For genuine reasons such as cost management, customer data protection, site and performance improvement, and rebranding, eCommerce brands often engage in website migration. Although the definition of website migration sounds easy to the uninitiated, the reality is a lot more complicated and can be damning if done wrongly. So, if you are thinking of doing a site migration, here is a beginner's guide with all you need to know about site migration, including a convenient checklist. This will be helpful to someone who wants to know all the subject entails before getting into it.

What is Website Migration?

Also known as site migration, it is the movement of content from one website platform to another. However, in the world of the internet, it typically means anything that can cause a change to the site's URL structure, no matter how little, such that it affects the discoverability of your content.

It is also any change that is made to a website that impacts its visibility, whether positively or negatively by a search engine.

Website migration is important because it affects visibility on the internet and can greatly impact traffic and sales for an eCommerce website. Hence, thoughtfulness is required as much as a site migration guide or checklist.

Types of Site Migrations

Content Migration:

This is primarily what is meant by website migration. Content migration is the process of transferring or moving digital content from one location, system, or platform to another. This can involve moving text, images, videos, documents, and other types of content from an old website or content management system (CMS) to a new one. The goal is to preserve the content's integrity, metadata, and structure during the migration while ensuring it remains accessible and functional in the new environment.

An example: A news website, Local News Today, is migrating from Concrete5 to WordPress. In this content migration, they transfer thousands of news articles, images, and videos, ensuring that all metadata, such as publication dates and author information, is preserved.

Protocol change

This is the moving of a website from a protocol such as HTTP to HTTPS, the latter being a more secure protocol for parsing data. For instance, migration has happened when a brand that once appeared on yourwebsite.com now appears on yourwebsite.com.

Subdomain or subfolder change

This means moving one ccTLD (country code top-level domain) into a subdomain folder. The easiest way to know this kind of change is in the structure of the URL after www. It is like moving from abc.com to abc.com/au or from abc.com to au.abc.com. In simpler terms, this is known as the alteration of url.

Domain name change

Domain name change happens to a business when the identification text of a website changes to something new. This often happens when a business is looking to rebrand. In such a case, the domain changes from something like yoursite.co.uk to oursite.co.uk

Top-level domain change

This kind of change may happen when an enterprise is considering focusing on a specific region or limiting access to people within a country. A common example is a ‘.com’ domain moving to ‘.ca’.

A business may also consider this if it thinks a new TLD will give it better authority. For instance, instead of ‘.com’ a brand may decide to use ‘.org’.

Replatforming Mobile Set-Up Changes

Replatforming mobile set-up changes refers to the process of migrating or transitioning a website to a new technology or platform with a specific focus on optimizing and enhancing its performance and functionality on mobile devices. It involves making adjustments, improvements, or adaptations to a website to ensure it loads quickly on mobile devices, and provides an excellent user experience on smartphones and tablets.

For instance, as a part of its replatforming strategy, XYZ Electronics implements a new and responsive design, optimizes image sizes for faster mobile loading, and integrates a mobile payment gateway for convenient mobile shopping from an XXE platform to AWS.

Site Structure Changes

Site structure changes refer to modifications or alterations made to the organization, layout, and navigation of a website. These changes can include adjustments to the website's information architecture, menu structure, page hierarchy, and URL structure. The aim is often to improve user-friendliness, search engine optimization (SEO), and the overall user experience by creating a more logical and accessible website structure.

For instance, a nonprofit organization, Greensample Alliance, is redesigning its website to improve user navigation. They restructured the site by creating clear categories for their environmental projects, separating content related to events and campaigns, and simplifying the main menu.

Web Redesigning

Web redesigning, also known as website redesign, is the process of giving a website a visual and functional makeover. It involves making significant changes to the website's design, layout, color scheme, typography, and overall appearance. The goal of web redesigning is to modernize the website's look and feel, enhance its usability, and align it with current design trends.

