eCommerce replatforming guide: What no one tells you about doing it right

According to commercetools, 77% of businesses reported a strong sense of urgency to replatform to a new eCommerce platform in 2025, due to limited scalability and poor user experiences. This highlights a broader shift in how businesses are thinking about replatforming, not as a routine technical upgrade, but as a strategic decision with long-term implications. Replatforming can significantly influence how your digital store scales, how teams operate, and how effectively customer experiences are delivered. That’s why it’s essential to evaluate whether a platform change truly aligns with your business goals before committing to it. 

In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about eCommerce replatforming, from what it is, the key benefits and potential risks, to when it’s the right time to make the move. You’ll also find a clear roadmap to help you manage the transition smoothly and build a future-ready digital foundation.

Definitions

eCommerce replatforming is the strategic process of moving your online store to a new eCommerce platform that resolves severe limitations in functionality, scalability, performance, security, and the ability to meet modern user experiences and customer expectations that the legacy platform can no longer handle.

Businesses need to note that replatforming involves a transition in both the backend (from databases and system architecture to ERP/CRM integrations) and the frontend (including interface and user experience). Therefore, replatforming is a highly complex undertaking that requires careful planning and execution.

To put it in a more easier way to understand, let’s think of a small grocery store operating in an old, cramped house. There’s no air conditioning, limited shelves, and customers struggling to move around. The owner decides to relocate to a larger, modern store with better facilities, an order management system, and faster checkout. However, the transition isn’t as simple as just moving in. The owner must carefully pack and transport inventory, reconfigure displays, and set up new systems before welcoming customers again.

eCommerce replatforming works the same way. Your current platform may still function, but its scalability, speed, and customer experience limitations can hold your business back. Moving to a new one offers better infrastructure, stronger integrations, and greater growth potential. Yet, like relocating a physical store, it requires thorough preparation to transfer data, configure systems, and ensure a seamless customer experience.

eCommerce replatform vs migrations

Replatforming and migration are closely related and often used interchangeably, yet they differ significantly in scope and purpose. The following breakdown clarifies how they connect and where they diverge.

• Migration is the broader, more comprehensive process. It can involve moving your store to a new platform, switching hosting providers, upgrading your CMS, or even changing editions. The main goal is to ensure that data, content, and functionality are successfully transferred while maintaining business continuity. Migration is primarily an operational and technical task, but its scope can vary depending on the scale of the change.

• Replatforming, on the other hand, is more specific. It refers to moving your eCommerce store to a new platform, which impacts both the frontend and backend systems. Replatforming often requires migration tasks such as transferring data, themes, and extensions. Additionally, it includes other tasks such as redesigning the workflow, optimising performance, or training the internal team on the new platform.

Businesses typically choose to replatform when their current platform begins to limit growth, operational efficiency, or the quality of customer experiences.

• The legacy platform struggles to deliver fast, flexible, and personalised customer experiences, often resulting in slow load times, rigid frontend design, and a fragmented checkout journey.

• Operations become increasingly inefficient due to manual processes, disconnected systems, and limited automation capabilities.

• Performance becomes inconsistent as the platform cannot reliably handle high traffic, large product catalogues, or peak order volumes.

• The legacy platform limits the ability to expand into new markets, channels, or business models without significant development effort.

• Security and compliance become harder to maintain due to outdated infrastructure, limited updates, or a lack of built-in standards.

• Overall costs continue to rise as the business relies on ongoing maintenance, custom development, and workarounds to support growth.

A well-aligned platform can remove these constraints and unlock value across several critical areas of the business.

• Customer experience excellence: Deliver richer, faster, and more engaging shopping experiences that meet and exceed customer expectations. A modern platform can empower businesses to design intuitive, responsive interfaces and a frictionless checkout journey that reduces abandonment and strengthens brand loyalty. In addition, it often comes with built-in or easily integrated tools for targeted campaigns, A/B testing, dynamic content, and loyalty programs. These features enable businesses to deliver more personalised experiences and enhance overall customer satisfaction.

