the new storefront inherits the same structural problems in a more expensive environment. So we start with a platform fit assessment against the actual business model, the B2B and wholesale requirements, the subscription and loyalty programs already running, the tax and multi currency reality, the ERP and the warehouse, and the way the merchandising team needs to work on a Tuesday afternoon. Then a decision document, and a scope that names what is out.
02
Continuity Before Launch
Products, variants, images, metafields, content, customer accounts and their password hashes, order history, subscription contracts, loyalty balances, reviews, gift card balances, store credit, and every URL on the site all have to arrive intact. Each of those is a separate migration with its own failure mode, and the ones that break most often are the least glamorous: review counts detached from products, loyalty balances that reset a member to zero, and subscription contracts that need the customer to re authorize payment. We map them individually, we test them on staging with real data rather than samples, and we decide early which are moving and which are being archived.
03
Platform fit Before Customization
Shopify Plus and BigCommerce are both capable foundations and the right answer depends on the business, not on the fashion. Shopify Plus generally wins on checkout, on the app ecosystem, on merchandising speed, and on the number of people who already know how to work in it. BigCommerce holds up better on complex B2B pricing, on multi storefront setups, and where native catalog complexity would otherwise require an app stack. Custom development is what you do after the platform's own patterns have been exhausted, not instead of learning them. Every customization added before launch is a thing that will need maintaining in year three.
04
Readiness Before Go Live
The best migrations feel unremarkable because the risk was removed in the weeks before, not managed on the night. That means a full staging environment with production data, a QA matrix walked device by device and browser by browser, checkout tested with real cards and every payment method, tax and shipping rules verified against live orders, the redirect map tested in bulk before deployment rather than after, and a launch window chosen against the merchandising calendar rather than the development one. Nobody replatforms in the week before Black Friday. Several people try.
Our Ecommerce Website Migration Services
Platform Strategy & Migration Planning
Two to three weeks. We audit the current storefront, interview the people who use it daily, document integrations, and model the total cost of the move including the licence, the apps, the development, and the operational hours nobody puts in the budget. The output is a recommendation with a phased plan, a risk register, and a data migration specification detailed enough for a developer to work from. If the honest recommendation is to stay and fix, that is what the document says.
Data & Catalog Migration
Catalog mapping is where a migration is won or lost. Product types, options and variants, collection logic, tags, metafields, and the taxonomy that the navigation and the filtering will be built on all have to be redrawn rather than copied, because the old structure encodes fifteen years of workarounds. We normalize the catalog first, then migrate: products and variants with their images and alt text, customers with order history and password hashes where the platform allows a silent transition, reviews reattached by SKU, subscriptions moved with re authorization handled deliberately, loyalty balances reconciled, gift cards and store credit carried at their exact value. Every migration runs twice, once on staging for QA and once for real, with a row count reconciliation both times.
Shopify and BigCommerce Build Execution
We build Shopify and BigCommerce stores that work just as well behind the scenes as they do for customers, combining development, operational efficiency, and CRO-focused user experiences.
URL Mapping & Redirect Strategy
Every URL on the old site gets a destination, decided by a person rather than by a pattern match. Products to products. A merged collection goes to the page that inherits its intent, not to the homepage. Discontinued products go to their category rather than to a 404. Blog and content URLs stay where they are, because that is where the inbound links sit. Then single hop 301s, chains flattened, verified in bulk against a crawl of the old site within an hour of launch. The first crawl after a replatform sets the recovery curve.
SEO & Technical Preservation
Rankings are lost at a replatform for seven repeatable reasons: redirects, metadata, structured data, internal linking, page speed, an indexable staging site, and collection copy dropped in the redesign. Each has a control, and our ecommerce SEO team applies them from week one.
Shopify Plus & BigCommerce Build Execution
The build itself: theme development on Shopify's Online Store 2.0 sections so the merchandising team can work without a developer, checkout extensibility and Shop Pay configuration, B2B on Shopify or BigCommerce's price list logic where wholesale is in scope, Markets and multi currency, the app stack chosen for the smallest footprint that meets the requirement, and the integrations, ERP, PIM, warehouse, tax, subscriptions, loyalty, and reviews, built and tested individually before they are tested together. As a Shopify Plus agency partner we would rather ship fewer custom components and hand you a store your own team can change.
