eCommerce Migration Checklist. 10 Easy Steps to Business Success

Since shopping cart replatforming can be risky, time-consuming, and costly, it is essential to prepare for it and find the right migration tool for the task.

In today’s evolving digital space, online businesses are looking for ways to boost sales, enhance the efficiency of company processes as well as their team members. Therefore, the merchants are supporting the possibility of obtaining a more advanced shopping cart and performing eCommerce migration. 

Since shopping cart replatforming can be risky, time-consuming, and costly, it is essential to prepare for it and find the right migration tool for the task. It will prevent you from unexpected circumstances such as data loss or running over deadlines. So, let’s look closer at the eCommerce replatforming checklist and learn what actions to take into account before and after the data import. 

7 Factors Why to Consider eCommerce Migration 

As mentioned above, migrating to a more suitable eCommerce platform is not only a pressing matter nowadays. It’s an opportunity to expand your online store’s functionality. So, consider the most common aspects and sings that will help you identify whether to move to a different shopping cart:

1. Increased Customers Attendance 

If your online store loads slowly during the peak periods, then eCommerce transfer might be a good idea for your company. Needless to say that the slow loading time of an online shop negatively impacts the customer experience and the overall sales. The proof is the research that shows the damage for an online business that can be caused by a one-second page delay. According to the investigation, the eCommerce business that sells $100,000 per day can potentially lose $2.5 million a year. 

2. Outdated Features and Tools  

When you are at the beginning of the online business journey, a free or inexpensive shopping cart solution with basic functionality can be more than enough. However, this beginner software can easily hold you back when the company is growing day-after-day. The business processes demand more advanced features, integration options, and efficient support. Even if you think that there’s no need for more advanced capabilities, consider the rapid development of technology over the last years. There is always something better coming along on the eCommerce market. If you are the owner of the online business that hasn’t updated the shopping cart in quite a while, take a look at what else is out there. 

3. Improved Check-Out Experience

In case the checkout process of completing a purchase takes a lot of steps, it can easily confuse the customers and lead to store abandonment. To avoid this, it is essential to provide clients with secure checkout options. And don’t forget about a variety of payment choices. The advanced eCommerce platforms offer only two steps that speed up the checkout time and minimize the amount of personal info the consumers have to fill in. Therefore, e-merchants tend to select the shopping cart solution that includes an option to buy a product or service without registration. As a result, you might get better user experience and revenue growth. 

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4. Easier Maintenance and Updates 

Too much maintenance of the shopping cart is one of the main issues for online business. If you notice that your development team is continuously fixing bugs or solving other problems, then it’s time to think about eCommerce replatforming. Look for a platform that offers less expensive and time-consuming upgrades. Besides, the efficient shopping cart should include the functionality with an ability to install the new plugins fast and easily. All of these aspects will help you reduce the costs and invest them in other areas of your e-store for further improvements. 

5. Effective Cost of the Platform 

Evaluation of the budget and opportunities is one of the vital aspects of any business success. When it comes to choosing the right-your-size eCommerce solution, consider how many financial resources you can allocate. Keep in mind that the final price of the online store comprises not only the subscription and security fees but also the hosting and maintenance cost, and much more. So, take the time to surf the web for finding the shopping cart that can fit your business requirements and budget in the best way.

6. Efficient Analytic Tools 

eCommerce reports play a critical role in providing information about business performance. You can use the standard options and create customized reports based on the info that changes every day. It gives you an opportunity to analyze the data and see what can be done for further improvements. So, look for the eCommerce platform with a flexible reporting system that can help your business thrive. 

7. Diversity of the Third-Party Integrations

Not all the eCommerce solutions are perfect and include the necessary features that can suit your business demands in the most accurate way. Even though your future platform might lack some capabilities, you can use the third-party integrations to add the features you need. The eCommerce market represents all different kinds of extensions and apps to expand the e-store opportunities and ease the work of your company processes and employees. 

All in all, if you notice that your online organization needs the improvements mentioned above, store migration can become a step forward towards your business success. Albeit the e-store data transfer is a challenging process, the thorough planning and preparation steps st. Let’s look closer at the crucial tips for eCommerce website migration that can help you perform the task effortlessly. 

eCommerce Migration Checklist: How to Get Ready for a Data Import

Now, when you have decided to migrate from your current shopping cart to the future platform, what are the steps to run the transfer smoothly? Among a list of recommendations, here are the most critical aspects of how to prepare your online shop for a switch. 

