The entire global market has undergone several transformations, from the acceptance of digitalization to search engine optimizations. With so many recent changes, businesses became more capable of drawing more traffic towards them and increasing their overall revenues. Therefore, most companies started to invest in ecommerce migration to gain the maximum benefits.
Although, on the one hand, the transformations opened new opportunities and selling pouts, they also created new hurdles and challenges. For example, when businesses conducted their operations through physical media, they didn't have to work much on unique records, marketing, sales strategies, etc.
Now, most businesses are conducting their operations online; therefore, special attention is essential to take the business to a new height. But let's first understand the need for ecommerce migration.
The emergence of online ecommerce platform
A recent report published by Statista indicates that it is proven that the eCommerce market will have a global revenue of $7.4 trillion by the end of 2025. Several governing factors define how this new form of business has gained such immense popularity worldwide. However, before we proceed further, let's have a quick walkthrough of some of the main reasons for ecommerce platform popularity.
- Ecommerce businesses are open to all 24X7, which is impossible for traditional brick-and-mortar companies.
- Users prefer access to almost all items from different categories, so they can quickly shuffle through unique collections and check the products to find the essential ones.
- Another reason ecommerce store development has become so popular is the flexibility of shopping for businesses and users. There is no need to go through the hassle of establishing a physical business, walking up to a store to get something you need, and so on.
- On top of all these, users now carry the stores where they go because most ecommerce platforms can be accessed via cell phones. (iOS and Android).
- You don’t have to worry about printing templates, pasting banners on the wall, using hoardings, or any such obsolete trading methods. For marketing, you can opt for ways like social media marketing, advertisements, and so on.
What is ecommerce store migration?
When you want to take your business to the next level, you put it on a particular ecommerce platform. By doing so, you can access all features and benefits of the concerned platform. But when you are unsatisfied with the results or want to upgrade the ecommerce business, you need to shift from one platform to another. This process is termed eCommerce migration.
Although it sounds easy to achieve migration, the reality is far more different. Migrating the business from one ecommerce provider to a new one involves a wide range of steps to be covered. Let’s take a real-life example where you want to move a physical store from the second floor of a shopping mall to the fourth one. In this case, you first need to keep all the store contents at the new location and then transfer the files, copies, furniture units, appliances of your own, and so on.
Although an ecommerce website doesn’t have any of these things, you need to work on data and control transfer, followed by files, folders, software platforms, and so on. You must transfer the warehouse and account management software platforms from one store to another during migration. Databases will change, so ecommerce website developers need to apply patches to migrate the data.
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Need for ecommerce store migration
1. Access to new reporting features:
One of the main reasons you should migrate your ecommerce business from one storage provider to the other is the availability of different reporting features. You need in-built reporting tools to ensure all analytics are correct and can be used to know about the business's success, failures, etc. So, if another ecommerce website development company offers you a better reporting platform, you should migrate your business to that level.
2. More testing abilities:
Once you migrate the online ecommerce business to a new store, you will get different built-in testing tools. This way, you can quickly check if the store can live up to the user specification or do you need to work on updates and modifications.
3. Better compliance and compatibility:
Another reason to migrate your online ecommerce business is to become compatible and compliant with the current business standards and achieve a competitive edge.
Challenges Faced During eCommerce Platform and How to Solve Them?
It is known that migrating your ecommerce Platforms for business for business to a new store will not only give you more leverage on business operations but also gain more new customers. On top of this, you can easily live up to their expectations. An ecommerce development company India like AIS Technolabs can help you migrate your ecommerce solution to a new platform to achieve excellence.
Let's glance at the challenges you must overcome to migrate to a new platform.
1. Migrating Different Data Types
One of the major concerns of migrating your ecommerce business from one platform to the other is concerning the data types. With so much different data to handle in an ecommerce business, you need to write appropriate migration logic and queries. If the records are duplicated or have some missing information, it will become very difficult for you to conduct business.
2. Handling Customer Information
It is essential to check if you have proper security and mechanism to work on customer records. If not, you need to devise the strategies and put them into effect before any other action. For more assistance, you can hire an ecommerce development services provider like AIS Technolabs.
3. Establishing Privacy
It would help if you worked on creating different algorithms and authentication layers to ensure all user data and business information are well-protected. This way, you don't have to worry about data breaches, loss of revenue, and many other challenges. You also must incorporate strategies to ensure the login platform is secured well.
4. Making a New Catalog
Once you are done with the migration plan, you need to plan the catalog. It usually varies from one ecommerce platform to the other, which is why you need to finish the mapping. For example, if your existing store has a single-page catalog with everything listed under one heading, the new store might not accept the same. In this case, the best ecommerce development company India transforms the catalog according to the new template protocols.
Related Blog: Key Strategies to Grow Your B2B eCommerce Business
5. Mapping Categories and Products
The next hurdle that you need to check is whether the categories and all products are mapped well or not. For example, let’s consider your deal in retail. Here, you need to map all the products under each retail category, like grocery, home essentials, apparel, accessories, etc.
6. Maintaining and Building CMS Pages
CMS or content management system must be incorporated within the new ecommerce store. It will help you maintain all contents on the pages, from landing page contents to product images. The main problem arises because the tools used to define CMS vary from platform to platform. If you are having trouble, you can easily hire an ecommerce web development company.
7. Working on SEO and Traffic
If your existing ecommerce store is already SEO optimized, it doesn't mean you can ignore this step completely once you are done with the original migration. Instead, you need to design new strategies to ensure the migrated content is at par with the SEO terms and conditions of the new ecommerce store. Only then can you expect the SERPs to be better.
8. Setting up New Monetary Networks
Lastly, it would help if you incorporate new channels for payments and other transactions per the allowable modes of the new platform. For example, COD or cash on delivery is not supported by every ecommerce platform. Similarly, payments through cards are common, but not phone wallets. So, collaborate with a professional who can provide the best ecommerce development solutions at an affordable rate like AIS Technolabs.
Conclusion
Now that you know the changes you need to make to ensure the new ecommerce store lives up to the expectations, it's time to work on your strategy-building process. If you do not have proper strategies in place, it won't be possible for you to work comfortably on the new changes established after the business migration from one store to the other. So, connect with our experts at AIS Technolabs for state-of-the-art ecommerce migration services.
