Organisations may decide to launch a new version of their website for many reasons. The design could feel outdated, the business may have evolved its offerings over time, or it may need to scale when the back end can no longer support the integrations and functionalities needed for growth.
Whatever the reason, unless it’s a simple reskin (which doesn’t change the site structure or functionality), there are a lot of considerations that need to be taken into account.
New businesses, with a website on a brand new domain are relatively easy to launch. There are no links, no domain authority, and no pages have been previously indexed. If for whatever reason the launch doesn’t go smoothly, as long you’ve left yourselves with ample time to deal with any issues before beginning to market your site, it doesn’t really matter.
However, websites which have been residing on the same domain for years while building their brand and traffic through numerous marketing channels are at serious risk of destroying all their hard work if a website migration is not managed correctly.
What to expect when migrating a website
Depending on the complexity, it can take months to complete the migration of a website to ensure it goes as smoothly as possible, from the initial designs being presented, to the site relaunching. When changes are being made to the structure of the website, what it’s built in, or the CMS, the project can quickly become more challenging from a technical perspective.
There are also often multiple stakeholders involved. If the redesign is set to be a major refresh, typically, a branding agency, designers, developers, internal product and marketing teams, and external agencies are likely to be involved. These teams need to work closely together, ideally from a single strategy document or project management tool, with tasks assigned to them and a timeline in place.
The first few weeks of planning may involve market research and user testing to see how the new branding resonates with the target audience. From there, after several rounds of revisions, work can finally begin on the new website.
The next stage sits with the designers and developers, who will be responsible for mocking up page designs, and proposing how the site should be structured. At this point, an SEO agency or in-house expert, as well as those working on UX/CRO should become involved, ensuring that the proposed structure of the site lends itself well to being scalable and crawlable, and is easy for users to navigate
Most importantly, pages that currently rank well and drive traffic to the site (or those that act as an important page in the conversion funnel) still need to be included, or have a similar alternative page that they can be redirected to in the new design.
Once the structure and functionality of the site have been agreed upon, wireframes and/or a sitemap have been produced, and have been approved, the site can move into development.
This is when teams managing all aspects of digital marketing, and in particular, SEO, need to start the bulk of their work.
What tasks are typically undertaken to migrate a website?
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