• Operational efficiency: Introduce upgraded infrastructure, automation tools, and improved data management. This helps streamline operations, reduce manual workload, and increase the speed and reliability of daily processes such as order fulfilment or inventory updates.

• Scalable performance: Ensure consistent speed and reliability even during periods of high traffic, extensive product catalogues, or surging order volumes. It provides the technical resilience needed to support business growth without compromising user experience.

• Further growth and diversification capability: Empower businesses to explore a wide range of growth opportunities with minimal disruption. This can include expanding into new markets, reaching additional customer segments, launching new sales channels, introducing new products or services, implementing multi-brand or multi-store strategies, or adopting hybrid business models such as subscriptions, marketplaces, or franchises. With built-in capabilities for multi-store management, localisation, and multi-language or multi-currency support, enterprises can scale operations globally with confidence and agility.

• Trust, security, and compliance: Build with advanced security architecture, regular patches, and automatic updates to address emerging threats. Along with compliance frameworks such as GDPR or PCI DSS, these measures protect customer data, strengthen brand trust, and minimise legal and operational risks.

• Long-term cost savings: Decrease overall costs over time once the right platform is chosen. For example, modern eCommerce solutions could minimise recurring upgrade expenses and allow the addition of multiple features with minimal effort as the business grows.

Replatforming carries certain risks during the planning and execution phases that businesses should be aware of. These risks can include: 

• Cost overruns and budget pressure: Replatforming represents a significant financial investment. Initial estimates often fail to capture the full complexity of custom integrations, data cleanup, and unforeseen development challenges. As a result, cost overruns can quickly strain budgets, particularly when project timelines are extended.

• Architectural and logic conflicts: Different eCommerce platforms operate on distinct architectures and business logic. Migrating from one to another may cause incompatibilities in workflows, API connections, or data structures. Without careful planning and adaptation, these conflicts can disrupt automation flows and create long-term technical debt.

• Unexpected website downtime: System failures or unexpected downtime during replatforming or immediately after launch can lead to direct revenue loss. Beyond the immediate impact, such disruptions can erode customer trust and lead to a long-term decline in retention.

• SEO disruption: Incorrectly managing URL redirects, site structure, and content migration can cause search engines to de-index or penalise the new site. This results in a sharp, often long-lasting loss of organic search traffic, crippling sales performance.

• Data migration complexity and potential data loss: Moving vast amounts of historical data (customer profiles, order history, product catalogues, reviews) is a highly technical process. Any data corruption, loss, or incorrect mapping can result in operational failures, compromised service quality, and compliance risks.

• Low employee adaptation and change resistance: A new platform often introduces new workflows and operational models. If internal teams lack sufficient technical capability or resist change, system adoption may be slow or incomplete. This limits the platform’s effectiveness and diminishes overall ROI.

In short, without the right strategy, replatforming can cause spiralling costs, data loss, and operational/ sales disruptions. With 19 years of eCommerce experience, On Tap can help you craft the right replatforming strategy to achieve greater cost efficiency. Start with our eCommerce consultation service to make sure your transition is smooth, cost-efficient, and future-ready today!

Replatforming is a significant and resource-intensive undertaking that should be viewed as a long-term strategic investment rather than a quick fix. Alongside the benefits it can unlock and the risks it introduces, the level of investment required is a critical factor businesses must evaluate when considering a platform change.

Short-term investment

The primary short-term investment lies in the initial planning and implementation phases. These short-term investments are typically one-time costs incurred during the replatform project. These stages are usually handled by a reliable development team or an expert agency, with the required scope and budget varying based on specific components such as:

• Data migration: Transferring product catalogues, customer profiles, order history, and other critical data requires careful cleaning, mapping, and validation. Complex data structures will increase effort, time, and cost.

• Customisation and feature development: If the new platform lacks specific capabilities from the old site and these cannot be migrated through third-party extensions, businesses may need to rebuild or enhance those features. Investment will depend on the complexity of the features being developed.

