eCommerce Platform and Data Migration: The Definitive Guide

The online landscape, like the rest of the real world, is in a constant state of flux. One might think that some industries never change, but the truth is the eCommerce climate is shifting all the time.

Even if your business is selling a portfolio of goods that have not changed fundamentally in a hundred years, everything around you changes. Customers’ attention spans change. Payment methods come into vogue and fall out of favor. Search engine algorithms change. Rankings fluctuate. With everything changing around you, sometimes an eCommerce platform or data migration to adjust to those changes can become necessary.

eCommerce Platform and Data Migration: What Is It?

In simple terms, an eCommerce platform migration is moving a website from one eCommerce platform to another, usually for reasons associated with cost and functionality. For example, if a small business starts their eCommerce journey with an online WordPress store, but find that as they grow, WordPress cannot handle their capacity or does not offer the functionality they need, that business might consider migrating to a platform that can meet and exceed their growing needs like BigCommerce or Shopify.

As an example of a client that came to 1Digital^Ⓡ in need of a migration for reasons of functionality, consider High-Tech Battery Solutions. For years, they operated on platform that limited their ability to effectively compete in their technologically changing market and they needed to move to a more capable platform, BigCommerce. 1Digital^Ⓡ designed a custom BigCommerce website for them and successfully migrated all of their data to their new store. Now they have a competitive, adaptive online store that can easily handle their growth and the changes in their industry.

Data migration, on the other hand, is similar to a platform migration but entails moving over all of the data on one website onto another. 

One representation of a migration project that 1Digital^Ⓡ handled, consider the situation experienced by ERC Wiping Products. 

ERC Wiping Products came to us on a custom platform that needed the robust capabilities and out of the box functionality offered by BigCommerce. Because they were on a custom platform, we couldn’t just move their data from their old platform to BigCommerce. Instead, we worked alongside them to check their customer, order, product, and category data and built custom scripts to ensure the data transferred accurately.

Both of these processes can be arduous and the reasons for needing to perform an eCommerce platform and/or data migration are many. Here are some of the more common causes requiring a migration.

Why Might You Need to Plan for a Migration?

As tempting as it can be to fall into the thinking that your eCommerce business will never need to engage in a platform migration, it’s a thought in which you should not become too comfortable. As well as your business might be performing, adaptability is one of the hallmarks of success, and sometimes adaptability means platform migration.

Rapid shifts in the market can cause companies to make impromptu adjustments to their marketing or pricing strategies. New legislation sometimes requires development teams to alter products to meet codes and regulation. By similar tokens, platform migrations can become necessary, and it’s best not to let them become necessary suddenly.

Mike P., Director of Business Development at 1Digital^Ⓡ, elaborates on some of the many reasons a platform migration can become a matter of necessity.

“The first thing that comes to mind is a business that is developing more of a focus on wholesale or a B2B orientation. A business that is trending more towards B2B operations might find that its current platform is not structured in a way that offers enough out-of-the-box B2B functionality.”

“Another common issue experienced is with open source platforms. Open source platforms tend to have an accumulation of support, maintenance and security costs on a monthly basis that can add up and overwhelm or drain a business that isn’t a good fit for what some open source platforms can offer. All of those dollars spent on keeping the site afloat might be better spent on marketing or improving the site.”

It’s important to note, however, that Mike P. offered his insight with the caveat that these are only a very few of the common issues that might make a migration to a more capable platform necessary. Oftentimes, consulting with an experienced partner can help to uncover solutions to problems your business might be facing, including some of the following.

Scalability

As an online business continues to grow, there is a good chance it will tax its current platform. Additions to your product lines will make your store larger and more complex. Growing order volumes and new customer accounts can put a strain on your current infrastructure, particularly if the platform you’re using can’t handle the overload of information. Growing sales and new customers are a blessing, but they can overload certain platforms, causing inefficiencies that will become unhealthy for business.

