Moving a major DIY retailer to Magento 2

Challenge

The client is one of Finland's top 10 online retailers: tens of thousands of home, garden and DIY products, around a million visitors a month and seasonal peaks in spring and before holidays. The store had run on Smilehouse Workspace for years.

The platform could no longer keep up with the business. Peak days slowed the site down, and every new integration became a project of its own: the APIs made it hard to connect delivery services, payment providers and external search. The move had to happen without pausing sales and without losing search rankings the store had built over years.

Solution

• Custom migration toolWe moved the catalogue, customers with their passwords and the full order history. Shoppers did not have to register again, and customer service kept access to every past purchase.
• A new branded themeWe designed the storefront from scratch around the retailer's brand: easy navigation through a large catalogue, fast product pages and a mobile version, where most of the traffic comes from.
• Search, delivery and paymentsWe connected Klevu search with synonyms and suggestions, delivery cost calculation for bulky goods and local payment gateways.
• SEO preservedWe mapped redirects for every old URL, carried over the metadata and launched in phases, checking indexing after each step.

How we worked

1. Audit and architecture

   We mapped the old platform's data structure, every integration and how the client's team works day to day. That shaped the Magento 2 architecture and the migration order.

2. Iterative development

   We worked in two-week sprints with demos for the client. The data migration ran regularly against a copy of the live database, so it was well rehearsed by launch.

3. Load testing

   Before launch we tested the site under load comparable to peak sales and optimised the bottlenecks in the catalogue and checkout.

4. Launch and support

   We switched over in an overnight window with a final order sync and stayed on support through the first seasonal peaks.

Outcome

The new platform handles peak sales and runs 43% faster. Delivery and payment integrations go through stable APIs, and the client's team manages the catalogue and promotions without developer help.