• System integration: Connecting the new platform to ERP, CRM, PIM, payment gateways, and warehouse management systems ensures seamless data flow across all business functions. Investment may vary based on which systems the business chooses to integrate and the complexity of those connections.

• UI/UX design and frontend optimisation: Replatforming also offers an opportunity to enhance the store’s interface, improving usability and conversion rates. Depending on business needs, investment may include making visual design, responsive layouts, accessibility adjustments, and performance optimisation to ensure a seamless and engaging customer experience.

Long-term investment

After migrating to the new platform, businesses must account for recurring costs for ongoing use, maintenance, and scalability. Key components include:

• Platform licensing and hosting: Even after go-live, recurring costs arise from licensing fees, hosting services, and platform subscriptions. The pricing model varies by platform type:

• SaaS platforms manage hosting, security, and updates, but involve recurring licence and app fees, with flexibility limited to available extensions.

• Open-source platforms offer full ownership and flexibility for deep customisation but require significant internal or partner resources for development, hosting, updates, and maintenance.

• PaaS platforms offer managed infrastructure, built-in security, APIs, and scalability while allowing custom development. However, businesses are responsible for maintaining application features and implementing security updates, which can add ongoing costs.

• Third-party extensions and apps: Typically, extensions and apps charge on a subscription basis, representing an ongoing cost that businesses need to factor into their long-term budget.

• Maintenance and post-launch support: Post-launch, budgets must cover bug fixes, technical optimisations, updates, and security patches to ensure the platform remains stable, secure, and fully operational. Regular maintenance also includes scaling infrastructure as traffic grows or features are added.

Overall, ecommerce replatforming requires a substantial commitment of resources, time, and organisational effort. The investment involved should be considered in the context of the limitations it is intended to address, particularly where performance, scalability, or operational constraints can no longer be resolved through optimisation alone. In these situations, understanding the full scope of the investment helps businesses move forward with clarity and realistic expectations.

Once the key considerations to replatform have been clearly defined, it’s time to move forward with the execution phase. As noted, eCommerce replatforming is a large-scale, highly complex initiative that involves multiple stages. Adhering to a structured process ensures that your investment delivers the intended business transformation and minimises potential risks.

At this early stage, businesses need to clearly define who will be on the development team, as this is a critical factor that can determine the success of the entire project. Generally, businesses adopt one of three models:

• In-house: Provides maximum control and lower long-term maintenance costs. Still, because replatforming is usually a large-scale project, an in-house team alone may struggle to handle it unless it is exceptionally experienced and well-resourced.

• Agency: Utilises specialised expertise and proven implementation experience. It’s advisable to choose an agency with extensive industry experience that can support diverse business models. This approach suits companies that lack in-house technical resources or seek a faster go-to-market timeline.

• Hybrid model: A collaborative approach where internal teams and external agencies share responsibilities based on their respective strengths. For example, your team may handle UI and customer experience, while the agency focuses on backend integration, performance optimisation, or system connectivity. This model balances external expertise with internal knowledge, offering both flexibility and cost efficiency.

The business should also establish a dedicated in-house team to support the project throughout its lifecycle. This team should include representatives from all key functions, not just the development IT team, but also Marketing, Operations (Inventory and Fulfilment), and Finance, since all of them will operate on the new eCommerce platform. Doing so ensures that business requirements are captured early and that technical feasibility is carefully considered at every stage.

This initial phase sets the foundation for the entire project by answering the fundamental question: What are we trying to achieve that the current platform cannot support? Below are the key steps to clearly define these goals.

• Deep gap analysis: Systematically review the current platform's limitations across performance (page load speed, peak traffic handling), functionality (missing features like subscriptions or advanced personalisation), and technical debt. Beyond all these limitations, if the platform’s total cost of ownership (TCO) increasingly exceeds your expected budget, this is another key factor businesses should evaluate.

Pro tip: For this step, consider using diagnostic tools like AuditIQ, which provides a comprehensive 360-degree assessment of your website. It will help you identify underlying issues and receive instant alerts.