#1 Identify the Plan and Main Stages

Outline the eCommerce migration plan and set up a time for replatforming. So, place the most challenging tasks upfront and start performing them following their importance. For example: check out the database for the duplicated or unnecessary items. 

#2 Determine the Size of Your Database

The transfer can’t go too far without a thorough analysis of your eCommerce entities. After the cleansing of your database, start thinking about how many records you want to migrate to the new eCommerce platform. This procedure can help you focus on the data quality and find out the potential database problems. 

#3 Choose the Platform to Fit Your Business Needs 

One of the most crucial stages of the website migration checklist is to select the right platform that can suit your business size, budget, and requirements. You should start by investigating the challenges you face with your business processes and understand the importance of fixing them as soon as possible. Hence, determine the problems you come across now and go through a list of capabilities your platform is lacking. Think critically about what is holding you back and what needs to be improved. After that, analyze the collected information, determine the vital points you want to see in your future platform and start looking for the desired solution on the web.

Keep in mind, many eCommerce shopping carts offer free trials and demos to check the solution in action. So, it is an excellent opportunity to test the platform of your new online store, as well as check out the features and interface in real-time. 

#4 Map the Data and Third-Party Integrations 

The difference between data schemas of the shopping carts can vary substantially. Note, even though both the current and desired platforms can include a similar structure, the relationships between the entities can be different from each other. 

Besides, you should investigate and decide which extensions and apps to keep and erase before the eCommerce replatforming. It can save you a lot of time and effort during the migration procedure. 

#5 Run the Backup of Your Database 

Since the records of your existing solution are the core of the future one, it is essential to avoid any data loss. Thus, it is your responsibility to create a backup of the current e-store entireties and keep it after the transfer is over. 

#6 Notify Your Employees about a Change 

It is important to announce to your colleagues about the upcoming migration and explain how your online company can benefit from it. Don’t forget to educate your team: provide the tutorials, visuals, etc. to show the difference between the existing and new shopping carts. Also, to skip the worries about user adoption, it is suggested to train employees working with an ultimate solution. It will improve the user experience and help the team adjust to a change fast and easily. 

#7 Select the Efficient Migration Method 

There are several ways to run eCommerce data import. One of them is to perform the process manually on your own or with the help of the techs. However, you should evaluate if the time is worth the money since this procedure requires copy/pasting activities and some programming skills. So, if you have many items to transfer, it can take a lot of time and lead to some unexpected issues you are not ready for. 

Another way is to find the right instrument to move the data from your existing online shop to the new one. Cart2Cart is one of the oldest and advanced automated tools on the market that has already helped a wide array of online businesses to perform the migration fast and securely. It is a migration service that includes all the features that are required to move the information across various shopping carts automatically. Also, without intensive hands-on, the automated service enables you to run the eCommerce replatforming without the downtime of the current online shop. 

#8 Launch the Test eCommerce Migration

Now, when all the preparation steps are behind and you are ready to run the actual migration, there is a possibility to try out the migration service to check how the tool functions. For instance, Cart2Cart offers a free Demo Migration, so you can explore whether the tool works properly.

#9 Run the Full eCommerce Import

If you are satisfied with the Demo results, take the following steps should be made to run the eCommerce migration without a headache: 

1. Fill out the credentials of the existing and new shopping carts. 
2. Choose the records you want to transfer and run the Demo Migration. 
3. Start the full eCommerce migration. 

#10 Consider Actions after the eCommerce Replatforming

By and large, when the most challenging part is completed, you should take into account the several post-migration activities for successful platform roll-out:

• run an audit after the transfer;
• go through SEO requirements (301 redirects, 404 pages, sitemap, etc.);
• move the client’s passwords;
• try out the new online shop;
• expand the functionality of the new shopping cart if necessary by installing the third-party integrations and apps. 

Final Thoughts 

The decision to perform eCommerce migration is critical when you decide to make the changes for online business improvement. Yet, it requires a lot of time and effort to prepare your company processes, team, and budget. Thus, it is essential to set up clear objectives and create an efficient plan for successful data import. So, if you want to get the advantages related to the revenue enhancements and effective team performance after the switch, take the hints mentioned above into consideration to perform the task with ease. 

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