Upgrade of Laravel in 3 months for a 40-year UK manufacturer.
ITQ Commerce led the end-to-end upgrade of Airlink Transformers — re-engineering the storefront, migrating 4,800+ products, and rebuilding the entire customer experience without losing a single SEO ranking.
A legacy platform holding a market leader back.
Background
Airlink Transformers has been designing and manufacturing toroidal transformers from their Essex facility since 1982. As a British, family-run business serving the military, aerospace, medical, audio and renewable energy sectors, their reputation is built on engineering precision and reliability.
But their digital presence wasn't keeping up. With a catalogue of more than 4,800 products and decades of accumulated SEO equity, simply "switching platforms" wasn't an option. It had to be a clinical, lossless upgrade.
Project Objectives
- Upgrade Laravel to a scalable modern platform
- Preserve all SEO equity across 4,800+ products and 50+ categories
- Modernise the customer experience across every key journey
- Integrate critical commerce tooling (shipping, payments, reviews)
- Deliver the entire programme in 3 months without a service gap
A complete upgrade, delivered as four parallel workstreams.
Rather than a sequential rebuild, ITQ Commerce ran four streams in parallel — design, migration, integrations and content — so the upgraded Laravel store could go live with full feature parity and a sharper brand experience from day one.
Platform & Experience
Laravel 12 upgrade in 3 months
Full upgrade from Airlink's legacy Laravel store onto Laravel 12, including theme architecture, data model and admin workflows — all delivered inside a single quarter.
Redesigned Homepage, Category, Product & Checkout
A fresh UX/UI applied across every key conversion page — modernising the look, simplifying navigation and bringing Airlink's engineering credibility to the front.
Customer-facing email templates
The full set of transactional emails — order confirmation, shipping, account — redesigned and rebuilt to match the new brand identity end-to-end.
Commerce Integrations
Shipping calculator integration
Real-time shipping calculation built in at cart and checkout, giving customers transparent costs based on weight, destination and service level.
PayPal payments
PayPal added alongside existing payment options to widen checkout choice — particularly important for Airlink's international customer base buying voltage converters.
Custom review system + migration
All historic product reviews migrated cleanly across, plus a custom review system built specifically to fit Airlink's product structure and display them where they convert best.
Data & SEO Migration
4,800+ products migrated
Every product imported with all SEO metadata intact — titles, descriptions, alt text, URLs and structured data — to protect organic visibility on launch day.
50+ categories rebuilt
Complete category taxonomy rebuilt and re-mapped — voltage converters, chassis-mount, industrial, audio, EV, marine and more — with all SEO content carried across.
Information pages migrated
About, accreditation, delivery, returns, terms and other key information pages migrated with full content and SEO data preserved one-to-one.
4,000+ customer records migrated
The full customer database transferred across — accounts, order history and contact details — so returning customers picked up exactly where they left off.
Content & Customer Engagement
Videos & Resources page
A dedicated Videos and Resources hub introduced — surfacing Airlink's engineering know-how, product walkthroughs and educational content in one easy-to-find place.
Forums implementation
Airlink's forums content brought into the new store — preserving the long-running technical Q&A library that engineers and installers rely on.
FAQ blocks across the store
Reusable FAQ blocks built into the storefront — answering buyer questions inline, reducing support load and adding rich, indexable content for SEO.
A modernised storefront, page by page.
Side-by-side previews of the key customer journeys we redesigned. Cleaner hierarchy, faster paths to product, and a checkout that finally matches Airlink's engineering reputation.
Homepage
Category Page
Product Page
Checkout
The toolkit behind the build.
A modern, scalable foundation chosen to give Airlink long-term flexibility without the constraints of their legacy platform.
A future-ready store, delivered without disruption.
Airlink Transformers now operate on a modern, flexible commerce platform — with cleaner customer journeys, broader payment options, and a foundation that scales with the business.
End-to-end delivery
Full replatform from Visualsoft to Shopify scoped, built and launched inside a single quarter.
Products migrated cleanly
Every product carried across with full SEO metadata preserved — protecting decades of organic visibility.
Key journeys redesigned
Homepage, Category, Product and Checkout all rebuilt around modern conversion best practice.
Integrations live at launch
Shipping calculator, PayPal and a custom review system all integrated and ready on go-live day.
New content hubs
Videos & Resources plus migrated Forums content — strengthening Airlink's authority position online.
Brand-aligned emails
The full customer-facing email suite redesigned and rebuilt to match the new storefront identity.
Planning a re-platform or upgrade of your own?
If you're outgrowing your current commerce platform or its starting to creak, we'd love to talk. ITQ Commerce specialises in clean, on-time migrations or upgrades that protect what's working and modernise what isn't.
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