QA & Launch Readiness
A QA matrix rather than a checklist: every template, every device class, every payment method, every shipping zone, every discount type, every customer state including the logged in returning subscriber with a loyalty balance and an active subscription, which is the account that breaks first. Load testing where the traffic justifies it. A DNS and go live runbook with an owner per line and a rollback position. A migration is a sequence of reversible decisions until the DNS changes, and then it is not, which is why the hour before is the wrong time to be discovering anything.
Which Platforms Do We Migrate To?
We migrate brands to Shopify and Shopify Plus and to BigCommerce, from Magento and Adobe Commerce, WooCommerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, legacy custom builds, and from one another.
Many brands run several platforms. Few have decided why. A migration is the rare moment when those decisions are all open at once, which is what makes it worth doing carefully and worth doing rarely.
The platform may change. The standard never does.
Our pricing
Choose the plan that best fits your needs. From a solid foundation to a fully optimized solution.
Foundation
Basic
$5,000
$5,000
Planning
For brands deciding whether, when, and how to move.
What's Included:
Platform evaluation and recommendation against real requirements
Catalog, data, and URL mapping
SEO preservation and redirect strategy
Integration, app, and operational dependency mapping
Migration roadmap with a risk plan and a realistic timeline
Monthly reporting on search conversion and revenue contribution
Signature
Most popular
$30,000
$30,000
Project
For growing brands moving platforms without losing what they have built.
What's Included:
Everything from planning, executed
Theme build on the new platform
Data and catalog migration with validation
SEO preservation and 301 redirect execution, monitored through launch
Apps and integrations re-implemented and tested
QA, launch, and post-launch stabilization
Bespoke
Premium
Custom
Custom
Contact us for more
For established brands with complexity a fixed scope cannot hold.
What's Included:
Everything in the full replatform
Multi-store or multi-market migrations
Custom data transformation and middleware
Phased rollout and parallel running
A dedicated migration lead and engineering team
Continued partnership through the first quarter of live trading
What moves the number: catalog size and product data complexity, the count of integrations and custom flows, content volume, whether B2B, wholesale, or subscriptions are in play, and multi-currency or multi-market requirements. We run SEO ourselves, so redirect and preservation work is not handed to a third party and hoped for.
Scale deliberately.
Automate intelligently.
Expand confidently.
Where does platform limitation currently restrict your growth trajectory?
FAQ
Everything you need to know about our Replatforming approach.
What does an ecommerce replatforming agency do?
An ecommerce replatforming agency plans and executes the move of a storefront from one commerce platform to another, and owns everything that has to survive the move. That covers the platform fit decision, catalog and taxonomy redesign, migration of products, customers, orders, reviews, subscriptions and loyalty balances, URL mapping and redirects, SEO preservation, the new build, QA, launch, and the stabilization period afterwards.
Will I lose SEO rankings when I replatform?
You will lose rankings only for reasons that are preventable, and there are seven of them: missing or chained redirects, metadata regenerated by the new theme, structured data dropped, internal linking flattened by a new navigation, collection page content removed during the redesign, page speed regressions from a new app stack, and a staging site left indexable. Each has a control, and the controls belong in the plan from week one rather than in the launch checklist.
Should I move from BigCommerce to Shopify Plus?
Not automatically. Shopify Plus generally wins on checkout conversion, app ecosystem, and how quickly a merchandising team can work without a developer. BigCommerce holds up well on complex B2B price lists, multi storefront setups, and native catalog complexity that would otherwise need apps. The decision should be made against your B2B requirements, your integration surface, and your team's capacity, and sometimes the answer is to stay and fix the catalog.
What happens to my customer accounts, subscriptions, and loyalty balances?
They migrate, but each one differently and each with a failure mode. Customer accounts can usually move with order history and password hashes so the transition is silent. Subscription contracts often require payment re authorization, which has to be communicated before launch rather than discovered by the customer. Loyalty balances and store credit must be reconciled at exact value, and reviews reattached by SKU or the count on every product page resets.
Can you replatform without downtime?
In practice the storefront is unavailable for the length of the DNS switch and the final data sync, which is minutes rather than hours when the sequence has been rehearsed. What is avoidable is functional downtime: a checkout that accepts a payment method it should not, a shipping zone that quotes wrong, a discount code that fails on the first morning. Those are QA failures, not infrastructure ones, and they are what the launch runbook exists to prevent.