eCommerce Replatform.

The most common failure mode in an eCommerce replatform isn’t that it ships late. It’s that it ships on time, launches, and then conversion drops 8–12% in the first quarter post-launch. The replatform is technically successful — code shipped, UAT passed, launch went smoothly — but commercially, it’s a disaster.

The causes are knowable in advance. SEO migration gaps. Checkout flow regressions. Site-search behavior changes. Performance degradation on key pages. Personalization context lost in the migration. These are the patterns PD’s eCommerce template is built to catch.

The first phase of a replatform is platform selection. Done well, this is a structured evaluation against your actual requirements. Done poorly, it’s a vendor-led process where the platform that runs the best demo wins.

PD’s Platform Select phase is structured around your catalog complexity, your integration topology, your team’s technical capability, and your budget profile. The shortlist is generated from these inputs, not from vendor sales decks. Atlas surfaces the platform decisions other clients of similar profile made — and how those decisions worked out.

Catalog migration is the part of every replatform that’s underestimated. The variant model is more complex than the brief assumed. The localization is messier than expected. The merchandising rules are deeply embedded in the old platform in ways that aren’t documented.

PD’s Catalog/Data phase is given disproportionate weight. The catalog complexity scoring (described on the eCommerce industry page) drives the realistic timeline. The validation workflow catches the issues before they become launch risks.

Most replatform UAT is run against synthetic test scripts that don’t reflect how real shoppers behave. The site passes UAT and then fails in production because real shoppers do things test scripts don’t.

PD’s UAT phase includes shopper-path testing — running real customer journeys (from search to checkout to confirmation) against the new platform with realistic data. Atlas surfaces the journey patterns most likely to expose regressions for clients of similar profile.

The post-launch peak season is where the replatform either succeeds or fails commercially. Treating peak as a checklist run two weeks before Black Friday is too late.

PD’s Peak phase runs from launch through your highest-volume period. Performance benchmarks are established and monitored. Conversion rates are tracked against the pre-replatform baseline. The Atlas benchmarks show where you sit vs. similar replatforms at the same point in their post-launch trajectory.