Scalability is one of the most commonly cited reasons that makes an eCommerce platform migration necessary, and while that might be daunting, the good news is that you can plan for it.

Stressing the importance of thinking ahead, Mike P. has stated that in order for a migration to run smoothly,

“You need to take time to plan for [that] migration, [and] you should start planning for a migration at least three months before you want to be on the new platform.”

Unless your growth is explosive and occurs overnight, it’s possible to plan ahead and determine the point at which it will become the most cost-effective and practical to begin a migration.

Price

Cost is another commonly cited reason for a platform or data migration, and can sometimes go hand in hand with scalability. You might determine that the price you pay for the performance you receive is inadequate.

Each eCommerce platform has its own pricing structure. Some require you to host, whereas others charge a subscription fee. If your store is growing rapidly, it might become cost ineffective to maintain a website with high maintenance fees, development fees, and/or hosting infrastructure.

Technical Issues

An eCommerce platform that doesn’t provide you with peak performance and functionality is hardly worth it, regardless of the costs.

As your website grows, additional traffic may take a toll on its speed. Slow site speed kills user experience, which in turn hurts your brand. Rapid growth may also make your ability to add new products, categories, or customer accounts untenable.

As new apps are developed, you may find a need for them in your online store; in which case your platform must accept seamless integrations, and some platforms offer this type of functionality much better than others. The integrations you would like to make into your site will vary by industry and will widely include apps handling payment, offering the ability to leave reviews, keeping track of financial data and more – whatever subset of these your business requires can make it necessary for you to choose a platform that offers the proper level of support and functionality.

Cumbersome Marketing

If your eCommerce platform doesn’t make it easy for you to reach your target market or to connect visitors with the products they want, that’s a whole other problem.

For example, a website that doesn’t offer the right level of customizability to present your brand or integrate it into the layout is going to be a weak link in the chain mail of your marketing strategy. Consistency is key with branding, and therein lies the value.

Your online store should also offer an expertly crafted responsive design to facilitate mobile commerce, which has been rapidly growing in recent years. That’s another channel through which you will need to be able to reach your target audience.

As a slightly different, but related example, your platform needs to offer an intuitive navigational hierarchy or robust search capabilities – that’s a facet of marketing, too. If customers visit your site but can’t search for or locate the products they want, you’ll miss out on a sale.

 

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These issues rarely stand alone, but often converge in a storm that serves as a convincing indicator that it is time, or past time, for an eCommerce platform migration.

Making the tough decision to move to a fitting platform and planning accordingly will give your business the freedom to grow at its own natural pace without presenting you with technical or functionality issues.

Paying close attention to some of these fine details can help you avoid a migration disaster involving the loss of data, the loss of SEO value, and a negative impact on customer experience. Partnering with an experienced agency with a proven track record can help you prevent many risks from becoming an issue during or in the wake of a migration.

eCommerce Platform Migration Risks

Because there is a high volume of sensitive and valuable data being handled during an eCommerce platform migration for even the smallest of online stores, there are a number of risks that come along with the territory. While working with an experienced eCommerce agency can help to prevent them, it’s good to know where the risks lie. Here’s how Mason Q., a Business Development Manager at 1Digital^Ⓡ, summarizes some of the risks that clients face when planning for a migration:

“There are a lot of things to consider. First is data deletion or negative data manipulation. For example, if you go from one platform to another and each platform uses different coding, fields that exist on the back end might be different which could make transfer tricky. You need to be sure to consider everything to make sure it all works together seamlessly.”

“You should also be wary of faulty data migrators, which can corrupt your data, messing up your product information or creating duplicates, which can be a big problem in migrations. If it’s done incorrectly, you can lose all of your organic business or seriously adversely affect it.”

These are only some risks that could be involved in a migration, but you can see how much consideration needs to be taken even for something so specific.

