Platform Migration

This article is a synopsis for a Blog article entitled "redeveloping and migrating your online store."

Introduction

Throughout the lifetime of an online store it is essential to update the site in response to changing customer demands and competitive pressures. Some modifications can be minor - such as the tweaks to the design, some major - such as the introduction of new functionality and some fundamental - such as migration to a totally different ecommerce platform.

I have observed numerous ecommerce website developments and the thing they share in common is that, at some point, they run into difficulties. Usually it is because of a lack of planning.

This article explains how to increased your chances of success and minimise the risk of damaging your business.

Planning your project

In any ecommerce project insufficient planning is the same as planning to fail.

Before you start work on any project, you need to be very clear about what you are trying to achieve in terms of:

• Generating website traffic
• Increasing conversion rates and revenue
• Business efficiency

And have a clear plan in place to mitigate risk and measure success.

Any request for tender document should document and quantify the aspects of your business you:want to improve and what aspects you want to preserve and protect. Without this it is difficult to determine the scope of the project, what resources you need and how much to invest.

Most request-for-tender documents fulfil the first requirement well - after all, it is the exciting bit of the project. Where they tend to fall short is in documentation the things that need to be left as they are.

The main challenges

Website redevelopment projects typically run into difficulties when you don't do the following things well.

Time and cost estimates

Even the most conservatively estimated projects overrun. Humans tend to be optimistic and price pressure often leads vendors to under-quote clients. The end result is that most projects are under-funded which results in them being insufficiently planned and resourced.

Content migration

One project I was part of had a single featured a single bullet point in the plan - redevelop the website content. This one line item took the retailer 9 months to complete, more time than the rest of the project together. When you sell more than 50 products, migrating website content is a significant data processing task which, if done without care, can destroy your search engine rankings and reduce conversion rates.

Website design

For better, but all-too-often for worse, the design of a website tends to dominate the migration projects. You need to maintain perspective. Yes, design is important, but the success of the project depends on a number of different factors.

I've seen people spend days discussing the position and colour of a button and a few minutes agreeing some vague plan to retain the search engine rankings the whole business depends on. Don't make that mistake!

Incorrect assumptions

The devil really is in the detail. Ecommerce systems have many hundreds of features and to save time it is tempting to assume that they all work on the same way.

Often, the reason for this is that at too much attention is given to making the site look great and fixing technical pain points at the expense of the more "mundane" things.

It is vital to review the following areas very carefully:

Third party systems

Integrations with third party systems are a feature of many online stores. Systems such as Loqate (address capture), Feefo, Trust Pilot, PayPal and other payment processors are commonly used, but not always easy to integrate. This needs to be checked at the beginning of the project, epecially if you are migrating platform.

Product configuration and pricing

Ecommerce systems do not use the same approach to creating products with different configuration, bundling and pricing options. For example, Sellerdeck makes it relatively easy to use quantity-break pricing, Shopify does not feature this at all.

Order processing

Sellerdeck has relatively sophisticated order processing features, some are very basic. I have seen a lot of projects where the overall benefits of the redevelopment have been undermined by order processing limitations. Also, where you export orders into third party systems, you will need to check that these integrations are supported.

Checkout

Not all systems allow you to customise the check-out screens and integrate important third party services, such as postcode lookup.

Plugins

Website developers love plugins because they provide a cost-effective way of adding new functionality to their clients' sites.

The problem is that plugins are more likely to be used to plug the embarrassing gaps in ecommerce platform functionality that often emerge during the closing stages of the project (due to insufficient planning).

The best way to view any plugin is as a code smell. Alien third party code that will become increasingly expensive to manage with time. The more plugins you use, the harder it will become to apply updates to your ecommerce platform.

Only use plugins when they enable or facilitate USP for your web site and before any development work starts.

Performance monitoring

If you have a busy online store, it could take some time before you know for sure that you redevelopment has been a success. When I worked at one platform vendor, one client contacted us to ask if we help them could work out why their new website was selling as much. Sales had fallen by several thousand pounds week and they didn't know why.

It is important to prepare for the worst. The means making sure that you continue to monitor the performance of your website using Google Analytics, Google Search Console and, ideally, a third party ranking tracker like Moz. That way, when you do hit problems, you can identify exactly where they are.

Conclusion

Every project carries with it risk, but with good planning you can mitigate this risk substantially, simply by evaluating all of the challenges you will need to overcome.

The good news is that all you have to do to keep ahead of your competitors is spend more time at the beginning of the project evaluating the total impact of the project on the business.

That way you increase the likelihood of achieving you goals and reduce the risk of failure.