An example is a downtown restaurant that wants to adopt a website with a fresh look. They redesigned the website by updating the color scheme to match the restaurant's new branding and improving the menu presentation for customers' convenience.

Why Migration

In the ever-evolving digital landscape, a website has to remain dynamic and not static; hence, it requires periodic updates and improvements. An eCommerce site has even more needs to remain dynamic to accommodate growing traffic, ensure data protection, and maintain brand image and identity. While this process might seem daunting, it's essential for various reasons.

Here are some valid reasons for your eCommerce website to consider migration and the benefits it can bring to your online presence.

1. Enhanced Performance and Speed

As technology advances, so do the expectations of internet users. Slow-loading websites can be a major turn-off for visitors. Website migration often involves upgrading hosting servers, optimizing code, and compressing images, resulting in faster loading times. Improved performance not only enhances the user experience but also positively impacts your website's search engine rankings.

2. Responsive Design for Mobile Users

The majority of internet traffic now comes from mobile devices. If your website is not mobile-responsive, you may risk losing a significant portion of your audience. Understanding your customers is important, as their demographics and your products factor into their preferred gadgets for surfing the web.

Website migration provides an opportunity to adopt a mobile-first approach, ensuring that your site looks and functions flawlessly on smartphones and tablets.

3. Improved Security

Website security is a top priority. If your site is vulnerable to cyberattacks or runs on outdated software, migrating to a more secure platform can safeguard your data and user information. Newer platforms often have better security features and receive regular updates to address vulnerabilities.

4. SEO Benefits

Search engine optimization (SEO) is vital for online visibility. During website migration, you can implement SEO best practices, update meta tags, improve URL structure, and create 301 redirects. These actions can boost your website's SEO performance and help maintain or improve search engine rankings.

5. Content Reorganization

Over time, your website's content may become disorganized or outdated. During migration, you have the chance to restructure and refresh your content. This can improve user navigation, making it easier for visitors to find what they're looking for, and can also lead to better engagement and conversions.

6. ECommerce Expansion

If you're running an eCommerce website, migrating to a new platform can provide advanced features and scalability. This can be crucial as your business grows, allowing you to offer more products, streamline the checkout process, and provide a better shopping experience for customers.

7. Compliance and Legal Requirements

Changing regulations and legal requirements can impact your website. Migrating allows you to ensure your site complies with the latest legal standards, such as data protection regulations (e.g., GDPR) or accessibility requirements.

8. Cost Savings

Migrating to a new hosting provider or platform can sometimes result in cost savings. You may find more competitive pricing or a package that better suits your website's needs, ultimately reducing your hosting expenses. However, cost should be the last consideration for migration. Functionality and compatibility of platforms and data are more important necessities.

Migration Checklist questions to answer

1. Are my goals solid enough?

The primary expectation is to have your goals defined and clear with expectations. Be clear on what you want from this migration and even more certain that your platform (whether the current one or prospective one) has an analytics dashboard that allows you to track everything you want to measure.

Your goal can be: I want a fast load time. I want to be easily discovered with better traffic. Be clear with your goal and ensure you have a result-tracking tool.

What and who do I need?

Ask the ‘what’, and ‘people's’ questions are the next thing. What do I have to get, budget inclusive? Speaking with experienced website agencies or developer will give you an exhaustive list of the things you need.

Who are the people that will make this successful? If you wouldn’t be hiring an agency for your site transitioning, then you need to know the important personnel required.

Here is a compiled list of possible experts you may need for a successful website migration. You may review the descriptions of their responsibilities to see which ones apply to the kind of migration you want to do.

Team of people involved in migrating a website

Project Manager: Oversees the entire migration project, including planning, coordination, and communication between various teams. Ensures that the project stays on schedule and within budget.

Web Developer: Responsible for the technical aspects of the migration, such as coding, implementing design changes, and ensuring that the website functions correctly on the new platform.

