Online store migration: how to keep your orders and catalog

Key points

• Inventory data and integrations before you pick a migration date.
• Test orders and payments, including the cases that fail.
• Decide how to carry over changes made between export and launch.

When changing platforms solves the right problem

The store receives orders, but every catalog change or integration needs a complicated intervention. Your team downloads lists, corrects stock by hand and checks documents separately. There may be a good reason to migrate, but you first need to establish what exactly is blocking the work.

Some problems come from data or processes and will follow you to a new platform. If the same products have different codes in your inventory system and in the store, moving will not align them by itself. Separate the platform's limits from the information and rules that need cleaning up.

What to migrate and what to archive

Inventory products, variants, images, categories, customers and orders. Include discounts, documents and the information your support team needs. Decide which data must be usable in the new system and which history can be kept in an archive your team can access.

Check every important field with samples, not only the product count. An import can have every row and still swap units, prices or variants. Customer passwords cannot always be transferred between platforms, so prepare a clear procedure for account access.

How to handle orders placed during the move

New orders and changes come in between the first export and launch. Decide which system remains the official source and how the differences will be transferred. If you need a freeze window, define what stops and how you communicate it.

Reconciliation should show which orders exist in each system and who checks the mismatches. Avoid a situation where both versions accept orders without a shared stock rule. Keep identifiers that let you follow an order from the moment it comes in to the final documents.

What to test before switching the live store

Build a list of real scenarios: products with variants, discounts, business accounts, a different delivery address and unavailable products. Check the transfer to your inventory system and the response to the customer. An order shown in the store does not prove that the integration picked it up.

Also test a declined payment, a delayed confirmation and a repeated notification. The system must tell an unpaid order from a confirmed one and must not create the same operation twice. Use the providers' test environments where they are available.

• Payment, order and email confirmation.
• Stock, reservations and order cancellation.
• Documents and the shipping integration.
• Account access and available order history.
• Forms and support requests.

How to protect important URLs and pages

Map old URLs to equivalent pages and keep the URLs that have no reason to change. Do not migrate only the homepage and the top categories. Products that received traffic or were used in campaigns need correct destinations.

Update links, the sitemap and canonical URLs. Check indexing and crawling after launch. Search rankings can fluctuate. A migration plan reduces the risk but does not guarantee identical organic results.

What should be handed over after launch

Ask for the import report, the list of exceptions, the redirects and the rollback procedure. Decide who monitors the first orders and who steps in when an integration gets stuck. A migration is accepted when the important processes have been verified, not just when the new site is live.

For Center Electric, Webmate connected the online store, the warehouse and the ERP/CRM. That connection shows why moving a store has to be planned together with operations. For an estimate, prepare your current platform, the size of your catalog and the list of integrations that must keep running.

Frequently asked questions