Re-platforming your e-commerce store is one of the most significant growth decisions you can make. It’s a move toward better functionality, improved user experience, and greater scale. But it carries a monumental risk: the potential to erase years of valuable ad performance data and momentum overnight.
Many businesses see a terrifying dip in performance during this process, not because their strategy was wrong, but because their execution was flawed. The truth is, a successful migration isn’t about luck; it's about meticulous planning.
At RTN, we believe wisdom and foresight are the cornerstones of a successful transition. This checklist is our blueprint for protecting your ad performance. We’re sharing the genuine insights we use to guide our clients, ensuring your re-platforming journey is a launchpad for growth, not a step back.
This is where the battle is won. A successful migration is 90% preparation and 10% execution. Rushing this stage is the single biggest mistake you can make.
1. Benchmark Everything: You cannot know if you've succeeded if you don't define what success looks like. Before you touch a single line of code, pull detailed performance reports for at least the last 12 months.
Your Action: Export data on ROAS, CPA, Conversion Rate, Click-Through Rate, and Impression Share across all campaigns, ad groups, and key products. This is your baseline, your source of truth.
2. Technical SEO & PPC Alignment: Your SEO and PPC teams (or agencies) must be in lockstep. An SEO-driven URL change that isn't communicated to the PPC team can instantly break thousands of ad destinations.
Your Action: Schedule a joint kick-off meeting. The primary agenda item: the URL mapping strategy.
3. The Definitive URL Mapping File: This is your migration bible. Create a comprehensive spreadsheet that maps every single old URL to its corresponding new URL.
Your Action: Use a tool like Screaming Frog to crawl your entire existing site. Add a column for the new URLs. This document will be critical for updating ad paths, tracking templates, and sitelinks. There is no room for error here.
4. Prepare Your New Shopping Feed: Do not wait until launch day to build your new product feed. The new platform will likely have different required attributes and formatting. A disapproved Google Merchant Center feed can halt your Shopping campaigns (and PMax campaigns if running product listings through them) for days.
Your Action: Build and upload the new feed to Merchant Center as a test feed. This allows you to identify and resolve any errors before it impacts your live campaigns.
On launch day, speed and precision are paramount. The goal is to minimise downtime to a matter of minutes, not hours.
5. The "Pause, Update, Enable" Protocol: The moment the new site goes live, pause all campaigns.
Your Action: Use Google Ads Editor to perform a bulk find-and-replace on final URLs using your mapping file. For accounts with complex tracking, update the tracking templates. Once all URLs are updated and verified, re-enable the campaigns.
6. Immediate Tracking & Tag Validation: Your analytics are your eyes and ears. Are your conversion tags firing correctly? Is revenue being reported accurately?
Your Action: As soon as the new site is live, run a series of test transactions. Use Google Tag Assistant to verify that your Google Ads conversion tag and remarketing tags are active and collecting data on the new site.
You’ve successfully made the switch. The work isn't over; it's just entered a new phase. Now you monitor and optimise.
7. Performance Analysis (Old vs. New): Refer back to your benchmark report. For the first 30 days, monitor performance daily. Are there discrepancies? Have certain products or categories dipped in performance?
Your Action: Create a new performance dashboard that directly compares post-migration data to your pre-migration benchmarks. This will quickly highlight what’s working and what isn’t.
8. Hunt for New Opportunities: Your new platform may offer new capabilities. Better landing pages, faster load times, and improved mobile experience can all open doors for performance gains.
Your Action: Analyse your Quality Scores. Faster page speeds on the new platform should lead to improvements in your Landing Page Experience scores, which can lower your CPCs. This is low-hanging fruit for immediate optimisation.
Re-platforming carries inherent risk, but it doesn’t have to be a gamble. With a structured, data-first approach, you can protect your performance, minimise disruption, and set the stage for your next level of growth. This checklist is your guide to doing it right.
Feeling overwhelmed? Worried about your own re-platforming process? If you feel you need a fresh set of eyes on your campaigns, you can get a complimentary audit with RTN. We will tell you what’s working and what isn’t. No sales fluff, just genuine insights which you can keep.