E-commerce replatforming: Steps for success in 2024

Highlights

You’ll learn about:

Key indicators it's time to consider re-platforming:

• Challenges in implementing updates
• Increasing the total cost of ownership
• Security issues
• Poor user experience
• Competitive disadvantage

Benefits of successful e-commerce re-platforming:

• Enhanced customer experience and site performance.
• Reduced load times through headless CMS.
• Omnichannel engagement for increased customer loyalty.
• Scalability and flexibility for growing businesses.
• Improved security features for customer data protection.

Are you ready to transform your online business and capitalize on the e-commerce market?

Keep reading to learn more!

With e-commerce sales likely to reach $8 trillion by 2027, outdated, old-fashioned and underperforming platforms will push your business growth, but in the backward direction.

Just like a train that changes tracks to reach new destinations, your new e-commerce site or store requires a change when expanding or when you want to optimize your online presence.

A performant and user-friendly ecommerce website drives customer engagement, loyalty and purchases, putting you in the driver’s seat. 

That’s where most online retailers turn to e-commerce re-platforming. 

For retailers stuck in the decade-old legacy and traditional systems, e-commerce re-platforming ensures your business races ahead without a hitch.

Read on to learn more about the reasons for re-platforming your e-commerce, strategies to re-platform and more. 

What is e-commerce replatforming?

Ecommerce replatforming refers to migrating your existing online store from an older version to a newer and advanced ecommerce platform. Migrating to a modern ecommerce platform helps you take advantage of the latest functionality, such as headless architecture, application programming interface (API) and cloud services.

As re-platforming is a time-intensive process, you usually opt for it when your business complexity grows and it becomes challenging to work with multisites and systems. 

When is the right time to re-platform?

If you’re still reading, you’re probably thinking about re-platforming your website but have overlooked it because of the time and cost involved. But, the more you sideline replatforming, the costlier and more complex it becomes. If your e-commerce platform is showing any of these signs, it’s the right time to re-platform:

You find it challenging to implement updates

Did you know the average cost of website downtime is $9,000 per minute? If your store cannot handle the spike in traffic, especially during the holiday season, you will lose millions of dollars in sales. Implementing a simple update or adding a new feature takes time, resulting in poor user experience and increasing website downtime. 

When you start losing money, it’s time to replatform your website.

Your total cost of ownership (TCO) is growing

When your ecommerce platform's existing functionalities are no longer sufficient to meet your growing traffic requirements, you’re bound to invest in custom-made solutions, which increases your operations costs. Adding many custom-made modules and solutions can make you realize your TCO is no longer sustainable. 

Your store is prone to security breaches

Every time customers purchase, they trust you to keep their personal and financial information confidential. However, security gaps can pop up when your ecommerce store is nearing its end. While implementing security patches can be a short-term solution, ignoring potential security breaches risks your business. 

Your store’s user experience is poor

Failure to deliver a good user experience reduces customer satisfaction, forcing them to switch to your competitor. If your customers consistently complain about unresponsive websites or issues during checkout, it’s time for e-commerce replatforming. 

Your competitors are outpacing you

A user-friendly ecommerce site with a superior user experience encourages your customers to switch to competitors. When your customers avoid your store, even when you provide better quality products and competitive pricing, it means your competitors are outpacing you by providing feature-rich stores. 

Benefits of website re-platforming 

Here are a few benefits of website re-platforming:

Improves customer experience

Companies that focus on an ecommerce replatform project experience a positive outcome in the form of an increase in profits. Increased site performance, average order value and improved conversion rates create a more satisfying customer shopping experience.

Enhances performance 

A one-second delay in the load time can reduce your conversion rate by 20%, especially in retail and e-commerce businesses. Choosing a headless content management system like Contenstack with API integration drives the highest performance for your applications and online store. Contentstack’s headless CMS can easily handle the increase in traffic even during the holiday season. 

Provides an omnichannel experience

Replatforming your website provides an omnichannel experience across all touchpoints. When you provide an omnichannel experience, you reach new customers regardless of whether they access your store through your mobile app or website. The ability to provide an omnichannel experience increases customer engagement.

