A five-division group needed a modern website without throwing away years of search visibility. The rule for the whole project was simple: every URL that ranked had to keep working.
What the client was dealing with
A group spanning hardware, building supplies, fitness equipment, industrial supply and haulage ran its catalogue on an ageing PHP site with more than 25,000 product images and SKUs.
The site needed a rebuild, but its product and category pages carried years of search rankings, and the business systems behind it fed product data into the site.
How the engagement ran
01 Discover
Mapped every division, category and product template, and recorded the URLs that brought in search traffic.
02 Diagnose
The risk was not the design. It was losing URLs, metadata and data connections during the move, which is where most migrations lose their rankings.
03 Design
Cloned the existing interface in React and improved it, so regular customers kept a familiar experience on a faster front end.
04 Deliver
Migrated 25,000+ images and SKUs, preserved the URL structure and on-page SEO, and integrated the group's software APIs with the new front end.
05 Develop
Handed over a documented structure so the team can add products and categories without breaking URLs.
06 Demonstrate
Checked the migrated URLs and metadata against the old site before and after launch.
Engagement detail
| Field | Detail |
| Sector | Multi-division group · Hardware, building supplies, fitness, industrial, haulage |
| Market | Undisclosed (client under NDA) |
| Scope | 25,000+ product images and SKUs |
| Services | PHP to React migration, UI rebuild, SEO preservation, API integration |
| Systems | Group software APIs, product catalogue |
| Handover | Documented structure for the client team |
Protect the URLs first
A migration succeeds or fails on whether the pages that already rank keep working on day one.
Client anonymised at the client's request.
Related service: If your website is the bottleneck, see how we approach website design and development.
Related reading: our approach to technical SEO, and another catalogue project, an e-commerce build across three markets.
Frequently asked questions
How do you migrate a large catalogue without losing rankings?
Keep every ranking URL working, carry over titles, descriptions and on-page content, and check the new site against the old one before and after launch.
Why clone the old interface instead of redesigning it?
Regular customers already knew where things were. Cloning and then improving the interface kept that familiarity while moving to a faster React front end.
Did the new site connect to the group's existing systems?
Yes. The group's software APIs were integrated with the new front end so product data continued to flow.
