Thoughtfully starting business online requires continuous consideration and numerous decisions to be made. However, beginners do not often get preoccupied while choosing online solutions for their startups because let’s face it, at that point fast and preferably free service is what you are looking for.
Nonetheless, sooner or later any successful business owner, who was able to cherish their company from ground zero, is facing a need to upgrade their ecommerce platform. As the business grows, updating is necessary to effectively process new SEO demands, increased traffic, products and service extension, concurring overseas market and other aspects of online business development. A basic e-commerce architecture that satisfied the needs of your website in the beginning might no longer be. This is where ecommerce replatforming comes into play.
The Migrating Dilemma
Despite the necessity of moving your website to another ecommerce platform is evident at some point, in many cases the final decision is pushed back indefinitely. The reason for that is quite logical: although upgrading to a more capable solution has great chance to drastically increase your sales and organic search engine indicators, the transitioning process implemented without prior research and support might set you back due to its complexity.
That is why it is important either to be fully equipped to apply the needed measures on your own, or rely on professional expertise of 3rd party company to secure this transition for you. Keep in mind the following factors before replatforming.
What to look out for while replatforming?
Define the requirements of your business to be considered before choosing a new ecommerce platform. Pay special attention to technical capabilities, as importing some specifil types of data from your old platform to the new one might be problematic if not impossible in some cases. For instance, order history data is stored quite differently on various platforms, which often complicates the transition.
Once the new solution is chosen, study how its technical peculiarities on other websites that have it implemented. Pay attention to URLs, as they would need to be compatible with your current ones. Think in advance about domain name and security sertificates, as those might need to be updated or moved to the new server. As both processes require time and attention to detail, do not postpone it to the last moment.
Don’t forget you will need to keep your old website running for at least couple of weeks to ensure successful transition of all the important files, scripts and data. To make sure not to miss on any communication with the customers during the change, check email on both servers, the new one and the old one. After the migrating complete, test all your order forms, checking out and payment system, as well as all means of communication with your clients, before making your website live.
These tips might help to smooth over the process of replatforming. If you do not feel comfortable to execute the transition on your own, ask for assistance from one of the specialists. The service usually includes not only solving technical moving issues, but preliminary audit and evaluation of your needs to choose the most suitable ecommerce solution.