Rebuilding an Ecommerce Store Customers Were Abandoning at Checkout
An independent retailer's online store ran on a platform that had been patched and extended for years. Checkout worked, but it asked customers to do too much before they could pay.
The Challenge
The store's checkout required account creation before purchase, ran on outdated plugins with known vulnerabilities, and loaded slowly on mobile — the majority of the store's traffic. Cart abandonment was a recurring complaint from the owner, along with concerns about payment security raised by the client's own bank during a routine review.
Our Strategy
We recommended a phased migration rather than a single high-risk cutover: rebuild the storefront and checkout on a modern, actively maintained platform, migrate the product catalogue and order history without downtime, then decommission the old install once the new one was verified end-to-end.
Implementation
- Migrated the full product catalogue, images and historical order data to WooCommerce
- Rebuilt the checkout as a single guest-friendly flow, with account creation optional rather than mandatory
- Replaced unmaintained plugins with a smaller, actively supported set
- Ran a security review on the new install before launch, covering the areas in our security assessment service
- Kept the old site accessible internally during a verification window before final DNS cutover
Technology
Security
The previous install had several outdated plugins with disclosed vulnerabilities. Part of the rebuild involved a plugin audit, removing anything unused, and setting up a maintenance schedule so updates don't fall behind again — the same approach covered on our maintenance & security page.
Results
- Checkout no longer requires account creation, removing a step that customers had specifically complained about
- The store now runs on actively maintained software rather than plugins with known, unpatched vulnerabilities
- Page weight on product and checkout pages was reduced significantly through image optimisation and plugin cleanup
Client name withheld at their request. We haven't published specific conversion-rate figures for this project because we don't hold independently verified analytics from before the migration for direct comparison.
Related Reading
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