If you’ve decided to migrate your e-commerce website to a new platform, understanding the risks is essential. While it’s impossible to eliminate all challenges, many steps can minimize them. Let’s explore common e-commerce platform migration risks and how to address them effectively.
Common Risks During Migration
Data loss or corruption
Moving data from one platform to another always carries the risk of data loss. Even worse, data corruption can occur during the process, requiring time-consuming manual fixes. Losing product details, customer records, or order histories is one of the most significant e-commerce platform migration risks to avoid.
Broken links and 404 errors
Changing to a new platform often results in a different URL structure for your pages. Without proper planning or configuring redirects, this can lead to broken links or dreaded 404 errors that frustrate users and hurt SEO.
Downtime affecting sales or user experience
Switching platforms requires a transition period where your old site is replaced with the new one. Even with careful timing, domain changes can take hours to propagate, causing unavoidable downtime. Additionally, a new website design or user experience can confuse returning customers, potentially impacting sales.
SEO ranking drops
Migrating your website can disrupt your SEO. Changes to URL structures, broken links, and updates to your site’s coding or content may temporarily lower your rankings in search engines. SEO impacts are among the most concerning e-commerce platform migration risks, but they can be mitigated with the right strategies.
Compatibility issues with plugins, or integrations
Most e-commerce websites utilize apps and 3rd party services to enhance the user experience or provide additional functionality. Apps are often designed for specific platforms, so you may find that your new e-commerce solution doesn’t support apps you were previously using. In addition, 3rd party services and integrations may need to be reconfigured to work with your new platform.
How to Mitigate Risks
Perform thorough backups
Before beginning your migration process, it’s critical to make backups of your data. This gives you something to “roll back” to and check against if there are any problems transferring your data to the new platform. A simple export to CSV is often enough to provide security in case of a data issue.
In addition, you should make backups regularly throughout the process to ensure its up to date. For example. If you standardize all of your product descriptions prior to migrating, you’ll want to do a new backup of your product data after that process. Customers and orders data will change during the migration process, so plan to do frequent backups as needed to ensure you always have the latest information saved.
Test on a staging environment
Most e-commerce platforms allow you to build your new website on a temporary domain. This allows you to create a staging environment where you can build the new store without affecting your live website. Take advantage of this staging environment to test thoroughly as you migrate your content, design and data. Enlist employees, colleagues and friends to review the new website content, test functionality and apps, and place dummy orders to ensure that checkout is working properly.
Your staging website is also ideal for testing new apps and 3rd party integrations. If you need to switch to a new app or service, evaluate both the features and cost of comparable apps available for your new platform. Most apps have a free trial so you can test them before upgrading to a paid plan.
Have an SEO strategy for redirects
New URLs will require 301 redirects to avoid broken links in search engines and beyond. Before starting the migration process, do an export of all your products and pages to create a list of all your original page URLs. As you build out your new website, map the corresponding new URL for each of your original ones. Right before launch, upload your list of old and new URLs using your new platform’s 301 redirects tool.
It’s almost impossible to catch every old URL and redirect it. Search engines and other websites may still have links for old products or pages that you deactivated in the past. After your migration, make sure to regularly check sources like Google Analytics and Search Console for any 404 errors. You can then upload additional 301 redirects to eliminate those broken links.
Work with experienced developers or consultants
With so many steps and potential pitfalls, migrating your e-commerce platform can be a daunting task. Hiring an experienced developer, web designer or e-commerce consultant may be worth the expense if it means mitigating risks that could impact sales. This is especially true if you are a sole proprietor or lack resources to help with the migration. Working with an e-commerce migration expert can help streamline the migration process, ensure compatibility, and reduce downtime, making the transition smoother.
Conclusion
Migrating your e-commerce platform requires planning and attention to detail to mitigate risks and achieve a seamless transition. While challenges like data loss, downtime, and SEO disruptions are common e-commerce platform migration risks, they can be managed effectively with the right strategies.
If you’re handling your own migration, download my E-Commerce Migration Checklist below for a step-by-step guide to a successful transition.
Still evaluating platforms? Schedule a free platform consultation to explore your options.
Need professional help? Contact me today for a free quote on your migration to BigCommerce.
