Digital transformation is the process of reshaping business operations to respond to new digital technologies. Redesigning your website as part of a digital transformation is an excellent way to help drive more traffic and grow your users’ trust in your brand. In this blog post, we’ll explore tips on how to plan a website migration—so your SEO agency Manchester can execute this strategy with confidence.
A website migration is a transformative change that brings together different websites from the same organization into a single platform. We understand that this might sound like gibberish if you aren’t familiar with IT terminology, but don’t worry. Even if you have never planned or even heard of a website migration before reading this blog, you might be about to learn something useful nonetheless!
What is a Website Migration?
A website migration is a transformative change that brings together different websites from the same organization into a single platform. This process is usually completed by an in-house team or SEO consultants Manchester working closely with your marketing or IT departments. A website migration is much more than just a website redesign or change in CMS. It’s a strategic organizational change that brings together different websites from the same organization into a single platform. An improvement like this brings immense value to the organization and its stakeholders.
A migration is a great way to help drive more traffic, generate leads, and grow your users’ trust in your brand. A migration is usually triggered by the need to reduce costs, increase the availability of services through digital channels, and increase the number of users engaging with your brand. A successful migration requires careful planning, and this is why you should begin by kicking off the process with a project kick-off meeting.
Why Should You Plan a Migration?
To avoid headaches down the road, it’s important to plan for this migration as thoroughly as possible beforehand. Planning for a website migration is essential for many reasons, including:
- The reduction of costs – Most companies spend a lot of money on maintenance and upgrades of old technologies. This might not be their core competency, so outsourcing or hiring an in-house team can be costly. Therefore, you might benefit from migrating to a newer platform to avoid spending too much on maintenance and upgrades.
- The improvement of service availability – Different websites might be hosted on different servers. Therefore, they may not be available when you need them most. Migrating to a single platform that’s hosted on one server can help improve service availability.
- An increase in brand engagement – Digital transformation is the process of reshaping business operations to respond to new digital technologies. Many brands are now focusing on improving their online user experience through digital channels. Migrating your websites to a single platform can help improve your users’ engagement with your brand.
Map Content Inventory
You can’t migrate content if you don’t know what it is. That’s why you need to map an inventory of the content you have on your current websites. To do so, you’ll need to find out where your content is being hosted. You can easily do this by creating a spreadsheet or using a content inventory tool. Once you know where your content is hosted, you can begin mapping its structure and categories, including:
- The number of pages or articles – You can start mapping the volume of content after discovering the number of pages hosted on each website. The number of pages on each website varies depending on the type of industry and the purpose of the website.
- The type of content – You can also start mapping the type of content on each website. The content type varies depending on the purpose of the website. For example, a website that sells products online might have product descriptions as its main content. A blog website, on the other hand, might include a combination of product descriptions, images, and blog posts.
Estimate Content Volume and Complexity
After you have mapped the content volume and the type of content hosted on each website, you can start estimating the volume and complexity of each piece of content. You can do this by utilizing the following steps:
- Keep track of the number of pages with a high level of complexity. These pages might be long, have many images, have links to other pages and sites, or have many fields to fill out. Marking these pages with a high level of complexity helps you estimate the effort required to migrate them.
- Keep track of the number of pages with a low level of complexity. These pages might have few links and fields, have short sentences, and have few images. Marking these pages with a low level of complexity helps you estimate the effort required to migrate them.
Define the Scope of Tasks to Be Completed
Once you have estimated the complexity of each page of content hosted on each website, you can define the scope of tasks to be completed for the migration. The migration process is similar to that of a construction project. You would expect the contractor to determine the scope of work before beginning the project, right? The same applies to a website migration. Before you begin migrating content from one website to another, you need to determine what tasks need to be completed. All tasks that need to be completed as part of the migration process can be divided into four categories based on their complexity:
- Easy tasks are quick and easy to complete. They involve the migration of low-volume pages with low complexity.
- Medium tasks need some effort to be completed. They involve the migration of low- or medium-volume pages with low or medium complexity.
- Tough tasks require you to put in a lot of effort. They involve the migration of high-volume pages with high complexity.
- Critical tasks have to be completed with great care. They involve the migration of high-volume pages with high complexity.
Conclusion
Digital transformation is the process of reshaping business operations to respond to new digital technologies. Redesigning your website as part of a digital transformation is an excellent way to help drive more traffic and grow your users’ trust in your brand. SEO Manchester is well-placed to enable you to do this, so please get in touch to discover more.