Some other risks that businesses might face during a migration include:

Time

Even with a planned migration, downtime is a risk. This is a problem businesses face which can result in the need for a migration in the first place. Unplanned downtime results in lost orders and poor customer experience that can hurt your overall brand image.

During a migration, even planned downtime can have some of these negative impacts on sales and business processes. If your site is down during non-peak hours or for just a short while, it’s something that’s best avoided, regardless of the situation. The point is, downtime is bad – so it’s best to try and prevent it to the best of your abilities.

Data Loss

Poorly planned migrations or migrations made under duress during a short time frame can result in a loss of data. Your data ranges from product photography to customer account information to past order histories and everything in between – all of which is valuable.

That’s why planning for a migration and partnering with experienced professionals is critical. There are many reasons why your site could be struck by unexpected downtime or when delays in getting the site live can take longer than expected and result in unnecessary downtime. Careful planning eliminates all of that, and careful planning brings you in touch with the experts.

Preventing Damage to SEO

Another thing to keep in mind when planning for a migration is the damage that can occur to your search engine optimization as a result of poor planning or oversights. There are countless ways that a poorly planned migration can adversely affect your SEO causing your site to lose rankings and authority, so it pays to take pains to properly plan ahead.

Keep Track of Your Analytics

Before you migrate, make copies of all of your data in Google Analytics. That way, you can see exactly how your site performed before the migration and can look for specific errors after the move. If there is any loss in traffic, having access to your old data may help to identify areas that need improvement.

Keep Track of All of URLs

If you want to be able to see how every page on your website performs, then you need to keep track of every URL to track traffic to that page and associate any detrimental effects with the change in the URL.

To prevent loss of SEO value to your website, you should make as few changes to your site architecture as possible, even keeping URLs the same. Keeping your site architecture and URLs the same or as close as possible to your original website will help to protect against lost SEO.

Ensure You Have Redirects in Place

Building up all that SEO value over time means that some users are inevitably going to go looking for your old site, even after you migrate. You can’t just let them reach a dead end – that’s terrible for your SEO value, your brand image, and your user experience.

In order to prevent a loss of organic traffic and page not found issues when you change URLs,  you should have 301 redirects in place. Your site is liable to have some changes in URL structure even if others remain the same.

A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect that will send customers looking for your old site, or pages on your old site, to your new one and will help to preserve almost all of your original SEO integrity. Without 301 redirects in place to redirect traffic heading to your old site, they might end up in front of a 404 error. That’s why it’s crucial to have redirects in place for any migration so that your new website will not suffer a loss of traffic or a loss of valuable SEO. 

Sometimes a platform’s structure requires a specific formatting for URLs. Because of that, you might need to change some while others remain the same. Consider the following hypothetical example illustrating where a 301 redirect would be required and when it wouldn’t. 

Anywhere there has been a change in URL necessitates the implementation of a 301 redirect. In addition, your new site won’t be able to reap any of the gains you’ve earned in SEO through your old site. It’s a critical part of preserving your SEO value and it has the real effect of helping to prevent a dip in traffic that can occur as the result of a poorly planned or poorly executed migration.

Set Up Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a great, free tool that you can use to ensure that Google can crawl and index your site and help you identify problems with your site structure. You can use it around a migration to help you preserve as much SEO value as possible and transfer it to your new site.

Google Search Console offers a Change of Address Tool that alerts Google to your change of address and helps transfer your search results to your new site. This tool can be critical, primarily with changes in URLs that can be dangerous to your search value, but when handled properly can help protect your new site. Google Search Console can even help you keep track of your old site so you can measure how long to keep redirects in place.

 

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Working with an expert like 1Digital^Ⓡ can make all of the difference in the world when it comes to migration. Experienced partners that have handled migrations many times in the past and know the risks to watch out for can perform the necessary checks to prevent loss of data and damage to SEO.

