Our Ultimate Checklist for Migrating Your Business Website

What is website migration?

Website migration is the process of relocating a website from one environment or system to another. You might need to do this for any number of reasons, for example: you’re changing your domain name, you need to upgrade your CMS, you’re switching hosting provider, or your site needs a thorough redesign to match your growing business needs. Whatever the reason for the change, website migration needs to be handled with care.

Done well, a website migration will maintain all the organic traffic and domain authority you’ve built up over the years whilst transforming your online presence for the better. On the other hand, a poorly managed transition could have a serious impact on your business leading to your search rankings dropping through the floor and your sales figures following suit.

Common reasons why website migrations go wrong

Before we dive into the checklist, it’s worth taking a quick look at some of the most common reasons why website migration can turn into a digital nightmare. In our experience, a migration that’s carried out without the right expertise has usually fallen into the common traps of:

• Not planning every step of the process
• Not backing up data and losing important content
• Not understanding SEO and how to keep your site indexed on search engines
• Not redirecting URLs properly
• Timing the migration badly
• Not testing thoroughly or monitoring correctly after launch

To help you avoid these pitfalls, we’ve created a jargon-light website migration checklist that walks you through the major steps you need to take to successfully transition without losing business.

Key business website migration steps

1. Make a website migration plan

“Failing to plan is planning to fail.” Alan Lakein

Thorough planning is the cornerstone of every project that lands on our desk here at Web Adept. If you don’t get the planning stage right, you might miss something critical that comes back to bite you on the you-know-what later in the process.

When planning your site migration, some checklist essentials are:

• Identify what is/isn’t working well on your current site so you know what to keep/ditch/upgrade.
• Decide what specific new design elements/functions are required for the new site to achieve your business goals.
• Create an implementation team; whether that’s in-house, external experts or a mixture of the two.
• Draft a realistic timeline that works for your business and any digital experts you have on board (not forgetting buffer time for unexpected problems).
• Back everything up before you start so nothing is lost.
• Make list of the things that could go wrong and how to troubleshoot expected challenges.
• Identify what a successful website migration looks like in terms of key metrics, so you have a frame of reference when the process is complete.

2. Start the migration process

Once planning is complete, it’s time to get started. This is the time to be on your A-game – it takes a meticulous eye and careful implementation to make sure everything gets migrated properly without affecting performance.

The key steps here include:

• Copying all the data to the new environment.
• Preserving all those critical SEO components – keywords, title tags, meta descriptions, etc.
• Submitting a sitemap to Google Search Console so your new site gets indexed.
• Implementing 301 redirects to avoid broken links and keep your SEO rankings healthy.
• Updating your internal links to reflect the new URL structure.
• Verifying any third-party tools like payment gateways or CRM systems.
• Updating any directory listings or backlinks from external sites.
• Ensuring all your security features are properly configured.

3. Test, test and test again

We can’t overstate just how important this phase is in a successful website migration. You need to get in there and find every error before your customers do. There’s always something that needs fine-tuning to ensure your new website give visitors the best user experience.

So, make sure to:

• Go through every single page to check for broken links or missing content. Test everything from navigation menus, dropdowns, newsletter sign-ups and contact forms to chatbots, add-to-cart functions and payment processing. Basically, if there’s a button, click it!
• Check and optimise page load speed and site performance across multiple devices and browsers and under different network conditions.
• Make sure all your images, videos etc. are optimised and not slowing down page loading time.
• Get other people to test your site – it’s a great way to assess user-friendliness as well as highlight any glitches you may have missed.

4. Manage your website launch with care

Launching your new website is always the most exciting part of the process but if you want it to be plain sailing, preparing thoroughly and having a few crisis management strategies up your sleeve is critical.

Before the launch:

• Make sure your technical support team are ready for launch day and fully prepped to react to any immediate issues.
• Choose a launch time that aligns with your lowest website traffic, not peak time when things could get messy.
• Keep your team and any other stakeholders updated on progress and any problems that might arise.

After the launch:

It might take a day or two before things stabilise but if you have your support team fully briefed and on hand to help, you should be able to breeze through anything that crops up. Don’t forget to let your customers know about the new website, highlight any new features, and repeat the checks you did at the previous stage to ensure everything is working.

5. Monitor and Improve

At this stage, the launch celebrations might be over, but the hard work continues. Tracking your website performance and making any necessary adjustments is always important but needs extra special attention in the days and weeks after migration. Make sure you’ve set up automated alerts and you’re keeping a close eye on your daily traffic, SEO rankings, conversions, server errors, etc.

Once you’ve done any initial firefighting and you’re out of the woods, you can continue to track, test, compare and adapt over the coming weeks and months. Small fixes and gradual adjustments tend to be the better game plan during the post-launch phase.

What’s the best way to successfully migrate your website without losing business?

It can take a business years to recover from a bad website migration. The safest, smoothest, and most successful path is to let the professionals handle it all for you.

At Web Adept, we take care of everything from planning to post launch, so you don’t have to worry. We’ll also make sure you’re kept fully in the loop at each step of the process. We design for real businesses, not tech experts, so we’ll keep communications straightforward and jargon-free too.

You don’t just have to take our word for that. As TidyMinds, one of our recent clients, put it: “We’re immensely grateful for the patience shown by Web Adept. Naive to web development and management, Web Adept have simplified complex systems and processes so that as complete beginners we feel some sense of understanding.”

You can check out some of our case studies of happy clients who had smooth website migrations here. Or if you’d like to talk through how we can help you with a seamless transition, just get in touch with our team for a no obligation chat.

We’re here to make the process as easy as possible so that your business has the very best chance to shine online.

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