Magento 2 migration has been one of the nightmares for many E-tailers. Some considered it the worst period, and, on the other hand, the ones who managed to do it properly, were precedented with success.

This is indeed a new move and is also crucial for the next generation of digital commerce. This new platform provides eCommerce retailers with incredible growth and scalability.

Then you may ask, where is the downside?

Retailers who missed on the key factors while migration, almost lost the cream audience and also faced revenue dropping of about millions of dollars.

With the last date (June’20) being announced for the official support to Magento 1, popular eCommerce merchants are in a dilemma of how to migrate Magento 1 to Magento 2 without incurring traffic loss?

The question arises because recently,  many eCommerce store owners are experiencing the loss of SEO traffic after migration. We are sure, you do not want to face the same!

The task is bigger but manageable if carefully planned and executed.

So, as some e-Tailers consider, is migration a valley of death? What can go wrong? How mistakes can be rectified?

This blog is an answer to all your above questions. Keep reading…

Don’t head-first into the migration without proper planning:

• We know migration is vital, but don’t pump upon it without proper planning.  Rushing to migration will only lead to make you some unavoidable mistakes.
• The situation is almost similar to the saying, “if you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail!”
• Do not rush to the migration without a thought-out plan.
• The right time or the perfect time of migration is often overlooked when we have a heap of benefits in front of us. But this is where the companies go wrong. We may fail to identify the unexpected site errors which can result in a bad site experience.

Do you feel that migration during the festival time is appropriate?

• The strong and the only answer is No!
• You can miss out on the heavy traffic and a huge revenue loss. We are sure you do not want to sell “out-of-season” products on your shopping list, do you?
• One of the instant ways to find out the tentative period for migration is: You can log in to your Google Analytics.  Select a date range of one year back. Click on the option to view data by week. The screen will show the busy and the quiet periods of your store.
• The data will show the insights of the quiet period. Understand the date range in-depth and then decide on a good time for migration.

Know your criteria and set the standards:

• It is of vital importance to perform the baseline checks and also know the traffic levels. The two factors to be considered are the keyword ranking positions and the pages on the current site that have the highest traffic and revenue.
• If the migration uses some irrelevant keywords, it can lead to fluctuations in the site rank.  This could severely affect the amount of traffic on the site.
• One should be aware of the valuable pages that earn your site a huge amount so that things can be sorted out well before making the big move.

Failure to Crawl your site:

• Crawling through your site allows you to see your current URL structure. 301 redirects will help you in the cases where you are going to change the URL site structure.
• Knowing the URL structure will make you aware of any changes to the website’s URL structure. You can use a variety of tools for crawling and if you see any potential changes then you can implement 301 redirects.

301 Redirects :

• It is required to implement 301 redirects only when you are changing the URL structure. If you migrate Magento 1 to Magento 2, there is no change in the structure. But yes, if the migration is from any other relevant platform, then you need to perform correct redirect pages.
• If the redirects are implemented incorrectly, it may lead to the consequence of dire traffic loss.
• Once you are done with the redirection, it allows Google to know about the new URL location and redirects all the information and the “link juice” to the new address.

How you can make the correct 301 Redirects?

Try making your new URL SEO friendly.  If you are migrating from any other platform, optimize the site URL. Carry out the keyword research and find out the best-fit keywords for your new site. A keyword-rich, clear URL helps the search engines to understand the content of the page.

Only transfer important extensions:

• Migrating unnecessary extensions may cause dramatic effects on the site.  Do not forget to assess the necessary extension and its impact on the revenue.
• Even the new Magento 2 version offers a wide range of extensions and adds ons. So do not worry about the migration, you can skim some of the extensions and add the new ones with the same functionality from the Magento2 list.
• Such extensions can even be tested before you perform the migration task.

Perform the data migration beautifully:

• Do not haphazardly transfer the metadata, product data, orders, customer data, content data, and more.  Any mistake in performing this may lead to a loss in high-traffic pages and also the customers will be acknowledged of the change or loss of the data.
• Do not forget to back up the database from your current site. The backup data can help you in the situation when you face significant disruption.

Do not forget to take Ongoing testing:

You need to constantly test your new Magento store after migration.  If you fail to monitor the issue, it may impact the user experience and lead to the downtime of the site.  Potential customers may leave the site and search for a better alternative.

The Aftermath:

A lot of things have to be taken into consideration while migrating. Magento version 2 is incredibly reliable and authentic and we are sure that every penny you have spent will be worth it.

Once the migration to the new Magento 2 platform is settled, it should only reap benefits. The first step for migration is, to do it wisely!