• Establish key performance indicators (KPIs): Once you’ve clearly defined the problems to be solved, the next step is to set measurable success metrics for the new platform. These KPIs should directly align with your business goals and the issues identified (e.g., reduce page load time by 30%, improve conversion rate by 10% or enable multi-region sales).

Choosing the right platform forms the cornerstone of a successful replatforming project. It should be assessed from both business and technical perspectives to ensure alignment with long-term goals and operational realities. Key factors to consider include:

• Architecture: Select the architecture that best suits your business needs:

• Monolithic: An all-in-one system that offers simpler setup and maintenance, ideal for teams seeking straightforward management.

• Headless: Decouples presentation from backend to support multiple front ends (web, mobile, apps).

• Composable: A best-of-breed architecture that assembles independent services (search, PIM, payments, etc.) via APIs for maximum flexibility and scalability.

• Microservices: Divides functionalities into smaller, independently deployable services, enabling higher scalability, agility, and easier long-term upgrades.

• Deployment model: Choose the deployment approach (SaaS, open-source, PaaS) that aligns with your operational capacity and growth plan.

• Feature completeness: Evaluate the breadth of the platform’s native capabilities (e.g., product search, CMS, SEO tools). Comprehensive out-of-the-box features reduce initial development costs. Also assess advanced strategic capabilities such as B2B functionality, AI-driven personalisation, complex internationalisation (multi-currency/language), and robust loyalty program support.

• Integration capability: Evaluate the strength of the integration ecosystem, including stable, well-documented APIs and pre-built connectors for systems like ERP, PIM, and CRM. Weak integration is one of the most common causes of cost overruns and delays.

• Ease of customisation and development: Consider how easily your team can adapt workflows, interfaces, and extensions to unique business needs without excessive complexity or code dependencies.

• Site performance and reliability: Evaluate the platform’s speed, stability, and reliability under normal usage as well as during peak traffic periods.

• Security: Ensure the platform provides robust security, including data protection, regulatory compliance, access control, and resilience against cyber threats.

• TCO: Account for all expenses beyond initial licensing fees. Include development, hosting, integrations, maintenance, and upgrade costs over a 3–5 year period to accurately project ROI.

Explore leading eCommerce platforms

These widely adopted solutions are trusted by businesses worldwide for their proven capabilities and offer valuable insights to help you select the best fit for your business.

• Shopify: This is a hosted SaaS platform designed for businesses looking to quickly establish or upgrade their online store with minimal technical complexity. It offers strong scalability, reliable performance, and a wide app ecosystem for extended functionality. However, advanced customisation often depends on third-party apps or development work, which can increase total costs over time.

• Adobe Commerce: This platform offers on-premises, multi-tenant cloud service (SaaS) and single-tenant, dedicated infrastructure (PaaS) versions, providing flexibility for businesses of different sizes and requirements. It supports multi-site, multi-language, and multi-currency operations, with advanced catalogue management, personalisation, and seamless integration across systems. While robust and highly extensible, it typically requires a higher upfront investment and ongoing technical expertise.

• Magento Open Source: This platform provides a fully customisable eCommerce foundation for businesses with strong technical resources. It allows complete control over site structure, customer groups, and pricing models, making it ideal for complex online operations. Yet, since hosting, maintenance, and updates must be managed internally, it demands substantial time, expertise, and budget commitment.

• Carbon: This is a next-generation eCommerce solution built for rapid deployment, helping merchants launch a fully functional, best-practice website in as fast as 4 weeks. What distinguishes Carbon from other eCommerce solutions is its unique ability to combine the best aspects of Open Source, PaaS and SaaS models. Built on the Hyvä frontend and fully compatible with Magento/Adobe Commerce, it preserves the full depth of customisation and flexibility. As an On Tap product, you will also get a lot more than just Carbon, including:

• Evergreen: On Tap’s FREE UPGRADE model eliminates all the upgrade costs you pay to keep your store continuously up to date. It ensures your site always remains secure, stable, and fully compatible.

