Get on a call with us to see how we can help you
Get a QuoteRedefine×A Secret Admirer · Ecommerce Replatform & Migration
A Secret Admirer needed to leave its existing ecommerce platform behind without losing a single product, customer record, or search ranking. Redefine designed and built a custom Laravel platform, migrated the full catalog and order history, and rebuilt every integration, preserving the SEO value of years of organic traffic.
Summary
A Secret Admirer is a home fragrance and gifting retailer selling scented candles, diffusers, soaps and curated gift sets. Redefine designed and built a custom Laravel ecommerce platform to replace its existing system, migrating products, customers, orders and media across millions of records, retaining all metadata, redirects and search indexing, and rebuilding every third-party integration. The result: zero data loss, fully preserved SEO value, and a scalable foundation for multi-channel and multi-store growth.
Note: the migration scope (zero data loss, retained SEO value, multi-channel enablement) comes from the brief. Supporting percentages and testimonials on this page are illustrative samples pending verification.
The challenge
A Secret Admirer had years of organic search equity and a full catalog of candles, diffusers, soaps and gift sets built up on its existing ecommerce platform. Leaving that platform behind for a custom build meant the migration itself carried as much risk as the new system being built.
Every product, customer account, order record and media asset had to move across without loss, across millions of records, while every URL, meta tag and indexed page had to keep pointing search engines to the right place. Get either wrong and the business loses either its data or its years of accumulated search visibility.
On top of the migration, we rebuilt existing third-party integrations and custom storefront functionality instead of copying them, so the new platform could actually support diversification into multiple channels and stores, not just replicate the old one.
The approach
Redefine planned the storefront experience and migration engineering together, so nothing shipped to customers until the data behind it was verified.
Redefine designed the new frontend mobile-first for a gifting audience that shops on their phones, backed by workflow and verification systems the team could actually trust.
The migration engine was the hard part: moving every record across cleanly, then rebuilding the integrations the storefront actually depended on.
The work
Migration architecture (documented scope; flows inferred)
What we engineered
Migration & cutover
Data migration ran in staged passes against a live mirror of the legacy platform, with automated validation comparing record counts and field-level data before we accepted each pass. We built and tested the redirect and metadata map ahead of launch so search engines saw continuity, not a gap. Cutover happened in a tightly scoped maintenance window, followed by extensive post-launch monitoring to catch broken links, indexing issues or integration regressions before they reached customers.
Migration deep-dive
Every record type that mattered to the business moved across verified, not just copied.
| Data type | Source | Volume | Integrity check |
|---|---|---|---|
| Products | Legacy platform | Millions of records | Verified zero-loss |
| Customers | Legacy platform | Full account history | Verified zero-loss |
| Orders | Legacy platform | Complete order history | Verified zero-loss |
| Media assets | Legacy platform | Product imagery & content | Verified zero-loss |
Records moved in staged passes against a live mirror of the legacy platform, with automated reconciliation comparing record counts and field-level data before we accepted each pass as final. (Pass cadence and reconciliation tooling are inferred, confirm against the implementation before publishing.)
SEO & search continuity
Years of organic visibility hung in the balance the moment the platform changed underneath the URLs. We mapped and retained every signal search engines relied on before launch, not patched afterward.
What was retained
Before & after
The results
The brief documents the migration outcomes. Supporting performance and engagement metrics are reasoned estimates for the team to confirm against real analytics.
The brief documents zero data loss, full SEO and redirect retention, and multi-channel enablement. Performance, downtime and engagement figures are illustrative samples sized to a migration of this scope. Replace them with verified analytics before this page goes live.
“We were terrified of losing our search rankings. Redefine treated that risk as seriously as we did, and nothing broke.”
“The new admin tools give us visibility we never had before, and customers tell us the site just feels faster.”
Start here
We treat your data and your search rankings as non-negotiable: one team, fixed price, full code ownership, zero surprises at cutover.
No commitment. A scoping call costs nothing and tells you exactly what a safe migration would look like.