With ecommerce sales predicted to reach $7.3 trillion by 2025, the importance of an efficient, optimized ecommerce platform has never been higher. But if your platform isn’t able to help you scale, it might be time to re-platform.

Ecommerce platform migration is often perceived as a difficult or complex task. But in truth, migrating to a new ecommerce platform can be smooth and effective process.  

In this guide, we’ll dispel the myth of complexity around ecommerce platform migration, showing how, with the right partner with the right expertise, the process can be simple, easy and efficient. 

Conducting a pre-re-platforming assessment

Before embarking on a re-platforming journey, a pre-re-platforming assessment is required. This means first asking yourself: do you need to migrate to a new ecommerce platform? 

The main reason why brands should consider a site migration to another ecommerce platform is, quite simply, efficiency. 

But there are other reasons to re-platform too. Slow site performance, limited sales capabilities, poor customer experience, inefficiencies between platform and operations. These are just a few of the signs that you might need to switch ecommerce platforms. 

Whatever the reason, for ambitious brands that are already digitally mature, investing in re-platforming can be the turning point for scaling growth and achieving long-term success. 

Three key steps for a successful migration

Once you’ve determined that your ecommerce platform lacks the necessary agility and limits growth opportunities, the next step is to map out the real pain points and areas of improvement. This means looking at the long-term strategic goals of the business through a customer-centric lens.

Let’s look at three key steps you need to help guide your successful site migration.

Step 1: Combine customer data 

Start by thinking about the data that flows through the platform. 

Transactions, loyalty programs, customer relationship management (CRM) – what’s the value that each single provider brings? Is each piece of information working harmoniously together? Are resources and costs optimized? 

Brands typically combine the expertise of multiple service providers in a bid to achieve a complete commerce solution. But with each provider typically employed for a single task, this arrangement can quickly become inefficient

Updates from one provider might impact the relationship with another, for instance. Or, with multiple providers requiring payment, costs may get comple

Indeed, for businesses that rely on multiple software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendors, the cost of keeping every part running is often high. 

Migrating to a new ecommerce platform is an opportunity to optimize these resource usage and costs, enabling greater efficiency as a result.

Step 2: Think about the consumer experience 

Is your ecommerce infrastructure affecting your consumer experience? Are there any untapped opportunities within the consumer journey that could be leveraged through a more effective platform? 

As you map out the goals for your site migration, consider how and where your ecommerce platform fits into your wider consumer journey. 

Perhaps you want to create or evolve the omnichannel consumer experience with your brand, provide more checkout and payment options to suit buyer preferences, or ensure your site doesn’t slow or crash from increased traffic during peak demand periods.

If your current ecommerce platform doesn’t allow for these capabilities and upgrades, re-platforming could be the key to achieving them.

A seamless consumer experience is an essential part of an efficient ecommerce infrastructure, and should drive your migration project throughout. 

Step 3: Know your aspirations

Understanding the impact on your consumers is important. But just as crucial is identifying what you as a brand want from your re-platforming journey. 

For instance, many brands look to an ecommerce platform migration as an opportunity to unlock greater sales capabilities across subscription services, new loyalty programs, enhanced cross-selling potential – these are all made possible by migrating to a new platform designed to facilitate such strategic approaches. 

But for many brands, one of the key drivers behind re-platforming is achieving strategic scalability.

By ensuring your brand’s growth potential is not hindered by your platform’s capabilities, you can employ and explore the strategies that will enhance sales, revenue and consumer experience that withstand the test of time.

Why THG Ingenuity is your re-platforming partner of choice

When considering which will best support your journey to long-term success, it’s critical that you choose an ecommerce platform that fosters efficiency in terms of costs, scale and flexibility – and THG Ingenuity is here to deliver it. 

Reduce costs with full harmonious integration 

With a proven track record of helping brands succeed in their re-platforming journey, THG Ingenuity unlocks new opportunities for growth with ease and speed. 

With our complete ecommerce solution we can simplify your brand’s reliance on multiple and costly third-party vendors to just one single partner. 

Re-platforming to THG Ingenuity gives you access to everything required to succeed in ecommerce.

From a core commerce platform, comprising checkout options and fraud management to email automation, loyalty options, product recommendation functionality – all fully hosted by THG Ingenuity. This technology is constantly iterating and developed to keep up with the latest consumer expectations of their on-site experience.

Those operating on the Ingenuity platform benefit from the 10,000+ updates made each year without hidden costs or downtime. Plus, each platform update is considered in the context of our full technology offering – meaning no costly knock-on impacts in other areas of your ecommerce operations.

But scaling a business requires more than a functional, flexible ecommerce platform. If you need a complete commerce experience, our technology integrates seamlessly with our global fulfillment solutions and our extensive range of marketing services.

Our operations and logistics solutions give you access to a complete global fulfillment network. With 195 shipping destinations, 16 warehouse and fulfillment sites, and over 200 courier integrations, you can simplify your provider ecosystem and reduce costs with ease.

Alongside this are our digital capabilities. Spanning digital strategy and performance marketing, influencer networks, creative and content production, on-site trading and translation and localization services, we can provide everything you need to create customer connections and build a thriving digital brand.

Technology, operations and digital services – whatever you need to scale, Ingenuity can provide it – reducing costs with full, harmonious integration that reduces the need for multiple contracts to different providers. 

Less is more 

What’s efficient from a technology perspective is also efficient from a business perspective.

Migrating to the Ingenuity ecommerce platform means having a simple view of customer activity across every touch point, an aligned view for every department and a journey that prioritizes the customer experience at every step.

By streamlining several or all your ecommerce processes into a single provider, there’s a reduced need for multiple contracts and external partners.

As a result, decision-making becomes faster and significantly smoother. Even what might have seemed impossible before – launching into a new market, for example – becomes more achievable.

THG Ingenuity’s top priority is to understand your ambitions for growth. By determining what you want from your business journey, we can provide the services you need to get there – all in one simple partnership.

Flexibility is key

Before you decide to migrate to the Ingenuity ecommerce platform, we understand that you might be wary of disrupting any ongoing business relationships – with your external marketing agencies, for instance. 

But at THG Ingenuity, we offer flexibility when working with multiple external providers.

Ambition, innovation and collaboration are at the heart of what we do, and that extends to our work with your external providers. If you’d prefer to retain the services of third-party providers, our systems have integration capabilities that can make that happen. 

For example, when we work with external marketing agencies, we share full analytics reports on a regular basis, adapting our language and presentation to enable mutual understanding. All data is unified in a single view, with clear and regular communications between all the stakeholders involved.

THG Ingenuity is the complete commerce solution designed to simplify the complexities of digital commerce. When embarking on a re-platforming journey with us, we'll guide you through each step of the process, with guaranteed cost efficiency, growth and scalability. 

We combine technology, marketing and fulfillment solutions to empower brands to achieve their growth ambitions at scale.

Get in touch today to kickstart your ecommerce platform migration with confidence.