Navigating ecommerce migrations - Emma Russell - SearchNorwich 17

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EEAT Emma Russell fact file 🚀 Morally grey Dr in Godzilla: King of Monsters 🚀 Brilliant but rebellious maverick 🚀 Environmental activist 🚀 Releases Godzilla’s nemesis, King Ghidorah

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EEAT Emma Russell fact file 🚀 Founder of Oxford Comma Digital 🚀 E-commerce SEO 🚀 In my spare time I knit 🚀 Seen some migration horrors

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What is a migration?

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A migration is horror

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Why is a migration horror?

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Great SEO

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Move to Wordpress and redesign

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Domain name migration

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There are many different types of migration Domain name migration Platform migration Hosting migration Redesign

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What is a domain name migration? Moving from one name of a website to another For example: https://herfreesoul.com to https://freesoul.com

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Why are domain name migrations done? ➔ A company is bought by another and renamed ➔ A company wants to tweak their target audience ➔ A company wants to reframe their branding

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What are some common pitfalls? ➔ Redirects aren’t added properly and Google or other search engines can’t find your new content ➔ You’ve built up authority under one name, which is then difficult to transfer to a new name

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What is a platform migration? Moving from one tech stack to another For example Moving from Squarespace to Shopify

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Why move platforms? ➔ You’ve outgrown your platform and have new requirements that your platform can’t meet ➔ You have requirements you didn’t realise you had and need a platform that meets those requirements

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What are some common pitfalls? Your new platform still doesn’t have everything you need Your new platform relies heavily on client-side JS and Google isn’t putting in the resources to render it

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What is a hosting migration? Moving from one host/server to another For example: Moving from GoDaddy to 20i

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Why change hosting? ➔ Some servers won’t guarantee enough uptime for your needs or prove unreliable (*cough, GoDaddy, *cough) ➔ As you grow you might need something more scalable ➔ You might want more control over your servers

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What are some common pitfalls? ➔ Choosing GoDaddy as your hosting provider ➔ Understand the full server setup e.g. are you using something like Cloudflare? ➔ Are there speed implications? ➔ ALWAYS UNDERSTAND IF THERE’S GOING TO BE DOWNTIME

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What is a redesign? Changing the look and feel, including potentially, the taxonomy of your site For example Getting a branding refresh

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Why are sites redesigned?

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What are some common pitfalls? ➔ In the process of redesigning, sometimes companies decide to remove sections of the site that actually drive a lot of traffic ➔ You can say “if you’re happy to sign off an X% decrease, then it’s fine” - get this in writing

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Common misconceptions 1. Migrations are just about getting your redirects right 2. You’ll always lose traffic in a migration a. Migrations always drop 15% of traffic 3. A migration is always a really long project 4. A migration can be done over a weekend

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How to handle a Domain name migration Platform migration Hosting migration Redesign

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Don’t Panic

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Step 1: Understand what’s changing By understanding what’s changing you can understand what you need to set out in your requirements

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Step 2: Understand if this is a chance to make improvements Maintaining what you have Going after growth

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Step 3: Assess what’s working well and benchmark You need to benchmark traffic and everything that’s getting you that level of traffic

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Step 3: Assess what’s working well and benchmark As SEOs and marketers you need to drive what to keep or what to remove. You should have sign off.

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Step 4: Create your requirements Example document here

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Step 5: Create your requirements Full story here

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Step 6: Solutioning and cutover tasks Other than testing, you may have things you need to do, such as submitting XML Sitemaps to GSC etc.

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Step 7: Testing Communicate with the team how you’re going to test

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Step 7: Testing Tell them in advance what the high priority issues are and how you’ll communicate them

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Step 7: Testing Test against your requirements for staging and live. Nothing should be a surprise on live.