• On Tap Cloud: A fully managed, performance-optimised hosting offering enterprise-level scalability and reliability.

• AuditIQ: An intelligent 24/7 monitoring system that tracks performance, security, and configuration health to prevent issues before they impact website performance.

• API-first Integration Flow: A managed integration platform that enables real-time data exchange between eCommerce and back-office systems, accelerating capability expansion.

For the next step, businesses can move to designing for UI/UX. If your current website’s UX performs well, such as intuitive navigation or high-converting product pages, those proven elements can often be retained or adapted to the new platform. However, due to differences in system architecture, functionality, or front-end frameworks, full replication is rarely possible. This is where focused design is essential. Businesses should:

• Reassess core user journeys: Evaluate key touchpoints such as browsing, product discovery, and checkout across desktop, mobile, and tablet experiences. Identify friction points that may hinder conversions and redesign flows to create smoother, faster, and more intuitive interactions. Use analytics, heatmaps, and customer feedback to guide improvements.

• Collaborate across functions: Bring together UX designers, developers, marketers, and product managers to align design decisions with both customer expectations and business objectives. Cross-functional collaboration ensures that aesthetic choices support usability and that every design decision contributes to measurable outcomes such as higher conversion rates or improved retention.

• Prototype and test responsive layouts: Develop and iterate on design prototypes that balance visual appeal with usability. Conduct usability testing to validate navigation logic, content hierarchy, and load performance across devices. The goal is to deliver a consistent, high-performing experience that feels intuitive and cohesive across screen sizes and platforms.

Data migration is a crucial preparatory step that determines how smoothly your new eCommerce platform will operate post-launch. Incomplete, inconsistent, or unstructured data can cause performance issues, reporting inaccuracies, and even loss of search visibility. A well-organised migration plan ensures data integrity, operational continuity, and SEO preservation.

• Cleanse, normalise, and back up data: Begin by auditing all product, customer, and order databases to eliminate duplicates, fix errors, and update outdated information. Standardise categories, product attributes, and content formats to ensure data consistency across the new platform. Always create a complete backup of your legacy system before migration to safeguard against data loss.

• Define mapping rules: Clearly outline how data fields from your existing system will map to the new one. Ensure that critical elements, such as product SKUs, pricing, customer profiles, and order histories, remain accurate and traceable. This reduces the risk of broken links, missing information, or misaligned data structures after launch.

• Plan for SEO continuity: Your content migration plan should preserve existing SEO performance. Identify which URLs should be retained, determine where redirects will be needed for any changes, and map key SEO metadata such as titles, descriptions, and image alt text. Proper planning ensures that the new site can maintain search rankings and organic traffic once migration begins, rather than starting from scratch.

During replatforming, one of the most critical steps is deciding which features, integrations, and extensions should move with you to the new system and which ones should be replaced or rebuilt. 

Data and content migration

With backups and mapping already prepared, you can focus on executing the migration process itself:

• Import critical data: Move product catalogues, customer accounts, and order history into the new platform’s database.

• Transfer content assets: Migrate website content such as landing pages, blog posts, images, videos, and other digital assets to ensure continuity of brand messaging and SEO value.

• Verify integrity: Ensure that product variants, images, SEO metadata, and content formatting appear correctly on the new platform.

Feature and extension migration

For features and extensions, businesses should make a list of key functionalities they need to retain. Not all features from your existing system may be supported natively by the new platform, so it is essential to evaluate each function carefully. Companies can consider using third-party extensions by determining whether compatible plugins, modules, or integrations are available for the new platform. It is essential to verify version compatibility, ongoing support, and security updates to ensure these extensions function reliably.

For features that cannot be migrated through existing extensions, custom development may be required. This involves assessing technical feasibility, costs, and the effort needed to build a solution tailored to the business model, ensuring that critical functionality is maintained while adapting to the new platform.

