Creating a ecommerce Site Migration Plan may seem daunting; ecommerce replatforming involves its fair share of risk. Consider a ecommerce website migration agency that can help ensure a seamless migration whilst minimising the risk to your business' online platform.
One of the most important aspects of our work is collaborating with clients to scope and prepare a full specification ahead of any planned migrations or re-platforming. These are lengthy projects that take a lot of time, a lot of financial investment, and a lot of effort to get right.
When handled correctly, a migration to an upgraded software solution, a new ecommerce provider, or a new website hosting company should appear to have a seamless transition. Your external stakeholders should be unaware of the intricacies taking place behind the scenes, and more importantly, you shouldn’t experience any business interruption.
Our approach to migration planning is to ensure that every stage of the migration is carefully thought through. By considering every possible scenario, identifying the potential pain points, and establishing a strong understanding of what you are trying to achieve (and why) it’s much easier to ensure that your migration completes on time and budget.
It may help you to break the planning stage down into five distinct areas: your existing system, your long-term goals, your migration management, your contingency planning, and your final evaluation.
You may be considering a new platform because your existing software has come to its end of life. Or you may feel that an upgrade could help you to work far more efficiently. It could give you greater scope to add new services or enhance your business capabilities.
At the very start of your planning stages, you must undertake a detailed analysis of your existing systems and processes. Try to think objectively about how your system supports your business model.
At this initial stage of your planning, we highly recommend that you ask for feedback and opinions from other members of your team, across different departments and different seniorities. This will help you to establish any commonalities as well as learn more about what different departments need to be able to work more effectively.
Choosing to invest in new infrastructure isn’t just about improving efficiencies for the here and now. It’s about setting the foundations and establishing the basics of what you could anticipate needing in the future. With technology rapidly changing, and entire industries evolving, you need to be confident that any new platform will give you scope to grow your business.
In our view, a crucial element of your project specification is having a cohesive vision for what you want your new platform to be able to do. It’s important that you listen carefully to what other departments have to say; don’t assume that you know what a department could need. If your new software solution is intrinsically linked to every single facet of the business, then you need to make sure that it works effectively for everyone.
At this stage, you should now be much clearer about what you are looking for, and what you need your platform to be able to do for your business. You may have spoken to several platform providers to gain an insight into different software solutions. Or you may have spoken to an impartial consultancy / agency (like us) who can make recommendations on what is right for your business.
As you draw nearer to making your final selection, you need to start to think about the project management of the migration. Who will take overall responsibility for it and what are your timescales and budgets? If you want your migration to be seamless, it’s important to set out clear expectations from the very beginning.
Typically, migrations to new platforms or investments in new infrastructure require significant change management. It’s how you plan to factor in these changes, that can make the difference between a difficult project that overruns, and one that remains on track.
We advocate for incorporating contingency planning into your migration plans because it’s a fact that unexpected issues will arise during the process. We believe that by predicting what issues could occur, you could be better positioned to be able to mitigate those issues and ensure that the project remains on track. Of course, contingency planning can encounter a variety of facets, from data protection and disaster recovery to staff absences.
And post-2020, we now live in a world where the unthinkable could happen and businesses could be forced to transform their entire business models at a moment’s notice.With this in mind, you must work closely alongside your ecommerce and sales teams, as well as your IT, business development, and marketing departments to feel confident that you are prepared for the unexpected.
- Resourcing
- IT Infrastructure
- Impact on other areas of the business
Once the final migration is complete, and you have moved across to your new platform, you will need to be prepared to see if it’s working as well as it should be.
This is your opportunity to assess your return on your investment.
Of course, it will be difficult to make an immediate judgment as it may take a while before your sales noticeable increase.
However, you should be able to verify whether the new system has linked in with your initial aims and objectives, whether it’s overcome any of your previously identified pressure points and whether it’s enabled better, more collaborative working between departments.
As you can see, there’s much to consider with any migration or re-platforming. We believe that the more you prepare, and set expectations, the easier the transition will be.
If you would like to find out more about how our consultancy services can identify how to maximise the effectiveness of your migration, get in touch!
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