UX/UI Designer: Designs the user interface and user experience of the website, ensuring that the migration results in an aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly design.

Content Strategist: Plans and organizes content migration, including content audits, creating content maps, and optimizing content for SEO. You may also need a content writer and a copywriter for content editing and sales content to get leads or advertise the new outlook.

SEO Specialist: Focuses on optimizing the website's SEO during migration, including keyword research, on-page SEO improvements, and 301 redirect mapping to preserve SEO value.

Information Architect: Defines the website's information structure, including the sitemap, navigation menus, and content categorization, to ensure a logical and intuitive user experience.

Server Administrator: Manages the technical aspects of server migration, including configuring servers, ensuring security, and handling domain name and DNS changes.

Quality Assurance (QA) Tester: Conducts thorough testing of the migrated website to identify and rectify any issues, including broken links, functionality problems, and compatibility errors.

Database Administrator (DBA): Manages the migration of databases and ensures that data integrity is maintained during the transition.

Security Specialist: Focuses on securing the website during migration, including implementing security measures and addressing vulnerabilities to protect against cyber threats.

Legal and Compliance Expert: Ensures that the website complies with legal requirements and industry regulations, such as data protection laws, accessibility standards, and copyright issues.

Content Migration Specialist: Handles the technical aspects of content migration, including data transfer, mapping content to the new structure, and ensuring that metadata is preserved.

Communication Coordinator: Manages internal and external communication throughout the migration process, keeping stakeholders informed and addressing questions or concerns.

Analytics Specialist: Sets up analytics tools and tracking mechanisms to monitor the performance of the migrated website and provide insights for further improvements.

Training and Documentation Specialist: Develops training materials and documentation to help internal teams understand and use the new website effectively.

Backup and Recovery Expert: Implements backup and disaster recovery plans to ensure data and website integrity in case of unexpected issues during migration.

How Do I Maintain Content Integrity?

You cannot afford to have some information or content missing when moving your website from one location to another, whether by platform or URL migration.

Freezing your content allows you to map your current website with the number of pages and content present. Hence, it hinders the loss of content or some missing updates. A content freeze means not adding new content or updating existing content on the legacy site. Freeze your content at least a week before migration or before contracting the team to handle it. Any update can be done on the new website once success is confirmed.

Am I impressed with the new site's wireframe?

A wireframe refers to a simplistic layout sketch of a website or mobile app.

You should check out the wireframe of the new site. You can see what issues exist with the interactivity of the platform with users. What are people saying about the platform you are considering?

What professional issues are wrong with the original site?

You shouldn't just be moving your website because you have one particular need, which can be a valid reason, of course. Get an expert’s opinion or use analytics tools to scan your site. Go the whole length of crawling your original sites to find all issues and gain insights on what ways to fix them.

Crawling gets you to see the best-performing pages, broken pages or links, most-converting pages, etc. You can analyze your website with tools such as Ahrefs, Google Analytics, Ubersuggest, and Semrush.

Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider is a good and free (if your eCommerce website has fewer than 500 pages) tool to crawl your website. Knowing what's wrong with the old site offers premium insights into what to do better in the new.

How will my audience find the new site?

It will be a gross mistake to perform a website migration without speaking to your audience. You should have a banner on the website indicating that. You should have images and posts on your social media platforms.

Failure to communicate would cost you customers because trust can be broken as they are unsure of the genuineness of the new things they are seeing. If an old link does not work anymore, your competitor can get these customers. Apart from communication, do a 301 redirect from pages from the previous website or URLs.

You can read Ahrefs’ 21 proven ways to drive traffic to your website.

Are all the URLs working?

The way to find out is to test all the site's URLs. Run a sample test to confirm that the migration of each of the pages was completed and that none were broken. Confirm that all redirect protocols are working as they should.

Using an analytics tool to crawl your site is a great approach. You may also need a human to confirm that the appropriate content is on the expected URL link.

