What is replatforming?

Businesses replatform when their current platform holds them back: it's reaching the end of support, it's slow or costly to change, or it can't do what customers now expect. Done well, a replatform is a chance to keep everything that works, fix what doesn't and build for the next few years.

An example. A B2B distributor's store runs on an old platform that's hard to update. It moves to a modern one, bringing across products, trade customers and their prices, order history and saved lists. Every old product and category address is mapped to its new one with a 301 redirect, the ERP connection is rebuilt, and customers log in the next morning to a faster site with everything where they expect it.

What moves across

• Data: products, categories, customers, prices, order history and content.
• Addresses: every important URL kept, or redirected to its new home.
• Integrations: ERP, CRM, PIM, payments, delivery and any punchout or EDI connections.
• Features: what customers and staff rely on, rebuilt or improved.

Protecting search rankings

Search engines know your site by its addresses. A 301 redirect tells them, and anyone with an old link, that a page has moved permanently, so rankings and bookmarks carry across. Planning redirects, metadata and indexing before launch, then checking them after, is how a replatform keeps the traffic it has earned.

What it takes to do well

• Discovery first: what the site does today, which systems it talks to and what must not change.
• The right platform: chosen for where the business is going, which might be a themed store such as Hyvä on Magento, or headless commerce.
• Test migrations, to catch missing records and mapping errors early.
• A planned launch, with the final data transfer, redirects and integrations timed together.
• Aftercare, checking redirects, orders and integrations once the site is live.