Ecommerce website migrations: When and why to make your move

We all have times when we know we could be in a better place. But how can you tell when your online store needs a new home?

Your ecommerce business deserves a platform that fulfils your customers' needs, performs well for every visitor, and evolves to meet market demands.

The web is a competitive place, where businesses frequently adapt by integrating and transitioning between different software and tools. This is often the story of the ecommerce industry.

A report by commercetools highlighted that 77% of surveyed businesses felt a sense of urgency to migrate to a new ecommerce platform within the next year (the survey was conducted in September 2024), driven by factors such as limited scalability and poor user experiences.

On the bright side, 90% of those who had recently migrated reported improvements in sales and revenue post-migration.

Ecommerce migration can be challenging, but it doesn't need to be a burden. This article will look at different types of ecommerce migrations and the problems they solve. It will help you know when you are in a situation that you can move away from, and where to head next.

The big picture: What is an ecommerce migration?

Ecommerce migration, also known as ecommerce replatforming, is the process of moving your ecommerce site from one platform to another. It swaps some of the technology under your store to change what your store is capable of.This process may include transferring site data, content, and any new integrations to the newly chosen platform.

Types of ecommerce migration

Ecommerce migration can take on different aspects depending on the actual demands of your business or the problems you’re trying to solve.

• Platform-to-Platform Migration: The first thing that comes to mind is moving from Shopify to Magento, or WooCommerce to BigCommerce, etc. Moves like these give you access to a different range of features and can improve your store's scalability. They can also change your costs quite a lot.
• Hosting Migration: This keeps the same ecommerce platform but changes the server(s) that it is running on. Once your online store demands more server resources, for example, a business may transition between self-hosted solutions, switch to cloud-based platforms, or migrate between different cloud providers. This can change your store's performance (e.g. load times), scalability, and security.
• Improving Design & UX Overhaul: Revamping the frontend such as updating your hero section with new visuals, improving mobile responsiveness, or redesigning your checkout processes, for example, to improve user experience and conversions while keeping the backend unchanged.
• Data Migration: Transferring products, customer profiles, orders, and other essential data from your current ecommerce platform to a newly selected one (eg. WooCommerce, Magento, etc.) while ensuring data integrity and accuracy.

Ask yourself: why do you need an ecommerce migration?

We’re curating some questions for you to make the evaluation easy.

• Are you facing performance issues like slow site speed or poor user experience that drives customers away?
• Is your current ecommerce platform not capable enough to handle increased traffic or does expanding product catalogs take hours? These issues lead to scalability challenges.
• Are you unhappy with limited customisation, perhaps checkout options that are not good enough?
• Does your current ecommerce platform lack necessary security measures like GDPR or PCI DSS?
• Do high maintenance costs bother you?
• Does your current platform support omnichannel selling, automation, or integrations with third-party applications? If not, migration might be necessary.

By answering the above questions, you will have your WHY!

Ecommerce migration might not sound exciting, but when done right, it can remove the biggest constraints on your online sales.

Major reasons for ecommerce migration

Over recent years, surveys on ecommerce have asked businesses about the importance of migrations, and looked to understand common reasons for moving.

• Approximately 31% of businesses that transitioned to a new platform were seeking more advanced features to better serve their operations and customer needs.
• Over 15% of companies migrated to manage or reduce operational expenses associated with their current platforms.

Now the question is where these ecommerce merchants are heading for their next ecommerce platforms.

Nearly 46% of migration happened to Shopify, attracted by its user-friendliness. Still, you need to figure out if the platforms cover all the checks for your business. The recent Shopify price hike might be a problem if you’re new to the ecommerce business, and there are other questions you should ask yourself early in the decision-making process.

WooCommerce attracted around 13% of migrating businesses, appreciated for its flexibility and integration capabilities.

The pay off

90% of ecommerce owners reported an increase in revenue and sales after migrating to a new ecommerce platform.

Not bad. Better than you might expect, even.

The next question

So we’ve discussed why ecommerce migrations matter and when you ought to consider one for yourself. Particularly when it comes to hosting issues, we're here to help if you are wondering whether it's time for a change. If you find yourself looking at site performance data or comparing technical specifications and wondering how these things affect your online business, get in touch.

And for a look at the practicalities of ecommerce migrations, keep an eye out for another article soon.