Data Must Be Handled Carefully

These are some of the methods that can be implemented to help prevent migration disasters associated with poor planning or poorly devised processes. It’s important to note, however, that even with good planning and expert processes, there is a massive corpus of data that still needs to be handled with care in order to protect the work you invested into your old website, preserve it for your new website, and safeguard the customer experience you have worked so hard to build.

Customer Data

All data is important to the continued functionality of your online store, and a lot of it is interrelated. Much of it is relevant to your customers and includes information related to your customer accounts, customer passwords, and customer order history and invoices. Since business is ongoing, a careful process for moving all of these forms of data and more is critical to prevent a disruption in business.

SEO disasters aren’t the only problems that can occur during a migration. As orders are placed and invoices generated, there will be live information that needs to be migrated. Keeping track of it and ensuring it gets to the right place and can be found where it is supposed to be is critical for several reasons. It will prevent your business from losing track of orders and payments and it will help preserve your customer service, as well.

Product and Category Information

All of the information regarding product descriptions, pricing and inventory management is also critical to the operation and success of your online business. If there is a discrepancy with any of this information during or after migration it will present a disruption to your business – and must be avoided.

With certain products, the level of data is more involved than with others. For example, for sellers of clothing, a given garment might be offered in several different colors. Without the proper attention to detail, those fine points of detail might be lost – on a new platform, data like the product itself might be visible, but not the different options in colors. Working with an experienced provider that has previously handled sensitive data like this during migrations can help you foresee and prevent similar issues.

Content (Blog Posts, Photography, and More)

There is more information on your website that, while it might not be absolutely critical to the continuation of business, is partially responsible for the business you conduct in the first place.

For example, customers are more likely to purchase when they have access to quality product photographs. They might come to your site to read your blog for information on your products or services. Reviews are important too – that social proof took hard work to gain, and it’s not something you want to put at risk during a migration. While this information might not be as critical in the short term as orders and customer account information, it is still a part of your brand image and the value of your online store. A properly planned migration will account for it.

There’s something else that needs to be kept in mind when planning for a migration, which is that your new platform has to be compatible with any third party applications you ran on your old platform or has to offer you a completely serviceable replacement for them if they will not be compatible.

Types of Platforms

There are many types of eCommerce platforms available to online businesses and each one offers a suite of benefits to its users. Besides platforms that are developed in-house, you will most frequently come across open source platforms and software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms.

It’s critical to choose a platform that can accommodate the needs of your business, which of course will change over time but no doubt are related to some of the considerations enumerated earlier in this article. You will need to take into account projected growth, how much custom functionality you will require, compatibility with third-party apps as well as the costs you are willing to pay and what your capabilities are to host a store if that becomes necessary.

Open Source Platforms

Open source platforms are appealing to some eCommerce entrepreneurs because of the fact that you don’t need to pay a subscription fee and there is a large support community out there that specializes in providing services to these platforms like Magento and Volusion.

That being said, open source platforms require a huge investment in development and support. In addition, upgrades that occur to the software will require your attention whenever they are released in order to keep your site viable.

Although that is the case, if you have the resources to devote to developing an open source site, there are very few limits, if any, on the customization you can achieve. This is especially true if you have in-house developers that can devote all of their resources to managing and supporting your online store.

Open source platforms like Magento offer robust content management systems and a built-in mobile-friendly configuration. The platform is also built to offer a good groundwork for SEO, along with being large enough to handle hundreds of thousands of products and up to 80,000 orders per hour. It also easily incorporates many commonly used third-party apps like PayPal, SalesForce, SAP, Quickbooks, and more. 

Volusion is another popular open source platform that offers the same general positives and negatives as Magento, although it specifically offers a high level of customer support, a fairly easy to use dashboard and some of the best encryption available.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Software as a Service platforms are some of the most commonly used eCommerce platforms out there and building a store around one offers plenty of benefits.