Increases your business scalability

If your website loads fast but encounters frequent downtime, you will lose customers to your competitors. Managing this issue becomes challenging, especially if you’re using legacy systems. Traditional CMS usually transfers your website's load to multiple servers, each running a single application.

So, when a traffic spike occurs, one of the key servers can get overloaded, crash your new ecommerce platform and cause downtime to increase. Replatforming helps you automatically scale your platform and optimize performance and user experience. 

Ensures flexible content creation

Traditional and legacy systems make it challenging and time-consuming for content editors and creators. Often, you may spend weeks creating a landing page because of the complexities of writing new content.

Using a headless CMS like Contentstack reduces your time from minutes to seconds. Contentstack has helped many companies, like #K2 and Burberry, reduce their content creation and updation time to a few seconds. 

Enhances revenue

Online retailers that re-platform their websites can significantly increase their revenue. While costly and time-consuming, this process results in substantial benefits. A headless CMS enhances your website’s performance, makes it more responsive and improves the overall user experience.

On the operations side, replatforming improves efficiency, reduces overhead costs and frees up resources. These benefits together result in higher conversion rates and average order values. An efficient, user-friendly and effective platform attracts and retains more customers.

Improves security

E-commerce stores have top-notch security features to prevent security breaches. They have built-in protections and roll out updates and patches regularly. Higher security means your e-commerce solution stays safe and can face growing threats. Keeping things secure is essential for your customers’ trust and ensuring all their personal and financial information stays protected.

Steps to successful website re-platforming

Because your current platform holds a large amount of data, proper replatforming ensures you don’t lose anything. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to replatform your online store:

Assess your existing system

To assess your existing platform, answer these questions:

• What's encouraging you to re-platform? 
• Is your website slow and cannot handle the Black Friday rush? 
• Could it be friendlier for your mobile shoppers or need more search engine optimization (SEO)? 
• Does your platform require a total overhaul?

Setting the roadmap helps you choose a platform that meets your business requirements.

Choose the right platform

Your goal is to find e-commerce platforms that fulfill your business and customer requirements. Think about your requirements. 

• Are you searching for a scalable solution? 
• Do you need a platform that is reliable and offers superior speed?
• Do you require specific features such as superior customer support, built-in SEO capabilities and analytics?

Make a checklist of essential features before scrutinizing different e-commerce platforms.

Plan your migration process

The next step is planning your migration process. Here are some key components to consider:

• Data migration: Outline the data you want to transfer (product details, customer information, order history). Ensuring data integrity and security is imperative when replatforming.
• SEO preservation: If your website ranks well on the search engines, preserving its SEO rankings and organic traffic is essential. To maintain your ranking, develop a strategy around 301 redirects for URL changes.
• Testing environment: Create a test environment to test the migration to the new platform. Evaluating the new site for features and performance without risk to your ongoing operations or existing systems is the key to successful migration.

Secure your data

Before you start the migration, keep your data safe by creating a backup of everything. Check the data protection laws to maintain compliance. Ensure your new platform offers robust security features to add a layer of security.

Start data migration

After completing all the preparations, start with data migration. When executing the migration:

• Transfer your data to a new platform
• Implement design and customization changes
• Conduct extensive testing to ensure the migration meets your performance benchmark
• Integrate third-party applications and services.

Launch and monitor your new platform

After testing your website, launch your new platform. After the launch, monitor its performance and user feedback. Based on the feedback, address issues and implement changes quickly. In addition to tracking any SEO ranking changes, implement an SEO monitoring strategy. 

Focus on continuous improvement

Replatforming is not the end to increasing your website’s performance. It’s the starting point. Continuously gather insights and feedback to improve and optimize your e-commerce website. Stay updated with e-commerce trends and platform updates to ensure your online store remains competitive and meets your customers' needs.

Choosing the best platform for your e-commerce migration

When considering re-platforming, selecting the right e-commerce platform is the key to business success. Below are the top e-commerce migration platforms:

Contentstack's API-first approach sets it apart from others on the list. The composable architecture ensures seamless content delivery across various platforms and devices. Contentstack offers content management capabilities, excellent scalability and flexibility, making it ideal for businesses looking to provide a consistent omnichannel experience.

Best suited for: Businesses looking for a headless CMS focusing on omnichannel delivery.