This is the most critical phase, where the actual build, data transfer, and system connections occur. Integration is vital for ensuring smooth operations, accurate data flow, and a consistent customer experience across all channels. Poorly designed or fragmented integrations can cause order errors, pricing inconsistencies, fulfilment delays, and inefficiencies that directly impact revenue. Businesses should focus on connecting the systems that power daily operations, such as:

• ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning): Centralises inventory, pricing, orders, and financial management. A robust ERP integration ensures stock accuracy, smooth order fulfilment, and consistent pricing across all channels.

• CRM (Customer Relationship Management): Gives sales, marketing, and support teams full visibility into customer profiles, purchase history, and engagement data - helping deliver more personalised experiences and targeted communication.

• PIM (Product Information Management): Manages detailed product data, including specifications, images, and descriptions. Integrating PIM ensures that product information stays consistent and up to date across your website, marketplaces, and other sales channels.

• WMS (Warehouse Management System): Oversees stock movements, warehouse operations, and shipping logistics. Real-time syncing between your store and WMS improves order accuracy, fulfilment speed, and customer delivery transparency.

• Accounting Systems: Sync invoices, payments, taxes, and reconciliations automatically. Integration with accounting software helps maintain financial accuracy, reduces manual data entry, and ensures smooth end-to-end transaction management.

These integrations allow your teams to work with real-time, unified data, reducing manual updates and improving decision-making across departments. Ultimately, successful integration turns your eCommerce platform into the central hub of your digital ecosystem.

Achieve seamless connectivity between your eCommerce platform and key business systems with our integration service and API-first Integration Flow, driving automation and operational efficiency.

Before officially launching, test every part of your platform, from functionality to performance and SEO, to ensure a smooth, high-performing launch and minimise downtime. This includes:

• Functional testing: Confirm that essential store features like product search, login, cart, checkout, order tracking, and account management work as expected across all devices and browsers.

• Integration testing: Validate that data flows correctly between systems like ERP, CRM, PIM, WMS, and accounting tools. Check inventory updates, pricing syncs, and order statuses to prevent inconsistencies.

• Performance & load testing: Simulate peak traffic periods, such as significant sales or product launches, to ensure the site can handle heavy traffic and concurrent users without slowing down or crashing.

• Security testing: Review user access levels, data encryption, and API security to protect customer and payment information.

• SEO testing: Verify URL structures, redirects, and metadata are intact after migration to maintain your search rankings and organic visibility.

• User acceptance testing (UAT): Conduct extensive UAT on both desktop and mobile with real users or employees simulating genuine shopping journeys. This identifies usability issues, bugs, or layout breaks early, ensuring a seamless, high-performing experience across screens once the new platform goes live.

With all testing phases completed and systems performing as expected, the replatforming project moves into its most critical stage: launch and beyond. At this point, businesses must prepare not only an effective launch plan but also a post-launch strategy to ensure long-term success. Specifically:

• Pre-launch phase: Consider a phased rollout to reduce risks while monitoring system performance and user behaviour in real time. Coordinate marketing, operations, and customer support teams to resolve early issues quickly and maximise initial conversions. Use monitoring tools to track key metrics, including load times, traffic, sales, and user feedback. If problems occur, execute a rollback plan, implement fixes swiftly, and communicate transparently to maintain customer trust.

• Post-launch optimisation: Use data-driven insights to continuously enhance the customer experience. Analyse performance metrics, conduct A/B testing on key pages, and identify bottlenecks in navigation, checkout, or content. Plan regular updates, including SEO improvements, feature enhancements, and system audits, to maintain scalability, ensure security, and support long-term growth. A structured approach to optimisation ensures the platform remains agile and aligned with evolving business goals.

Overall, eCommerce replatforming is a complex process that carries significant risks if not properly planned and executed, making it essential for businesses to partner with a trusted agency that offers both technical expertise and strategic insight. With 19 years of eCommerce expertise and a team of over 400 specialists, On Tap is proud to provide an end-to-end platform migration service, from consultation and development to long-term support after launch. Connect with our experts today to get started!