Change is synonymous with business, and online stores are no different. Customer needs, products, and marketplaces are constantly evolving to meet the changing demands of users. Migrating to a new eCommerce platform is an inevitable step online store owners may have to take to keep up with the speed and growth of their digital businesses.
Understanding the Significance of Data Migration
Data is at the heart of any successful online store. When you consider the magnitude of information collected on your order page, sales pages’ email capture, and other pages, migrating to a new eCommerce platform is a highly sensitive undertaking. Your ability to handle volumes of product data and customer orders to payment and shipping information has the potential to either make or break your business operations.
The goal of any eCommerce replatforming process should be to do it fast, accurately, affordably, and efficiently, with minimal disruption to customer experience, and offer guaranteed data security. That’s why choosing the right data migration tool is undoubtedly the most important part of the equation.
Key Reasons for Data Migration
There are three main reasons why an online store owner might decide to migrate their eCommerce platform to a different provider:
Ever-Rising Maintenance Costs
If the month-to-month costs of maintaining an eCommerce website exceed or cut into a substantial portion of the store’s revenue, it only makes sense to find an alternative. Depending on the size and demands of your business, a SaaS solution might be better suited to your needs than a customizable, open-source platform.
Unreliable Site Performance
Suppose you’ve launched a marketing campaign to boost your site’s visibility and ramp up traffic to your online store. Let’s further say that your efforts have proven worthwhile, and you’ve seen a massive influx of visitors to your website.
There’s only one issue: Your current eCommerce platform can’t handle so much traffic and crashes every time the number of visitors spikes.
That’s a clear sign to migrate your store to a more reliable platform.
Lack of Modern Features
The eCommerce space is highly competitive. Your store is pitted against hundreds, if not thousands, of other websites and social media pages, all vying for attention from the same customer base.
If your online store lacks modern features, making it hard to navigate, slow to load, or isn’t optimized for mobile viewing, you’ve already lost the battle for online supremacy. A platform change might be in order.
Types of Data Migration
Data migration can take one of three forms. The common denominator among them is lifting and shifting backend data from your current eCommerce provider to a different solution.
Manual Migration
Manual data migration involves copying each product and its corresponding metadata from the source platform and pasting it onto the target platform. It is a tedious, highly technical, inefficient, error-prone process.
Assisted Migration
This option is, in many ways, similar to a manual migration. The only difference is that you would employ a web development professional to do it for you. It is the most expensive, time-consuming option of all the data migration alternatives available.
Automated Migration
This method relies on automated data migration tools such as Cart2Cart to migrate a store’s backend data from its existing shopping cart provider to a new one. It is the fastest, most accurate way to migrate your online store to a different eCommerce provider.
Advantages of Automation in Data Migration
The benefits of automated data migration in eCommerce compared to manual-driven processes center on time, cost, efficiency, accuracy, and data transformation.
Reduces Overall Delivery Time
Automated data migration tools have ready-made components that create repeatable workflows to handle several steps. They make the migration process faster, saving users from having to re-do the steps from scratch whenever they need to modify some aspects of the data. Time overruns in data migration projects average 41%. With an automated tool, your business doesn’t have to become a statistic.
Cost-Effective
Given the iterative nature of data migration, users can easily modify and repeat the process when using automated tools. Automation allows you to quickly identify the data set from a high-level point-of-view and make the desired changes without ever having to write a single line of code. Conversely, hiring a developer to handle this process can set you back thousands of dollars.
Simplifies an Otherwise Complex Process
Manual migration is a complex and tedious undertaking. Automation simplifies workflows, allowing users to perform several data migration steps in a single click.
Minimizes the Risk of Data Inaccuracies
Automation in data migration reduces the likelihood of human error observed in manual processes, resulting in accurate and transparent outcomes.
Allows for Data Transformation
Automated data migration tools make it easy and efficient to split or merge multiple fields, convert currencies, alter product codes, validate fields, etc. These transformations would otherwise be difficult to do using a manual approach.
