The e-commerce is evolving continuously in right pace with the needs of customers’ who are technologically advanced and passionate to buy online. They are unpredictable to a certain extent as their expectations keep changing which poses a real challenge for the e-commerce business owners to manage their outdated online stores. Looking for an impressive and advanced e-commerce platform and migrating to it is the choice for their survival online. In this context, opting for Magento is the best choice one could make.
However, it is not an overnight job or the easy task. A proper planning, roadmap, and hiring of the experts in the field is essential to successfully switch over to the platform. Let us explore the challenges to be understood and overcome the same before making this crucial dive.
Reliable hosting platform: Though Magento accelerates the e-commerce business, a robust hosting platform is necessary. Magento cloud hosting runs the store at lightning speed irrespective of holidays or at peak traffic. The content would be delivered fast and the site is optimized 24/7 and accessible to customers irrespective of their location. The merchant also get real-time performance analytics to ensure the working of the site.
Data Migration: Smooth migration of the data like customers, products, and sales data without loss is crucial. Having a backup is recommended. The customers should not be given the inconvenience of re-registering again. Of course, the password may be asked to reset in an easy way. The products, images and its description must be migrated properly and completely. It is recommended to migrate even the sales history so that the customers may not miss out their previous or pending orders. Informative blogs also should get migrated as it maintains the SEO ranking and organic traffic. It is better to reconfirm with the Magento development company you have contracted for the purpose.
404 Error Handling: Have the same URLs of the products, categories, and the CMS pages as they have been cached by the search engines and it is an authority for your store. In case, URLs are changed, a proper 301 redirect must be there and thus maintain SEO ranking. Moreover, it avoids loss of customers as they may fail to see the pages they are searching for. Moreover, it is necessary to keep a watch on the newly generated 404 errors and implement redirects for all those errors.
Proper hosting and caching must be implemented on the server prior to migration so as to prevent downtime.
Duplicate content: Managing the multiple products or the dynamic URLs having the same content is important by implementing the canonical URL. It is essential to setup the store from SEO perspective and avoid duplicate content and all possible onsite SEO issues.
Roll Back Plan: Though Magento Upgrade is the most appreciable choice ever made in online business, it is better to have a roll back plan. Having a plan B is highly recommended. Though proper hosting, SEO tactics, migration needs are all met with, there are chances of losing sales and organic traffic. At this juncture, rolling back to previous platform would be a clever decision to keep business running. It is better not to trash the old platform unless and until the business gets settled.
Finaly it is important to understand the challenge of magento migration thoroughly before actually beginning the process. The solution is possible only after one is clear about the issues.