The Objective
The objective of this project was simple in theory but complex in execution: migrating LC Engineering to a modern eCommerce platform without disrupting the business.
The migration needed to happen without compromising the operational history, customer trust, or organic visibility LC Engineering had built over decades. From the outset, success was defined by a set of strict, non-negotiable requirements:
- Zero loss of historical data, including orders, customers, products, and their relationships
- Zero negative impact on SEO, preserving existing rankings, indexed URLs, and inbound traffic
- No downtime or operational instability during or after launch
- Full preservation and improvement of vehicle-based browsing and KIT product functionality, which are core to how LC Engineering sells
This was not a redesign initiative or a marketing refresh. It was a foundation-level platform migration, designed to support LC Engineering’s next phase of growth while protecting the systems and workflows the business depended on every day.
Key Business Challenges
Migrating LC Engineering was not a standard platform transition. It introduced multiple, interconnected challenges that had to be addressed together to avoid compounding risk.
1. Enterprise-Scale Data Migration
LC Engineering was not moving a small or simple store. The migration involved:
- Hundreds of thousands of historical orders
- Over a hundred thousand customer records
- Thousands of products connected through years of transactions
We needed to accurately link orders to the correct customers, products, and fulfillment data. Any break in those relationships would impact reporting, customer service, and warehouse operations.
This level of complexity required a controlled, validated migration approach, not a basic export-and-import process.
2. Automotive Product Discovery
LC Engineering customers don’t start by searching for product names; they start with their vehicle.
Without proper filtering, customers are forced to sift through thousands of products and manually verify fitment, leading to confusion, abandoned sessions, and increased support requests.
The challenge was enabling vehicle-first browsing, allowing customers to select year, make, and model once and then see only compatible products across categories and search without slowing the site or adding friction, especially on mobile.
3. Highly Configurable KIT Products
LC Engineering’s KIT products represent complete performance systems, not simple variants.
Each KIT allows customers to select from multiple components, where every choice affects pricing, inventory availability, and fulfillment requirements. BigCommerce’s native variant structure was not designed to handle this level of conditional logic.
Replicating KIT functionality required a custom solution that extended the platform’s capabilities while maintaining a seamless shopping and checkout experience.
4. SEO Continuity
Years of organic search visibility were tied to LC Engineering’s existing URLs, content structure, and product pages. Any disruption during migration would risk traffic loss and long recovery timelines.
SEO preservation needed to be built into the migration process itself, not treated as a post-launch fix. Redirects, metadata, and technical signals all had to be handled deliberately to ensure continuity.
The Strategic Challenge
Maintaining control from start to finish was the most challenging aspect of this project, not the migration itself.
LC Engineering needed to modernize its platform without carrying over fragile logic, accumulated workarounds, or SEO exposure. At the same time, the new solution couldn’t become overly complex, as that would simply recreate the same maintenance and scalability issues on a different platform.
Optimum7’s role was to balance speed with discipline, moving efficiently while maintaining strict control over data integrity, platform behavior, and search continuity. Every choice was made to put long-term stability and flexibility ahead of short-term fixes.