Generally, utilizing Software as a Service requires you to pay a monthly subscription fee as a sort of license to use the software, but that subscription covers hosting, maintenance and upgrades, security and more. SaaS platforms, like BigCommerce or Shopify, will also, generally, require less work and attention than building a store using an open source platform.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is one of the most popular and most capable Software as a Service eCommerce platforms available. It offers merchants 24/7 support and mobile friendly designs which are critical in today’s online market.

It also enables sellers to sell across multiple external sites like Amazon and Facebook and can help streamline the process by which users find products shopping on Google and Shopzilla. It offers robust inventory management to help keep track of a huge number of products easily and is compatible with many of the most popular payment gateways.

Setting up an online store with BigCommerce can be as easy or as involved as you desire, depending on the level of customization you expect your store to afford you and the level of functionality you and your users expect.

Jenny, our Strategic Partnerships Manager at BigCommerce, summarized the big benefits of migrating to BigCommerce accordingly,

“BigCommerce is unique in the fact that it offers some of the most advanced functionality of any hosted solution for those looking to operate an online business. It can be as easy or as involved as you want it to be to set up a BigCommerce store. With it, you can create any type of design that you want, It’s compatible with multiple payment gateways, extremely scalable, and makes order tracking and inventory management practical.”

“For businesses whose current platforms are not allowing them the growth and flexibility they need, BigCommerce is an excellent choice for its out of the box functionality and B2B capabilities. Its open API even eases the process of migration for those coming to the platform.”

Overall, BigCommerce is an excellent SaaS platform that can offer a lot of functionality without putting the onus of security, updates, and maintenance on the user.

Shopify

Shopify, like BigCommerce, is another very popular and capable eCommerce SaaS platform. It is extremely scalable and can grow very quickly with your business, offers unlimited bandwidth, and up to 200TB of storage

Like BigCommerce, Shopify is highly customizable, depending on the level of involvement you need when you are building your online store. It offers over 100 premium themes that, like BigCommerce, are optimized for mobile devices.

In addition, adding products and managing inventory through Shopify is easy and streamlined, and the platform is compatible with a large number of third party applications.

Choosing a Platform

Making a decision about what platform to move to can be tough. It will require you to make important decisions about your business goals, growth, and the level of functionality and customization you need for your website.

Mason Q., a Business Development Manager at 1Digital^Ⓡ, weighs in on some of the factors that need to be considered when evaluating platforms,

“Clients should choose a platform that offers the path of least resistance. It really depends on the client’s requirements and the level of functionality they require from the platform. They need to consider a new platform’s integration with third party applications, as well as platform functionality, speed, security and support.”

As an example of a commonly encountered migration scenario, it’s not uncommon to see businesses start out on open source platforms only to later migrate to SaaS platforms like BigCommerce or Shopify. Over time, they find that keeping up with updates and maintenance on larger open source platforms is a burden that many businesses lack the resources to manage.

For example, many companies make the switch over to SaaS platforms like BigCommerce after initially building a store on an open source platform like Magento. While open source platforms like Magento can offer nearly unparalleled customization and freedom of development, they are very demanding on a company’s resources, time, and money.

While this is great for larger organizations that can afford it, there are definitely benefits associated with migrating to a SaaS platform like BigCommerce that is developed specifically with eCommerce in mind.

Sam M., a Business Development Manager at 1Digital^Ⓡ, explains,

“With an open source platform, you need to buy the server space and then you will be involved in a lot of upkeep. You’ll need to handle developments and updates, and you’ll be on the line for the security of your store as well. Server inadequacies can cause issues like site crashes, for example, if you experience too much traffic.”

“A SaaS solution like BigCommerce can be a lot more convenient and cost effective for some businesses that don’t have the resources to expend on development, upgrades and security. There are different plans [that are offered] with a platform like BigCommerce and with subscription comes the peace of mind that upgrades, updates and security will be handled by the provider. In addition, you’ll get immense scalability and 99.99% uptime. Ultimately, BigCommerce does half of the selling for you.”

