Site migrations are fairly common and happen for a variety of reasons. You might be changing hosting providers or simply rebranding your website with a new look and feel. Whatever your reasons are for moving your site, there is one thing you absolutely must have before the big change occurs – a website migration plan. Your website migration plan should be created before any portion of your website migration occurs.

What is a Website Migration Plan?

Simply put, a website migration plan is a series of steps that you or your organization will take to successfully migrate your website from one place (or format) to another. The website migration plan is the hard part – once you have the plan documented, migrating your website should be fairly simple. Some things to consider when creating your website migration plan:

• How big is your website? – How you approach your plan will depend a lot on how big your website is. Small websites will not be as intense as large websites.
• Who will be assisting with the migration? – Make sure that you have a list of all the people involved in your migration. You’ll need to know who you will be assigning tasks to and whether or not you need to notify any third parties or vendors.
• What is your migration timeline? – You will need to know when your migration will take place and how long you have to finalize changes.

Why is a Website Migration Plan Important?

A website migration plan is important because it can prevent a catastrophic failure.  A website migration plan can help you avoid embarrassing situations like missing content, missing pages, or broken inbound links. It also saves your organization time and money by making sure that tasks are done on time so that nothing must be repeated or is forgotten.

Creating a Solid Plan

According to David Hobbs of hobbsontech.com, creating a solid plan involves four different elements:

1. Relationships – This element would include things such as metadata, structured content, links, and integration with other websites. A good example of other websites your site may interact with would be places like Facebook or Twitter.  Make sure your plan includes the following:
   • Plans for redirecting old links – You could have links back to your site all over the web. Make sure your migration plan has a solid place to send all of these links. You’ll want to make sure you implement redirects appropriately. You’ll also want to contact partner sites and let them know that your links are changing and make sure they have current and correct information.
   • Plans for changing links on social media and similar websites – Make sure that your plan includes steps for changing links on your social media accounts, if applicable. Many sites today rely on traffic from social media outlets. Make sure that people can find the correct content when coming to your new website.
   • Plans for matching old pages with new pages – Nothing is more discouraging than visiting your favorite website and finding that content you’ve relied on in the past is nowhere to be found because that company did a complete overhaul of their website. Evaluate each page of your website carefully and make sure that you match old pages up to new pages so that content can be found easily. Your visitors should never find a dead link when they come to your new website.
   • Plans for notifying search engines of your changes – When your website structure changes, you’ll need to notify popular search engines such as Google and Bing of your changes. Make sure that your plan includes which sites need to be notified and how you will accomplish this task.
2. Team – This element not only includes your visitors, but also the team who will be migrating and maintaining your new website. Your plans will need to take all of these people into account. How will the changes affect them and what do they need to know to make your new website a success? Your plan should include elements for your team:
   • Who is doing what? – Make sure that each member of your team understands their role in the migration. Each team member should have a clear vision of what their responsibilities include and when tasks should be completed.
   • Third Parties – If you work with third parties, such as a marketing company or a web development company, your plan should also include their roles in your migration as well as a timeline for completion of their tasks.
   • Tools – Evaluate the tools you will be using to implement your new website. Make a list of the software you will be using as well as other technology needed for your website. If you are changing servers, you’ll need to make sure that your server technology is compatible with any software you are using. Even if you’re not making a server change, you’ll need to make sure that you have a full accounting of all the tools you’ll be using. For example, your new site might include a blog. What blog software will you be using? Blog software often requires a database. Therefore, your plan would need to include a task for database setup.
   • Pages – This portion of your plan will include your tasks for creating new pages. This part will be the most obvious as this involves the visual portion of your website migration. Your plans should include tasks to handle the following:
     • Page redirection – This portion of your plan should coincide with your plans for matching old pages with new, as well as redirecting old links.
     • Content – make sure that all important site content is implemented in the correct area for easy finding by your visitors.
     • Watch for errors – Make sure that you have a plan in place to watch the new website for errors once it is implemented.
     • Testing – Your plan should include extensive testing of your website. You should test to make sure that all aspects of the new site are functioning properly, that links work, and that images are linked properly.

What Your Plan Should Look Like

Each website is different so no two website migration plans will look alike. However, your plan should follow a basic structure for easy following:

• Overall Vision – Before you undertake a website migration, ask yourself the following:
  • Why is your organization undergoing a website migration?
  • Do you have the manpower to implement a website migration?
  • Is now a good time to complete a website migration?
  • Implementation – Your plan should include a complete actionable analysis for implementing your website migration. It should include the four elements above in detail, and each step of your plan should include details about timing and procedure. Each person responsible for undertaking a portion of the website migration plan should fully understand the scope of their duties.
  • Maintenance – Once your website migration has taken place, you will need to have a full plan on maintaining the website, watching for errors, adding new content, and checking for things that may have been missed in the implementation.

Your plan could be broken down in the following chart:

Implementing Your Plan

Once your plan is in place, it’s time to implement it. Before you dive in, you’ll want to make sure that everyone knows what their role is in the migration. Checklists can be very helpful in implementing a large change like a migration. There are several website migration checklists available online that you can format to suit your needs. Once you have implemented your plan, make sure that you have several team members ready to test the new content. It’s often helpful to have a staging area for your new website, whether you’ve moved your website to a new server or you plan for a large redesign of your website. Before making your new website live, do a full testing of internal links and images to make sure that they work. Read through your content to look for errors.

Website migrations can be a lot of work but they don’t have to be a headache. However you choose to format your plan, having a website migration plan can be the difference between embarrassment and a smoothly running website.