In today’s constantly revolutionising digital world, change is key to success. So when your eCommerce site is holding you back, it is time to think about re-platforming. eCommerce platform migration is a foreseeable requirement to keep up with its growth, release new features when required, introduce new channels, or embrace new technologies. Additionally, eCommerce store migration is vital for adapting to the rapid ongoing technological advances. It ensures that you remain competitive, and improve the performance, capabilities, and usability of your business. Need for eCommerce site migration Few signs that you are due for an eCommerce upgrade: Your website performance is holding back on loading time. As per Google, 50% of users will abandon a website if it does not load within 2 seconds. If your site is slow, and employee performance at work is poor, you should update to a more effective platform. · Lack of omnichannel features. If your current system is missing features supporting omnichannel selling, it’s time to migrate. · Lack of scalability. The ever-rising online buying needs, require an eCommerce architecture that scales to meet the needs of the business and the ability to process thousands of orders per minute. · Poor admin function. The poorly designed businesses will slow down the growth and result in reduced output. In such cases, migrating to a feature-rich eCommerce solution will ensure maximum output and productivity. · High maintenance. By hiring third-party solutions, eCommerce platform migration to a new platform can solve the problem of costly or time-consuming maintenance. Preparations to help your successful eCommerce migration process kick-off Listed below are a few steps important to prepare your services teams for the migration project kick-off. 1. Domain Name concerns Transferring the domain or pointing the domain to a new server must be considered firstly. Make sure you have control of your domain. You can use http://whois.domaintools.com/ to search your domain and find out what registrar hosts your domain and who owns the domain. 2. SSL Certificates Check if your site uses an SSL certificate by going to https://domainname. If yes, then you will have to have this moved to the new server. 3. Organic SEO Listings One of the major concerns is organic search engine listings. Most of the new site that are being created have different url’s for products, categories etc. Work on mapping the old url’s to the new ones so that your site doesn’t lose any ranking at all. Use handy 301 redirect and let Google and other search engines know where the new url’s are. 4. Moving Data A) Audit and backup existing data Before migrating, review the existing data collection and select what the team members needs to migrate and what they should leave behind. To avoid any chances of important data being lost during migration, you should back up your existing platform data. B) Importing and verifying your data Various types of data migration can be done manually, using a migration app, or through a third-party team. Two primary types of demographic data you should consider when migrating data are product data and customer/order data. It is recommended to migrate your product data manually when you are dealing with many different product or service options, bundled packages, carts, and themes to avoid any complications. An automated migration app is suitable for customer data transfer, as customer information like address and order history data is generally standard across the board. 5. Email Email is extremely important so any loss on this service could be immensely damaging. Migrating your website need not interfere with email, unless email is hosted by the existing web company. When pop3 email isn’t suitable anymore, you may consider a hosted exchange service, or in house exchange server or the Google apps which is a great way to set up your email with portable good features. 6. Activating the New Site Before you decide to go live on your new site, you need to allow some time maybe up to 48hrs or even less in some cases. Put up a maintenance page on the old site to avoid getting any orders on the old site from users whose DNS hasn’t been updated. 7. Full Testing of the new platform before launching It is extremely important to run thorough tests before launching the new eCommerce platform, to ensure the migration has been completed satisfactorily. Before launching do a full SEO audit of the website, check all other aspects, features, and functionality, social media accounts, verify that there are no typos, bugs, or errors that were missed during the importation process and pay close attention to any additions like new features or implementations to the new platform. Test the platform across all popular browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. Test it on mobile and tablet, both on iOS and Android. Also, place test orders on the new platform using all the available payment methods. 8. New Features additions Migrating to a new platform is the best time to implement some new trending features. Take note of your competitor’s site and the needs of your customers and study the customer behaviour to make the site run smoother. Make sure these new features are planned out correctly and that the developers know exactly what is required. 9. Don’t delete the old site To retrieve any missing data or refer back to something, it’s perfectly worth keeping the old site running on the old server for a few weeks or even longer until you are completely happy the new site is running correctly and as planned. References: How to run a successful site eCommerce migration. commercetools. (n.d.). Retrieved July 25, 2022, from https://commercetools.com/blog/how-to-run-a-successful-site-ecommerce-migration Migrating your site to a new Ecommerce platform – adeogroup.co.uk. (n.d.). Retrieved July 25, 2022, from https://www.adeogroup.co.uk/migrating-your-ecommerce-site/ GET IN TOUCH: Name * Company * Phone Email * Subject Message *