With respect to migration from Open Source to SaaS, Sam elaborated on our thorough processes to ensure accurate data transfer and customer satisfaction:

“Although every migration is different, when it comes time to move data, we take that data and send it to a third party server to ensure it’s compatible with the new website before we send it over. In addition, we perform a sample migration of a test set of customer data and show them how it will appear on the live site to get their approval before moving it over.”

That’s only part of the 1Digital^Ⓡ process; in reality it’s much more comprehensive and thorough. So what does a real world migration with 1Digital^Ⓡ look like?

Real World Migrations

1Digital^Ⓡ has performed well over 100 migrations in our history. Many of our projects don’t just entail data migration but account for design and development as well.

That was the case with one of our customers, KM Herbals, who creates and sells handcrafted aromatherapy, skin care and hair care products from natural botanicals. They were working with a platform that wasn’t only aging, it was preventing them from getting the customizability and functionality out of their eCommerce store that they needed to effectively compete with their competitors. They needed not only a migration to more functional platform like BigCommerce, but a redesign as well.

Branden W, their Project Manager at 1Digital^Ⓡ, explains:

“Their old platform wasn’t showcasing their products in the light that they wanted, and moreover was far too limited in scope and functionality. They needed to migrate to a platform that presented fewer stylistic roadblocks. Overall it was too restrictive.”

KM Herbals wasn’t only having trouble with their brand image consistency and integration on their old site. As stated, their issues were functional, too. They needed a more robust content management system along with the ability to integrate their brand into their site design.

As with any migration, there are risks encountered and ways to mitigate those risks. 1Digital^Ⓡ Agency goes the extra mile. In the case of KM Herbals, we kept track of any data that wasn’t transferring properly due to naming conventions and duplicate errors and worked with our client in order to either make them compatible or manually transfer them.

As a result of their migration and redesign, they ended up with a much improved design that was custom tailored to their management needs and aligned with the expectations of their customers.

“All of their data was accounted for, and at the end of it, they had a BigCommerce site that gave them more flexibility with design, content management, brand integration and product positioning,”

Branden elaborated.

Another client of ours, Sagebrook Home, a purveyor of fine accessories for the home including furniture, decor and lighting, was working with a platform that was in fairly common use among wholesalers in their industry. Despite its relatively widespread use, they didn’t appreciate the fact that they were locked into a contract with their provider and they needed a platform that would give them more custom flexibility and better functionality – specifically with regard to checkout. They needed a new platform that was compatible with their ERP software and one that was even more widespread so that upgrading and maintenance could be taken in stride. BigCommerce checked these boxes and then some.

However, every migration is with its challenges, as no two are the same. Joe C., 1Digital^Ⓡ‘s Project Manager for Sagebrook, went into some detail on the matters of the case at hand:

“With this project, specifically, we had to take extra care to ensure the timely and accurate transfer of their data. Sagebrook used an ERP called Navision, with which we had to cooperate during and after migration to ensure that data would sync up on the new site.”

“We had to get their data from Navision and make sure the new site would synch back and forth from that software.”

He went on,

“With certain checkout and category and product page customizations, it can be hard to know if they will work with the live data once transferred. For that reason, we had to perform quality assurance checks with the data as we were developing these customizations to ensure accuracy of transfer and functionality of the finished design. The testing and design had to be performed together to ensure compatibility and functionality.”

Due to 1Digital^Ⓡ’s comprehensive processes and level of attention to the customer’s needs, Sagebrook experienced a painless, timely migration and received a new website that was much better and compatible with their old apps. They ended up with a site that was easier to maintain and gave them more control over pricing and other internal processes.

An eCommerce Platform Migration with 1Digital^Ⓡ Agency

Our eCommerce Platform Migration Process is time-tested, effective, and proven by the results of our clients. The examples explored above are only two of the hundreds of data migration projects we have performed successfully for our clients.

