Migration
The replatforming checklist: switch without losing sales
June 26, 2026 · 8 min · ScaleLab
A platform switch touches everything: catalog, orders, customers, SEO, integrations, email flows and ad feeds. The projects that go wrong don't fail on the hard parts — they fail on the forgotten parts. This checklist exists so nothing is forgotten.
01Before you start: baseline everything
Record current conversion rate, revenue by channel, top landing pages, Core Web Vitals and search rankings for your money queries. Without a baseline you cannot prove the migration worked — or catch what it broke.
Freeze a data inventory: products with all variants and custom fields, customers with marketing consent status, order history, discount codes, gift cards and reviews. Consent status matters legally; gift cards are outstanding liabilities that must survive the move.
02The build phase: parity first, improvements second
Define launch scope as revenue parity: everything the current store needs to take an order, and nothing else. Redesigns, new features and catalog restructuring are phase two — bundling them into launch multiplies risk on the one day you can least afford it.
Build the 301 redirect map in parallel with the build, not after it. Every indexed URL and every URL with backlinks gets a destination. This is the single highest-leverage SEO task in the entire project.
03Integrations and the silent dependencies
List every system that touches the store: payments, shipping, fulfillment, accounting, email platform, review platform, ad feeds, analytics. Each needs a cutover plan and an owner. The classic failure is the forgotten feed — ads pointing at dead product URLs for a week.
Email flows deserve their own line: abandoned cart, welcome and post-purchase automations must be rebuilt and tested against the new store's events before launch, or they simply stop firing and nobody notices for a month.
04Launch week: sequence and monitor
Launch mid-week, in your lowest-traffic window, with a full order placed and refunded on the new stack as the final gate. Redirects go live with DNS. New sitemap to Search Console within the hour.
Then monitor daily for four weeks: 404 reports, indexation, rankings on money queries, conversion by device, and every automation's send log. Compare against the baseline from step one. Small deviations caught in week one stay small.