Ask most people what makes a platform migration risky and they will point at the tech. The data. The integrations. The go-live. Those are the things that keep people up at night before a big move.
We have come to see it differently. The tech is the part we have made reliable. We have migrated brands with huge product ranges, complex B2B setups and years of history, and we have done it enough times to know where the traps are. The part that still varies from one project to the next is the people.
The person most nervous about a move is rarely the one who signed it off
We see the same pattern again and again. The people who sign off a migration can usually see the upside clearly. They know why the old platform is holding the brand back and they are ready for something better.
The people who run the site every day feel it differently. They live in the current setup. They know its quirks, its workarounds and exactly which button does what. A migration asks them to give all of that up and relearn their working day. So they are often the ones who feel the disruption most, and they are the ones who need the most reassurance that we have thought it through.
Getting a migration over the line is not about convincing the person at the top, it is about bringing the people who use the platform with you.
Having a bigger team doesn’t always make it easier
You might expect a large, well-resourced team to make a migration easier. Often it is the opposite.
When lots of people are involved, there are more established ways of working to unpick, more roles with a stake in the outcome and more points of view in every conversation. All of that is worth listening to, but it takes time and care to work through. A leaner team can be quicker to align. There is less to unpick, the decisions sit with fewer people, and there is more appetite for change.
Neither is better or worse, they just need different handling, and knowing which one you are dealing with early on changes how we plan the whole project.
What this means for how we run a migration
This is why so much of our attention goes into the people, not just the platform. In practice that means:
Talking early on to the people who run the site, not just the ones who approve the budget.
Explaining what is changing in plain language, so nobody has to take our word for it.
Giving the nervous voices room to ask questions, rather than assuming silence means everyone is happy.
Planning for the team you actually have, whether that is a lean group ready to move fast or a larger one that needs more time to get comfortable.
Getting the people side right results in a steadier, smoother go-live, rather than a tense scramble to keep everything standing. Our hypercare, the support we give a brand in the weeks straight after a site goes live, is then there to catch the small details rather than to firefight the big ones.
“ Unified were an absolute pleasure to work with. Their expertise made the transition from Magento to Shopify seamless, and they went above and beyond to support us throughout the process. They brought our vision to life and gave us complete confidence in our new platform.”
Daniel Doogan - Digital Marketing Manager at iCandy World
A platform migration will always involve real technical complexity. But if you are weighing up a move and it feels daunting, the question worth asking is not only whether the technology can handle it. It is whether the people around it are ready, and whether the partner you choose knows how to bring them along.
That is the part we care about most.
Emma heads up delivery and operations here at Unified. She sits on the leadership team and has the responsibility to keep everything ticking along as clients expect.
