Including the parts that are annoying, the parts that take longer than anyone says, and the case for not doing it.
A migration page that only lists what comes across is a sales page wearing a hard hat.
The data
What comes across, and what does not.
Comes across
- Products, options and variants
- Images, re-hosted and cleaned
- Categories, structure preserved
- Customers and addresses
- Order history
Comes across with care
- Complex attribute sets
- Custom pricing rules
- Subscription schedules
- Loyalty balances
- Gift card balances
Does not come across
- Theme code and templates
- Bespoke extensions
- Third-party app data
- Analytics history
- Anything only in a plugin
The sequence
How it actually goes.
-
01
We import a sample first
Not everything — a slice, so you can see your own products in it and find the problems while they are cheap to fix.
-
02
We run both in parallel
Your old shop keeps trading. Nothing is switched until the new one is right, and "right" is your judgement rather than ours.
-
03
We map your URLs
Every product and category redirected. This is the step that protects the search traffic you spent years earning, and the step most migrations rush.
-
04
You switch when you choose
Usually a quiet week, never during peak. If you are asking about November, the answer is February.
-
05
We watch the first fortnight
Because the problems that matter show up in real orders, not in a test plan.
On timing
0
migrations we will run for you during your peak season.
Not a policy we enforce to be difficult — a policy because a replatform in November is how a good year becomes a bad one. Build through peak, switch after.
"We will tell you if you shouldn’t move yet." The honest one
If your stack works, if you are mid-peak, if the thing you need is a single app rather than a platform — the answer is no, and you will get it from us before you get an invoice.
Next step
Ask us to scope it properly.
Send us an export or a link to your shop and we will come back with what maps cleanly, what needs rebuilding, how long it takes, and whether it is worth doing at all.
- Parallel running
- Standard, not an upcharge
- URL mapping
- Every product and category
- During peak
- We will ask you to wait