Moving a business to another platform might become necessary as it grows and changes. But, simultaneously, you want everyone who deals with your business to know it has moved. And you want to ensure they can find your site and continue doing business there like they used to.
And not only must humans find your site, but bots must also know where you are. Most of all, you want to keep the reputation you have built up over the years, represented in your excellent ranking on Google.
Migrating a website to a new platform or domain can significantly impact SEO ranking. In addition, there is a real risk of losing crucial data, so site migration should be taken seriously.
This article will discuss some common migration issues and how to avoid them.
It's good practice to back up your site regularly, but it's even more critical if you are planning a site migration. Before you do the actual migration, create a backup of your current site in case something goes wrong during the migration process.
Deleting the old site once the new one is up and running is also not recommended.
It's essential to test the migration first before you go ahead with it. For this purpose, running a Demo data transfer is necessary to see how your current store products will look in the new store.
When it comes down to it, a website is a bunch of URLs, but they are very important. Before migrating, website owners should compile a list of the current site URLs.
This step has two benefits:
Check for broken links so you can fix them before the migration process. Broken links cause significant problems during site migration. They cause poor user experience because they lead to pages that no longer exist or have been removed, resulting in a 404 error.
The migration can cause broken links, for instance, when pages are deleted but not redirected. Broken links lead to poor user experience and can also affect the website's SEO by decreasing the website's authority and increasing the bounce rate.
Broken links can be prevented by thoroughly auditing the website's internal and external links, locating them, and fixing them.
Internal and external links should be updated to point to the correct pages on the new site.
A 301 redirect does what the word says: it redirects website visitors and search engines from one URL to another. A 301 redirect tells search engines that the original URL has been moved to a permanent to a new location. When a website visitor or a search engine tries to access the old URL, the server sends a 301 redirect code to the browser, telling it that the page has moved permanently and providing the new URL.
When a website is migrated to another platform, URLs may change significantly if the website has been restructured or redesigned. This is where 301 redirects come in handy – they can help to preserve the website's SEO ranking by transferring the ranking from the old URL to the new one.
Non-HTML assets like images, videos, and PDF files can drive traffic and generate revenue. If you change any URLs associated with these assets and redirect them, you may gain traffic from searches for these assets.
One way to avoid this scenario is to allow embedded content URLs to keep image names (and URLs) the same so they don't need to be redirected.
Use your website analytics to pinpoint when your website traditionally experiences high sales volumes and doesn’t schedule the migration during those times. This is common sense, but you'll be surprised how many migrations have been scheduled at inopportune times, resulting in a loss of traffic and revenue.
Don’t schedule the migration when your traffic levels are highest. Site owners should avoid pushing a migration while experiencing high levels of traffic. This can disrupt your users’ experience and result in substantial traffic losses.
Migrating during a low-traffic window won't interfere with user experience and will limit the impact should anything go wrong during the migration.
One proven way to handle website migration with the least frustration is through Cart2Cart: Wix Store Migration App.
Cart2Cart is an automated shopping cart migration service that makes it easy for website owners to migrate their online stores or websites.
The process happens in a few simple steps that are easy to follow. Users can transfer products, orders, customers, categories, attributes, reviews, and other entities to 85+ supported shopping carts.
Website migration is a massive challenge for businesses. It is time-consuming and requires a lot of resources. And there is so much that can go wrong, but if you plan it well and use a professional migration app like Cart2Cart, your migration experience will not be a headache.
When you use an automated shopping cart solution like Cart2Cart:
Cart2Cart: The Wix Migration app automates the Wix migration in 4 easy steps.
In the migration wizard, choose your existing store as your Source Cart and provide all the required information.
Next, choose Wix as the Target cart. Provide the required details.
Once you receive a notification that the migration is concluded, check if your site functions correctly. Create a test product, place an order, select your preferred shipping and payment options, and test them.
Lastly, notify your customers that they can now find your store on Wix and invite them to reactivate their accounts.
Wix is an incredible website builder allowing users to build beautiful websites and functioning online stores without coding or technical knowledge. It is an affordable website builder but also has an entirely free plan if you are on a budget.
To begin, choose your existing store as a Source Cart. Secondly, choose Wix as a Target Cart. Thirdly, select the data you want to migrate. Perform a demo migration. Lastly, perform the full migration.
Yes, with the help of Cart2Cart, you only need a few simple steps to automatically migrate all your important data, such as products, customers, and SEO URLs to your new store.
Due to the Wix shopping cart peculiarities, importing max 19 product images to the Wix store is possible. In case, there are more than 19 images related to the product - Wix will randomly choose 19 and import them to the new store.