Planning migration of your ecommerce website? Here are some tips to help you with a smooth migration

Planning migration of your ecommerce website? Here are some tips to help you with a smooth migration

If you have decided to migrate your ecommerce site from one to platform to another, you are obviously aware of the challenges that you are likely to face. There are a number of issues and roadblocks that you might face while planning a migration of an ecommerce website.

Some of the key reasons for you to consider migration (in the first place) are to opt for a newer, faster and better platform that is capable of managing your growing demands. There are many checks that you have to consider before taking a call.

One of the many dilemmas (and the biggest one) is to decide whether to opt for an open source tool or a commercial tool.

Some of the important features (that you have to factor in) are order management, payment solution or ERP to decide the best suited tool for your ecommerce migration needs. Surprisingly, the target market is also a critical aspect when you are considering a migration. The tool and its capabilities to manage local laws (like delivery time, shipment cost, consideration of VAT, sales tax, etc.) and the volume of your customer base are the reasons why the flexibility of the technology is important.

The capability of a tool to support multi-channel experience for multiple currencies and multiple locations is decisive. The major players in the ecommerce space offer advanced analytical, data mining and price optimization capabilities.

Prepare a deployment calendar Migration of an ecommerce platform requires you to involve all your functions like Sales, IT, Marketing, Finance, Operations and Customer Services. It can’t be done with the undertaking of a single function. Multiple stakeholders from different business departments need to understand the migration process and ensure that there are no delays (especially in cases where they have a role to play).

Business processes might require change With the introduction of a newer and faster platform, there might be a reduction in the manual processes and more of automated processes. So you might have to reconsider revising your business processes. Just making changes to the business processes is not sufficient. It is important for people who actually use them to test the processes. The framework and functionality of the new ecommerce website need to be set up along with the desired plugins. To check how much custom coding is required, the organization needs to validate and test the processes in work.

Take SEO into consideration

Recently migrated websites often experience a drop in rankings. If properly planned with an SEO expert, the migration will have least impact on the rankings. If there is a change in the URL, the 301 redirect ensures that link popularity and that maximum traffic is retained.

Setting up metrics It is recommended to set up the success (or failure) parameters of the ecommerce website (after migration is complete) to gauge how successful is the transition. The stakeholders have to decide what will be the most important factors that will decide if the platform migration is a success.

Train the users

The most challenging aspect of any transition is to accept the change. Employees usually resist change but if an organization plans a thorough training program, the acceptance of the platform will be higher. The golden rule is to conduct early and frequent trainings in order to create an excitement amongst the employees.

Conclusion Are you planning migration of your ecommerce website? To find a reliable migration solution provider, one of the most important traits that you must seek is help with all the above key points.

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