Navigating Your Next Website Migration: A Comprehensive Guide

Migrating from an existing content management system (CMS) or digital platform to a new one can be a challenge. While upgrading to a system that better fits your needs and priorities is well worth the effort, it takes careful planning and deep expertise to ensure a painless transition.

To help you navigate your next migration, we’ve put together the following guide – including best practices, solutions to common pitfalls and a cheat sheet for quick reference.

What is Website Migration?

A website migration is the process of moving your organizational website (or multiple sites) from one environment to another. This can involve significant changes – like redesigning your website, refurbishing your overall tech stack, restructuring your content and adopting new protocols.

Why Migrate?

Why migrate to a new CMS? Consider a few key benefits.

• Enhanced User Experience. Migration gives you the opportunity to strategically redesign user experiences and adopt tools that improve UX.

• SEO Benefits. With proper planning and execution, SEO rankings can significantly improve post-migration.

• Security Improvements. Migrating to a more secure protocol can help you better protect your data and build customer trust.

• Choosing a flexible CMS that suits your ultimate goals can make growth both possible and simple.

Think of your website migration as a relocation to a new office space. You’re essentially packing up your existing presence and relocating to a new, more suitable location with modern facilities and better environment. Similar to a physical move, migrations present challenges in addition to opportunities. Both take planning to avoid pitfalls and ensure a smooth transition to your new environment.

5 Common Migration Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

The process of website migration comes with its own set of intricate challenges that require focused solutions. Here are five common challenges and how to avoid them.

1.      Lack of proper planning

Challenge: Insufficient planning is one of the most common migration pitfalls. Not having an adequate roadmap invites a host of challenges and complications, including:

• Extended downtime during the migration, leading to a dip in traffic and lost revenue.

• Loss of crucial data like content, user accounts or transaction histories.

• Broken links, missing images and dysfunctional features, resulting in poor user experiences and disrupted SEO efforts.

• Budget and timeline overruns.

Solution: Regular communication with all stakeholders aligns expectations before and during migration and helps prevent misunderstandings.

• Start by setting clear-cut objectives, i.e., the reasons for the site migration.

• Determine a timeline. Set attainable milestones and be sure you have appropriate deadlines attached to each.

• Assemble a team that includes webmasters, SEO experts, content specialists, UX designers and other relevant stakeholders and prioritize alignment at every stage of the process.

• Have contingency plans to address hiccups in the process.

2.      Failing to backup data and files

Challenge: Not backing up your website before migration is risky. Backups serve as safety nets that enable you to recover files and data in the event of a crisis during migration. They also allow you to refer to previous versions if necessary. Skipping this part of your migration can result in serious repercussions, such as:

• The loss of critical data in the event of data corruption or accidental deletion. This can make it difficult – or even impossible – to restore your site to its previous state.

• The need to reconstruct and reconfigure your website from scratch. Without proper backups, you may find yourself starting from zero; this leads to lengthy recovery time, extended downtime, reduced user satisfaction, increased cost, and the loss of revenue and reputation.

Solution: Create a full backup of your website’s data, files and configurations before beginning your migration. Regularly document progress, and don’t be afraid to revert if necessary. Here are a few tips for effectively backing up your website data:

• Schedule regular backups – daily, weekly or monthly, depending on the frequency of updates to your website. Consistency is key.

• Make sure you have backups for everything on your website, including databases, files, media and plugins.

• Use reliable backup tools or plugins to automate the process. This helps you avoid the human errors that can occur with manual backups.

• Store backups offsite, preferably in a remote server or cloud storage. This keeps your data and files secure even if your website’s server experiences issues.

• Encrypt your backups. This will keep sensitive data secure, even if your files are compromised.

• Regularly test your restoration process to ensure everything works as expected.

3.      Poor implementation of redirects and loss of internal links

Challenge: Poorly implemented redirects can derail an otherwise seamless site migration. The team responsible for site migration might forget to redirect and update canonical tags while changing URLs. They may also accidentally delete internal links. This will hurt user experiences, search engine rankings and the overall performance of your website.

Solution: To avoid these issues, audit links regularly to ensure consistency and usability. Here’s an audit checklist for easy reference:

• Build a comprehensive redirect plan. Test all your redirects thoroughly.

• Observe your site performance and indexing on a regular basis.

• Be consistent with reviews and updates to your redirects.

• Identify key internal links and make sure they’re updated on your new site. Check the links thoroughly before and after the migration to make sure they are working properly.

4.      Letting crawlers and robots access your staging site

Challenge: Search engine crawlers visit your site to include your site, pages and content in search engine result pages (SERPs). But allowing them to access the staging site of your new website before it goes live can lead to premature indexing, duplicate content and crawl budget waste.

Solution: Prevent search engines from getting access to the staging site of your new website. Here’s how:

• Use robots.txt files to prevent search engine crawlers from visiting staging sites. Such files guide crawlers to identify which pages are to be excluded from indexing.

• Add “Noindex” meta tags to your staging site’s HTML to signal search engines not to index the content.

• Use HTTP authentication to restrict access to your staging site, requiring a username and password for entry.

• Implement canonical tags on your staging sites pages, specifying the corresponding pages on your live site if required.

5.      Forgoing non-HTML assets

Challenge: Failing to include non-HTML assets during site migration – such as images, stylesheets, JavaScript files and videos – can lead to broken visuals and missing links. Without these essential elements, your site may lose its intended layout and interactivity, pages may load too slowly and your site may appear incompatible with mobile devices.

Solution: Ensure proper migration of non-HTML assets by:

• Optimizing the assets for the new environment.

• Testing the post-migration functionality, design, performance and user experience of your website.

Website Migration Cheat Sheet

Keep this cheat sheet handy during your migration process for a smooth and efficient transition.

• Prepare a checklist. Outline each step and ensure every stage of your migration is covered.

• Follow best practices. From development to security, ensure you use best practices and employ best-in-class solutions throughout every area of your migration.

• Avoid doing too much too quickly. Make changes gradually to minimize risk.

• Conduct a pilot test. Check for technical errors to identify and prevent potential issues.

• Ensure server health. Regularly check that your servers are operational and up to date.

• Schedule migration during low traffic. Carry out your migration during off-peak hours to avoid disruptions.

• Monitor key pages. Meticulously monitor the pages that drive maximum traffic.

• Have a backup plan. Always have an alternative plan in place for managing contingencies.

• Outsource when necessary. For complex tasks, consider partnering with a reputable vendor for professional migration services.

Unlock Seamless Website Migrations with Material

A successful migration is more than a technical shift; it’s a strategic move towards a more agile, secure and customer-centric digital presence. Our recent client stories illustrate the impact of a seamless, well-executed migration – and Material’s expertise in managing the most complex and challenging migration processes.

1. Partnering with a global consulting firm, we boosted their engagement 30% with a seamless migration to Drupal 10.

2. Discover how Material migrated 170+ sites and 30k+ multilingual pages to scalable platforms, increasing the United Nations’ decision-making speed by 40%.

If you’re considering a CMS migration and you’re in need of advice or technical expertise, reach out. Let’s start the conversation.