Is the new site abiding by all SEO and SERP rules?

There are several rules to be aware of. One prominent rule is the plagiarism issue. So, ensure your content are original and top-quality. Do not have duplicate content. Multiple similar pieces of content on different domains tell Google and its spider bots that you are duplicating. Hence, upon completing your migration, disable the old website or use the HTTP 301 protocol to redirect people from the old content page to the new page with the content.

You can also check out Google’s helpful content update.

How can search engines discover my new site after site migration?

The easy way is to update the sitemap for visibility by search engine crawlers. For Google, which is the most popular and largest search engine by market share, XML and HTML are the two types of site maps. Google Search Console is a tool to update sitemaps. Ensure sitemaps are successfully crawled with a 200 status return code (success standard) before uploading.

Do not mass-migrate your pages. It is better to do them one after the other and prioritize the most important pages using 301 redirects. Google states mass content or page migration results in a soft 404 error, which is when a web server returns with a 200 OK code for a web page that does not exist instead of flashing the 404 non-existent error code.

How do I know the new site is doing fine?

Before now, you should have invested in an analytics tool. You have to check the ranking and performance of your site. Quality content and active links give your website a good domain rating. Any of the analytics tools mentioned in Number 6 above is good enough to monitor your traffic.

Specific Checklists and Strategies for Types of Web Migrations

Replatforming Mobile Set-Up Changes:

1. Mobile-First Approach: In today's digital landscape, a mobile-first approach is crucial. When replatforming, ensure that the new website is optimized for mobile devices, providing a seamless and responsive user experience.

2. AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages): Consider implementing AMP for faster mobile loading times. This can greatly improve user satisfaction and SEO rankings.

3. Progressive Web Apps (PWAs): PWAs offer an app-like experience on mobile browsers. Consider if PWAs are a fit for your replatforming strategy, as they can enhance mobile engagement.

Content Migration:

1. Content Inventory: Begin with a comprehensive inventory of your existing content. This includes text, images, videos, and any downloadable files. It's crucial to know what you have before migrating.

2. Content Prioritization: Not all content may be relevant or valuable on the new site. Prioritize content based on relevance, popularity, and SEO value. Some content may need updating or merging to remain relevant.

3. 301 Redirects: Implement 301 redirects for old URLs to new ones. This preserves SEO value and ensures users are directed to the right content after migration.

Site Structure Changes:

1. Information Architecture: Redesigning the site structure provides an opportunity to improve user navigation and organization. Plan a clear and intuitive hierarchy that aligns with user needs.

2. URL Structure: Decide on the URL structure early in the planning phase. It's essential to maintain consistency or set up redirects to avoid broken links and SEO issues.

3. Sitemaps: Create new XML and HTML sitemaps for the updated site structure. Submit these to search engines to facilitate indexing and improve SEO.

Web Redesigning:

1. User-Centric Design: Prioritize user experience and usability in the redesign. Conduct user research and usability testing to ensure the new design meets user expectations.

2. Branding Consistency: Ensure that the redesign maintains or enhances brand identity. Consistency in colors, logos, and messaging is vital for brand recognition.

3. Performance Optimization: Pay attention to website speed and performance. Users expect fast-loading pages, and search engines consider it a ranking factor.

4. Mobile Responsiveness: Reiterate the importance of mobile responsiveness. The redesign should adapt seamlessly to various screen sizes and orientations.

5. Testing and Quality Assurance: Rigorous testing, including cross-browser and cross-device testing, is crucial before and after the redesign to catch and resolve any issues.

6. SEO Considerations: SEO should be integrated into the redesign process. Conduct keyword research, optimize on-page elements, and monitor rankings during and after migration.

