Migrating an ecommerce website is a very crucial step for any online business. There can be multiple driving forces behind this decision. It can be due to the need for enhancement in the capabilities of any ecommerce website. It can also happen due to increasing business requirements. Migrating process could also be initiated to stay one step ahead of the competition. With huge ecommerce demand, the expectations from online retailers are also increased. Many Leading online retailers have already started taking pre-emptive measures to fulfill modern business requirements and expectations of users. It’s the time for smaller and medium sized ecommerce stores and startups to decide their preferences. They should carefully assess and evaluate their current ecommerce platforms while considering future business requirements and expectations.
If your current ecommerce CMS platform is less efficient, requires extra time, and costly to maintain then it’s a high time to re-platform your ecommerce website. There are multiple efficient and cost-effective ecommerce platforms which are more likely to enhance your business. Migrating your ecommerce site to better and suitable CMS platform for performance improvements can be a good move. Through this process of migration is costly and difficult for many brands as it involves data and cart migration. Re-platforming a website is not a preplanned decision, but sometimes it’s worth the investment for the betterment of the business. It can also open the door for new opportunities and bring an increased return on investment.
We have enlisted some of the challenges you may face while migrating or re-platforming your ecommerce website. You should keep these challenges in mind during the migration process to avoid any disaster. These challenges are listed below:
Financial Constraints:
You may need some investment while moving your ecommerce website from a certain ecommerce platform to another. You need to fix a certain amount of money before starting this process. You should collaborate with your IT consultants so they become aware of your budget and try to accomplish the process in the given pocket. They will be in the best position to help you spend your money fairly and where it is best required. Try to prioritize the requirements and make sure you are investing the right amount of money for the right purpose.
Hesitation:
The website migration process requires a lot of thought and planning. There would be multiple times during the migration process when confusions would rise. These confusions can come from various ideas and queries. Try to identify the key decision makers in your team who would be responsible for finalized decisions. This would ensure the continuity of a smooth process and prevent any disaster from happening.
Theme Design:
The theme design you are using currently, may not be available with other ecommerce platforms. You may not want to change the theme design for your website. This may cause some problem for you and your customers who are used to a certain design. The best method to overcome this challenge is to use a custom design for the website. You can incorporate this design with the ecommerce platform you are planning to use. This will not only be helpful for you but for your customers too.
URL Alteration:
Your present website URLs may already be cached by search engines. You may get these URLs when you migrate to other platforms. Sometimes, the URLs of various pages like landing pages, products pages, and any other important page may change. Just make sure that you have redirected these URLs to newer ones.
Many platforms have built-in redirect modules to handle this kind of issues. This URL redirection can help you to maintain the SEO ranking of your website and redirect the traffic to new URLs. Don’t try to redirect all older URLs to the homepage because it may affect the reputation of your website. The user may think of product unavailability on your ecommerce store and immediately leave your website. This may not help instead may increase the bounce rate and lower the number of leads on your website.
Data Migration:
This is a crucial aspect to look for while migrating your ecommerce store to other platforms. This process should not cause any discomfort to your customers. The experience of your customers should remain consistent while migrating from one platform to another. Their data and passwords should be preserved in every possible way so they don’t doubt your services. Their orders record should also be saved. Almost all ecommerce platforms have a built-in database which maintains the record and history of purchase orders. But try to make sure no data is lost while migrating which would further affect your business and your customers. Another disadvantage of data loss would be the inability to compare sales figures and progress analysis.
SEO Problems:
Many retailers show reluctance about website migration because they know it can have an impact on the SEO of their website. But, there are various techniques to cope with this problem which can be applied to make this impact minimal. These techniques include auto URL-adding and others.
Conclusion:
Ecommerce store migration can be a challenging task. There are plenty of hurdles incurred while migrating the website from one ecommerce platform to another. This may also include some investment. But this process can be fruitful after a while and can enhance your business and bring a good return on investment. We have discussed some challenges and risks above and also presented their solutions for your convenience. Just consider these before migration project and you won’t encounter any further problem. Best of luck!