How did Contentstack help Burberry migrate to a headless CMS?

Burberry upgraded its content generation and global presence by migrating to Contentstack, a headless CMS. Their tactical action enabled prompt content migration from one language to another and multiple platforms. Adopting a MACH approach, with Contentstack as its foundation, solved the problems of the slow market response and the limitations of the previous systems.

Contentstack provided better language management, seamless integrations and an easy-to-use interface. This digital transformation resulted in an 80% increase in content publishing speed and fewer developer support tickets, helping Burberry maintain its position among the leading luxury fashion brands.

After using Contentstack, Sonia Latoracca, Digital Commerce Content Manager at Burberry, said: 

“Creating content is quicker and easier with Contentstack. It’s a user-friendly tool making training and onboarding simpler. The integration with our translation and media systems means content can be created and published much quicker than before. The flexible, reusable components allow us to complete new design briefs without the need for constant development.”

Read the complete case study here. 

Contentful

Contentful uses a headless architecture. The platform focuses on ease of integration and deployment and allows your developers to build custom solutions. 

Sitecore

Sitecore offers powerful content management, digital marketing tools and e-commerce capabilities. Its integrated approach supports personalized customer experiences, advanced analytics and machine learning-driven insights, catering to businesses with complex needs and high traffic volumes.

WordPress + WooCommerce

When combined with WooCommerce, WordPress becomes an e-commerce platform. WordPress offers customization through themes and plugins. WordPress + WooCommerce pairing is user-friendly, making it accessible for businesses without technical resources.

Adobe Commerce

Adobe Commerce provides a flexible ecommerce platform, helping you with product catalogs and substantial traffic volumes. It stands out for its scalability options and a developed community and partner ecosystem.

Here’s a comparative overview of these platforms:

Each platform’s unique strengths make it the best for various e-commerce businesses depending on industry and specific requirements. Contentstack’s headless CMS features support omnichannel publishing, making your online store flexible.

Transition strategies for successful re-platforming

Transitioning to a new platform requires a well-thought-out strategy to ensure success and reduce disruptions.

Establish clear goals

When re-platforming your current e-commerce platform or store, establish what you want to achieve from the migration. The objectives could be site speed enhancement, increased scalability, reduced cost or leveraging technological advances to outsmart your competitors. Explicit goal setting provides directions and helps you measure your project’s success.

Phased rollout

A phased rollout provides a smooth transition and gives your team time to troubleshoot and solve problems. It also implies learning from the earlier phases to improve subsequent ones and avoid possible mishaps.

Rigorous testing

Rigorous testing during the ecommerce data migration pinpoints the issues at the early stages. Performance testing, security assessment and user acceptance testing evaluate your platform and website functionality.

User training and support

Change management is a significant component of replatforming. Ensuring appropriate training and assistance to users guarantees a less complex transition process. Communicating regularly about the changes and their benefits can contribute to user acceptance and satisfaction.

FAQs

What is e-commerce replatforming? 

Ecommerce replatforming is switching your ecommerce store to another platform to increase its performance and adaptability, especially when your ecommerce business scales.

What is an example of re-platforming? 

Migrating from a monolithic or traditional CMS to a headless CMS like Contentstack is an example of replatforming. 

What is website re-platforming?

Like ecommerce replatforming, website replatforming is about moving your online website from one content management system to another.

What is digital replatforming?

Digital re-platforming focuses on digital transformation initiatives such as websites, e-commerce sites and other platforms.

How long does the ecommerce migration process take? 

The timeline varies from a few months to over a year, depending on the complexity of your website.

What are the key factors to ensure a successful e-commerce site replatforming project?

Careful planning, engaging stakeholders, choosing the right platform and using effective data migration strategies are essential to successful replatforming.

What should I do after migrating my ecommerce store? 

After migrating, focus on optimization, monitor performance, integrate customer feedback and implement changes to the current platform.

Learn more

The e-commerce re-platforming project is challenging but still presents an opportunity for businesses. With careful planning, the right strategies and a focus on enhancing customer experience, your new ecommerce platform replatforming project can ensure your business growth.

Are you facing performance issues with your modern e-commerce platform?

Request a free demo to discover how our solutions can streamline your re-platforming process for a brighter, more profitable future.