Jewellery store upgrade with full data migration and card payments

The challenge

An online jewellery and watch retailer was running on an older platform version and needed to move to a current release with a modern theme. A platform upgrade on an established store is mostly about what must not be lost: customers and orders, a detailed catalogue with options and attributes, reviews, gift vouchers and search-friendly URLs.

The store also took card payments through a gateway extension built for the old version, which had to be rebuilt to work on the new one. We delivered the project through a reseller partner who managed the client relationship.

What we did

• New platform and theme. We installed the new platform version and installed and configured a premium theme, setting up the homepage layout and category menu.
• Full data migration. We imported customers, orders, products, categories, reviews, product options, attributes, vouchers and information pages from the old store, so the business kept its trading history.
• Search-friendly URLs. We set up SEO URLs on the new store using an SEO extension.
• Payment gateway port. We rebuilt the Heartland SecureSubmit payment extension for the new version and, when an issue appeared after launch, fixed it so card payments worked again.
• Go-live. The new store was built as a mirror, then moved to the live site root once it was ready.
• Post-launch support. We fixed checkout and cart issues and blog pagination, added the client's live chat code and raised the admin category autocomplete limit.

Tech stack

OpenCart 3.0.3.2, PHP, MySQL, Journal 3 theme, All in One SEO, Heartland SecureSubmit, Podium chat