We are consultative, thorough, careful and precise. Successful migrations start with a data migration plan. Here’s what our data migration process looks like.

Getting Access to and Evaluating Data

The first step in ensuring that your data will transfer properly and end up in the right place on your new website is to get access to that data. With access to your current account and all of your data along with the account of the platform to which you intend to move, we can make sure that the data is in a format that will sync with the new platform. It also gives us the ability to see where any problems might lie and eliminate them before they become serious issues.

Initial Data Transfer

After we evaluate your data to determine if it will sync with the new platform and see if any changes need to be made, we begin our initial data transfer.

While some might take your data and try to bring it right to your new store, we don’t. Moving your data directly to your new platform is almost a guarantee of errors that will need to be manually addressed.

Instead, we move it first to a third party server so that we can arrange it in a manner that assures it will populate properly and accurately on your new platform.

If your project also requires design or development, that work begins alongside the initial data transfer to save time where we can also check on any adjustments that need to be made.

Front End Data-Alignment Testing

After the initial data transfer, we can see if your data has transferred over effectively to the new platform and populated properly. This happens alongside our design and development processes and enables us to see if and where corrections need to be made.

At this point, we can take a look through the new store to see if everything looks as it should. Every migration is unique and our quality control process helps to ensure that issues and bugs are mitigated or eliminated. We use a ticket system to help keep track of this that you can follow throughout the process.

Resync

As soon as your initial data transfer is complete your new store is up and live, which means that some data such as orders will be changing through the process. To ensure that all data is up to date, we ask you to freeze changes to your store so that we can perform a resync to make sure there is no loss of data that may have changed since the initial data transfer.

If you want to continue to take orders, we ask you to track them during the freeze period so that we can enter them into your store after the resync is complete.

Front End Alignment Testing – Resync

Most of the quality checks and testing will occur right after the initial data testing, but there is always a slight chance that there could be unforeseen effects to data during the resync. For that reason, we perform a second quality assurance check during the freeze period of your resync to ensure that there have not been any undue changes.

Launch

After your new site launches, we can offer a number of services to ensure that the launch progresses smoothly and that old clients can find your new store. This will be arranged in detail, of course, before the migration, but some of these services are as follows:

1. Password Reset Email Blast

As soon as your site launches, we send a blast email to your customers indicating that they will need to reset their password for access to your new store.

2. 301 Redirects

We suggest implementing 301 redirects as part of any migration. These 301 redirects will, as mentioned previously in this article, alert Google that your site has moved and inform it of the new URLs, thus safeguarding you against a dip in traffic.

3. Google Search Console Support

Even with 301 redirects in place, Google may have trouble crawling your new site. For this reason, we monitor your Google Search Console for a few weeks after you launch to keep tabs on any issues that may arise so that they may be addressed.

After launch, you will have a free support period during which we will monitor issues and fix them if they present themselves. After this period is up, you may opt to partake in our retainer support program for updates or changes to your website for as long as you might choose.

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Every eCommerce data migration and every platform migration is different. Every online business has different needs and different goals. That’s why working with a consultative agent like 1Digital^Ⓡ can be the difference between a painless migration and a disaster.

Plan ahead and consider the growth of your business. Consider the custom functionality that your website requires and how much maintenance you perform on your website on a rolling basis. By planning ahead and partnering with an experienced agency that has planned and performed many successful migrations, you can build a better online store, offer a better user experience, and grow your business.

Part of planning ahead is going with a partner with years of experience and a proven history of performing successful migrations. Regardless of your industry, regardless of your needs in a platform, 1Digital^Ⓡ can help you find a solution that will allow your business to grow and flourish, while at the same time preventing data loss and minimizing downtime.

It’s a lot to take in, but remember, you can always start with a free migration evaluation that will assess your website, your data, your business’s needs and more. Visit out our page on migration services to learn more about what 1Digital^Ⓡ Agency can offer you. Better still, give us a call at 888-982-8269.