If you are like most, you have experienced a move: maybe to a different flat in the same city, or maybe to another country. My story is unique in that I’ve lived in pretty much the same city all my life. It’s nothing special, but I am grateful for it. Before I moved out of my family’s house, I had the opportunity to help my family first build a house and then worked through the process of moving into it. It can be stressful, and you want to make sure that everything works.

This analogy of moving into a house is quite a parallel to replatforming your ecommerce site:

It’s pretty well inevitable (Magento 1 end of life means you need to find something else, whether that is Magento 2, Big Commerce, Shopify)It takes a lot of time. Unfortunately, there is no replatform service that is the flip of a switch.It takes money. Your code and website was quite happy as it was. Now you need to figure something else out.It is risky. How do you ensure that you aren’t making a really bad choice? Or that the people you are trusting to do this migration actually know what they are talking about?

My focus in this information is primarily on the last point: it is risky. We have all heard the horror stories of merchants replatforming (they’re promised higher sales), but their revenue drops after the launch. While most everything in life has a risk factor associated with it, the fact that your website is feeding your children increases the risk in such a change.

Skip to: 01:30 My goal is to equip you, the merchant, with basic tools so you can reduce your internal risk metrics and feel comfortable in a quality re-platforming project.

Part 1: will search engines find pages on your new site?

When you replatform, the new platform will likely have at least some changes in it’s hierarchy, and thus the linking structure. For example, your previous product might be found at https://swiftotter.com/products.aspx?id=12345, but you are making your new website more search-engine friendly and now the same product is found at https://swiftotter.com/my-awesome-product.

You just launched your new website, but visitors from Google see this?

The problem is if you do nothing about this change in URL structure, visitors will search for “My Awesome Product”. Google will show them the link to https://swiftotter.com/products.aspx?id=12345, they will get a “Page not found” error, they will immediately click back, and you just lost a potential customer. Remember, Google is not the only issue. Hopefully, you have many links to your website from other websites, recommending your products content.

EXAMPLE:

Let’s say our old website is https://myexamplestore.com. You can find our best-selling gizmo here: https://myexamplestore.com/view-product.php?sku=amazing-gizmo. You are migrating to a new BigCommerce and have imported all of your products. The design is ready to go, and you pull the trigger. Customers are now browsing the new website. When they go to your store, they can easily find Amazing Gizmo using the search or navigation system.

However, when you search in Google for “Amazing Gizmo”, you are presented with this URL:

https://myexamplestore.com/view-product.php?sku=amazing-gizmo

Unless you have taken action to redirect this URL, this is where customers will land. On this new platform, they will see a “This page is not found.”

HOW CAN I ENSURE THAT GOOGLE WILL FIND THE NEW URLS?

Hopefully, you have already established redirects. These steps will give you peace of mind (or freak you out) that there are no stones left unturned with regards to these files.

We recommend and use Screaming Frog. It is 150 British Pounds per year. If the price scares you, think of how much this may save you. If 20% of your links will error out, you could lose way more than 20% of your revenue. And, no, the above is not an affiliate link.

Step #1: Scan Existing Site for all URLs:

Open Screaming Fr