Kentico CMS Upgrades and Ecommerce Site Modernisation

Summary

We modernise commerce-oriented sites for home automation and security brands, where a product catalogue, installation and how-to content, support material, reviews and a checkout path all live in one content management platform. This kind of engagement moves the platform to a supported version, restructures navigation and templates around how visitors actually shop, and rebuilds the editorial experience so marketing staff can publish and rearrange pages in a browser without a developer.

The Challenge

A replatform of this type is rarely a redesign alone. Custom code written against older platform APIs, third-party integrations, transformations and legacy web forms all break in different ways, so an upgrade attempted without an inventory of customisations produces its first surprise in production instead of in a rehearsal. Meanwhile the site carries accumulated organic visibility that a careless URL change destroys, and a marketing team whose ability to publish must survive the move.

The failure modes are consistent across work of this kind. Redirect maps get written after launch instead of before. Editors are handed free-form HTML fields, and the design erodes. Multimedia is added without size budgets or lazy loading. Search indexes are left rebuilding on the live site during business hours. Accessibility is treated as a remediation task at the end, when it is far cheaper to encode in the component library from the start.

The Solution

Platform and Architecture

Sites in this category are frequently built on Kentico over SQL Server, which supplies page types, a content tree, workflow and versioning, staging between environments, and modules for ecommerce and search. The engineering work sits in mapping existing content into well-defined page types and reusable widgets rather than one-off templates, keeping business logic out of view code, and applying output caching with correct dependencies so catalogue and inventory changes invalidate cleanly.

Planning the Version Upgrade

• Inventory every customisation, integration and transformation before any code is touched.
• Rehearse the upgrade against a copy of production carrying real data.
• Keep a rollback path for both the database and the file system.
• Write the redirect map ahead of launch, then verify it with automated link checking.

Content Model and Editing

A no-code back end is a design outcome, not a checkbox. Editors assemble pages from a constrained library of content modules, edit copy in a rich-text editor with a limited allow list of tags, place images through a media library that enforces dimensions and alternative text, and preview before publishing under workflow approval. Reviews are more useful when the model stores a written body, structured attributes and verification status rather than a bare numeric rating.

Search and Merchandising

Faceted search across the catalogue, obvious paths to the cart, and prominent access to installation and assistance content usually do more for conversion than visual restyling. Index rebuilds belong on a schedule and an environment that does not degrade live browsing.

SEO, Accessibility and Mobile

Descriptive alternative text on every product image serves search engines and screen reader users at once, which is why it satisfies ranking and accessibility obligations under WCAG and the ADA together. The rest of the work is structural: unique titles and meta descriptions, a coherent heading hierarchy, canonical tags, structured data for products and reviews, crawlable URLs, and permanent redirects for every URL that moves. Responsive layouts need real device testing, tap-target sizing and image delivery tuned to connection quality.

Audit Before Design

Work begins with an audit of the current site: template inventory, content types, custom modules, analytics on where visitors abandon, crawl errors and page performance. That produces an information architecture and a design plan before any visual work starts. Implementation then runs against a staging environment with content synchronisation and a launch checklist covering sitemaps, robots directives, canonical URLs and search console verification.

What This Delivers

A brand gets a catalogue that is genuinely findable, a checkout path visitors can reach from wherever they land, and support content that reduces inbound questions instead of hiding behind navigation. Marketing gains the ability to publish, restructure and merchandise without engineering involvement, inside guard rails that keep the design consistent. Engineering gains a supported platform version, a rehearsed upgrade path and a component library where accessibility and performance are built in rather than retrofitted.

Technologies and Tools

• Kentico content management with C# and ASP.NET
• SQL Server
• jQuery or a modern JavaScript bundler on the front end
• Built-in ecommerce, search, workflow and staging modules
• WCAG and ADA accessibility criteria, structured data for products and reviews