Risks of Website Migration and Recommended Solutions

Website migration is a complex and delicate process that involves various risks and challenges. That is why you should let a professional handle it if you are not one. As an eCommerce site, you have more reasons to get your migration right. Here are some of the common risks associated with website migration:

Downtime and Loss of Revenue: During migration, there is a risk of temporary downtime, which can result in a loss of website traffic and potential revenue. Proper planning and communication are essential to minimize this risk; it gives your customers and visitors a heads-up.

Data Loss or Corruption: Data migration, especially for large websites, can lead to data loss or corruption if not handled carefully. Mitigating the risk requires you to have a backup expert or data administration personnel on board. Backups and data validation are crucial to manage this risk.

Drop in SEO Ranking: If not executed properly, website migration can cause a drop in search engine rankings. Changes in URLs, content structure, or technical issues can negatively impact SEO. Implementing 301 redirects and closely monitoring SEO performance are helpful in this instance.

Broken Links and Functionality: Migrating content and functionality may result in broken links, missing images, or non-functional features. That can be very frustrating for customers and you. In the best instances, a customer would reach out to support to report a suspected broken link. And in the worst case, they move on to your competition. Extensive testing and quality assurance are essential to identify and fix these issues.

User Experience Issues: A poorly executed migration can lead to user experience problems such as slow loading times, navigation difficulties, or broken forms. Reviewing wireframes, thorough testing, and user feedback can help address these issues.

Security Vulnerabilities: Security risks can arise during migration, especially if the new environment is not adequately secured. Data breaches or website defacements can occur if security measures are not in place. So, you may need the help of a cybersecurity specialist to review the security cum vulnerability of your site. If you deal with customer data, it is better to insure your data than having to bear the cost implications of damages.

Content Duplication: Migrating content without proper de-duplication can lead to duplicate content issues, affecting SEO and confusing users.

Incompatibility with New Technology: Migrating to a new platform or technology may reveal compatibility issues with existing software or third-party integrations. Ensuring compatibility and conducting thorough testing are crucial.

Loss of Historical Data: Failing to migrate historical data and content properly can result in a loss of valuable information and user engagement. Ensuring data continuity is essential.

Legal and Compliance Risks: Failing to address legal and compliance requirements during migration can lead to legal consequences, especially in terms of data privacy (e.g., GDPR) or accessibility (e.g., ADA) regulations.

Reputation Damage: Frequent downtime, broken links, or a poor user experience can damage the reputation of a website and its brand. Rebuilding trust with users may take time.

Cost Overruns: Website migrations can be costly, and unexpected issues or delays can lead to budget overruns. You need thorough planning and contingency funds are necessary.

Lack of Adequate Resources: Insufficient resources, including skilled professionals and tools, can hinder the migration process and increase the likelihood of errors. Again, review the checklists above, supplying clear answers to each of the questions.

On a Final Note

In conclusion, the journey through the multifaceted landscape of website migration reveals not only its profound significance but also the intricacies and resources required to navigate this process successfully. Website migration encompasses a spectrum of challenges and opportunities that demand meticulous planning, expertise, and a keen understanding of the web pages on search engines.

We explored the meaning of website migration, uncovering how it extends beyond mere technicality to encompass the essence of adaptability in the ever-evolving digital ecosystem.

The topics discussed in this article emphasize the importance of meticulous attention to detail. From content migration and site structure adjustments to SEO considerations and mobile responsiveness, each facet interconnects, forming the intricate web of a successful migration.

Furthermore, the resources needed for website migration are not merely technical tools but a combination of human expertise, time, financial investments, and unwavering commitment. With resources and instances given, a robust migration plan hinges on collaboration among diverse professionals, from project managers and web developers to SEO specialists and security experts. These skilled individuals navigate the terrain with precision, using their collective knowledge to ensure a smooth migration.

A great factor often neglected in all of these is time! Time, often underestimated, is pivotal in migration. It provides the breathing space for thorough planning, rigorous testing, and seamless execution. Financial investments, too, are imperative, not only for acquiring the necessary resources but also for safeguarding against unexpected contingencies.