7 reasons to migrate your online store now
How to migrate you online store?
Simply with a click, unfortunately, it’s not that easy in normal cases!
The migration should be well planned. In most cases, there is a lot of technical and organizational effort behind it.
Merge Store, Website, and Blog
New Brand, New Store
Technical Backgrounds
Poor Performance
Change
Outdated Software
Migration of your online store should be well planned. In most cases, there is a lot of technical and organizational effort behind it.
There are various providers who have developed software that migrates data from one store system to another. Though, this only involves the data. Most providers have various options built-in, with which the URLs, for example, can also be migrated. Depending on which systems are used, this does not always make sense.
Besides the technical side of migration, there is also the conceptual side. Surely there is a reason why you want to migrate your online store. When choosing a store system, make sure that fundamental problems are solved with the migration.
Merge Store, Website, and Blog
1. Merge Store, Website and Blog
You may know this as well. Over the years, ideas and online projects have grown. And you have a domain for the store and a domain for your website. This has always worked well from a technical point of view.
Nonetheless, you are now seeing marketing challenges that are difficult to overcome. You have two different streams of visitors to the website and online store and lose many potential orders due to the separation.
Marketing is also more expensive and more difficult to coordinate.
Where is the best place to create content?
On the website, you position yourself and your offers. Like in the store, you sell your products. In some cases, the blog is still on an extra domain or subdomain on which you are informed about the news.
It’s time to bring all channels together and offer your visitors a unified experience!
There is now store software that can display both content pages and blogs well. The other way around in 2020 with so many offers online it is surely even more important! A CMS that can handle blogging and E-commerce.
New Brand, New Store
2. Migrate the online store because of a new brand
Almost every day you can read about takeovers in the media. However, this is not the only reason why new brand names are introduced. As a brand grows and develops, it can also outgrow its old brand image.
Sometimes it’s obvious and makes sense to use a new brand name and strengthen it. “Raider is now called Twix – nothing else changes!” may still be familiar to some.
Less known but also a complete change is the name of the web analytics software Piwik to Matomo.
Use the brand name change and check if you want to migrate with the online store as well.
Technical Backgrounds
3.Technical Requirements to migrate an Online Store
Your store system needs an upgrade or is to be replaced by another system. This situation can be a kind of special case.
Upgrading from Magento 1 to Magento 2 is not trivial. The e-commerce software has undergone considerable development during this “major upgrade”. With this evolution have come fundamental changes in the data structure and code. Thus, an upgrade is almost comparable to migrating the online store to another e-commerce software.
The special case here is mainly in perception. Especially with a major upgrade, for example from Magento 1 to 2, we can find the following situation: same design, same brand, same processes and Magento both times.
Why invest money now in apparently no change? I will go into this point in more detail below.
If you need to migrate your online store because of an upgrade of the store platform, then you can also directly think about another store system at this time.
If you are happy with sales, all processes and the effort around your current store, then there is little in the way of an upgrade.
However, if you encounter dissatisfaction with your current store, migrating to another store system may make sense.
4. Technical Requirements
You may be familiar with the following situation. You have a new idea for your online store and bring it to your Internet agency. You then hear something like the following:
“Your store system doesn’t provide the right functionality for your ideas.”
I have actually heard this from customers more often. In principle, it is always difficult for me to understand. First of all, it is about software and there you have to say, almost everything is possible!
When initiating software projects, the main focus is on feasibility!
Normally, this is determined by goals and budgets. So if your ideas for your online store reach the supposed technical limits, you are probably with the wrong internet agency and/or the wrong online store.
Migrating to another store can be a good solution here.
Poor Performance
5. No Sales
You receive no or hardly any orders via your store and want to start again. In principle a good idea!
But here I want to issue a warning. There are indeed technical reasons that scare away customers. An online store that does not work optimally on smartphones these days is completely unacceptable.
Although, you should check if the lack of orders comes from the fact that you need to bring more visitors to your online store. If you have 100 visitors a day in your online store and no or less than 2 – 3 orders on average, then you may indeed have technical problems.
Definitely reach out to me here and we’ll look at it together.
Change
6. Change, therefore migrate online store
Your business model and ideas change along with the market. This is normally a good development.
With every major change, you always have the opportunity to think ahead and set up future scenarios. In any case, it should be possible for your store system to support your changes.
If this is not the case, you should not compromise here. Good e-commerce software adapts to your circumstances and can grow with your requirements.
Outdated Software
7. Outdated Website and Software Environment
Your website is getting on in years and just needs a new look. Your online store software is up to date and you just need a new theme. This is the ideal case and can be easily realized.
More often, however, I have found a different situation with customers.
Software environment is not up to date
The store software was outdated. Due to the hectic day-to-day business, maintenance on the online systems has taken a back seat.
Suddenly there is an important upgrade, for example, because of a security vulnerability. However, dependencies exist that prevent the upgrade! Let me tell you the whole story.
The client’s software environment was a SuiteCRM and two WordPress systems, one for the website itself and one as a customer portal integrated with SuiteCRM. Everything had been running on a web server with PHP 5.6 for years and worked well in day-to-day business.
PHP 5 had passed the “End of Life Date” by the end of 2018. Hosters offered PHP 7 early on, but much web software took significantly longer to migrate to PHP 7.
My client received an email from the hoster at some point that the PHP 5 servers will soon be turned off and only PHP 7 will be available.
Complete system environment prevents upgrade
But, the software environment was not compatible with PHP 7, as it had not been maintained and updated for years!
Only new features have made it into the systems to support business processes and realize ideas.
Some of these features were unfortunately not developed to be upgrade-safe. This means that a system upgrade would lose functionality or even make the system unusable.
Not keeping software up to date can be expensive
That was a very unpleasant situation that I found there and we were now in a bind. So we had to manage several projects at the same time:
- Implement “upgrade-proof” functions
- Update software applications
- Upgrade server environment
Since these projects did not fit into the time frame required, we had to start other projects:
- Provisioning of a “new old server” (new server with outdated PHP version)
- Migrating the CRM and customer portal to the new old server
- Changes in processes and integration, as now two servers had to work together
Only now an update of the website as possible. After WordPress was up to date with all plug-ins, we were able to upgrade to PHP 7. Then it was time to upgrade the CRM and customer portal.
Overall, the project could have been run in a much more planned and cost-effective manner. For this, the company would have had to invest in maintenance and updates in the years before.
Conclusion
Conclusion to migrate your Online Store
There are several reasons why another store system may work better in your business. Deciding to migrate your online store is usually not a simple undertaking and should be well planned. Try to develop options and ideas early on to make the migration successful.
Do you need help with migrating? Just contact me and we will look at the options together.