Selecting the Right Data Migration Tool
Data migration tools are not created equal. The choice of one over the other comes down to the following baseline criteria:
Time
How long does it take to migrate an online store with X number of products, orders, etc., from one eCommerce platform to another? A robust data transfer tool should be able to do it quickly and efficiently.
Level of Automation
Are all the migration steps fully automated, or do you need a coding/web development background to complete the process? The tool you pick should offer end-to-end automation with a user-friendly interface.
Quality of the Results
How accurate are the results of the migration? The less you have to “fix” after the data transfer, the better.
Pricing
Does your desired data migration tool offer great value for the price? What does “value” look like?
You want to pick a solution that allows you to pay only for the data entities you migrate instead of one with a fixed price. Cart2Cart’s price estimator can give you an idea of how much migrating a specific number of entities will cost.
Downtime
Will the migration tool result in downtime for your website? Pick a solution that works in the background to migrate your store without disrupting shoppers on your site.
Security
Are sensitive store and customer data secure during the migration process? Is it deleted from the server after migration?
Your chosen tool should guarantee server, network, and application data security. Employee access to data should also be restricted and only at your (the client’s) request.
Support
Does the solution offer tech support if you would rather not handle the migration yourself? Pick a solution that gives you this option if you have unique migration demands.
Cart2Cart is one of the few automated data migration tools that satisfy these criteria. It explains why it is a top choice for many store owners looking to switch to a different shopping cart provider.
Preparing for Automated Data Migration
Once you’re clear on why you would like to change your current eCommerce platform to a different provider and have come up with a solid plan of attack, here are some steps you must take beforehand to ensure the data migration process goes off without a hitch:
- Choose an appropriate hosting solution for your new store if you are dissatisfied with your existing provider;
- Temporarily deactivate search engine indexing on your new store to prevent Google from flagging it as a duplicate of the old one;
- Obtain the website, hosting, and domain access credentials for both your source and target stores;
- Review the extensions on your current store and decide which ones you’ll retain in your new store;
- Audit your existing store’s database and determine which data (products, orders, categories, customers, etc.) you’ll retain, delete, or update;
- Do a site backup of your store data before you initiate the migration process;
- Schedule your migration for an appropriate date and time when your store has the least amount of traffic;
- Implement a new site design from a ready-made template or one from scratch if you want a fresh look for your store.
Executing Data Migration Step-By-Step
Once you’ve taken the necessary steps to prepare your source and target carts for data migration, you can launch into the replatforming process. The nuances of the data migration come down to the tool you use and the eCommerce platforms involved. Here’s how to migrate your online store using Cart2Cart’s automated data migration tool:
- Visit the Cart2Cart website and sign up for an account;
- Select your source cart and target cart from the respective dropdown lists provided, input the access credentials to both, and link the two stores using the Connection Bridge in the Cart2Cart plugin;
- Pick the data entities you want to migrate (Products, Orders, Customers, Manufacturers, etc.) and map the corresponding fields in the target store;
- Select any custom migration add-ons you might want to integrate into your target cart;
- Map customer groups and customer order statutes from your source store to your target cart.
Once you’ve completed the steps above, you’re ready to run the free demo. If you’re satisfied with the results, you can launch the full migration to transfer all your site data from your old store to the new one. It is worth noting that Cart2Cart’s free demo only migrates a handful of data to give you a feel for how the process works.
Post-Migration Considerations
Once you’ve successfully migrated your store from your existing eCommerce platform to a new provider, there are three critical post-migration steps you need to take:
- Run a post-migration audit to identify and isolate issues that could potentially get in the way of your target store’s functionality. For instance, check whether:
- The domain name is active;
- The navigation links are working as they should;
- The links in the site menus, headers, and footers are accurate;
- Etc.
- Install the apps and plugins required to enhance your store’s functionality;
- Notify existing customers of the migration and prompt them to reactivate their accounts.
Final Thoughts
eCommerce data migration is an inescapable part of a business’s natural growth trajectory. As your product offerings grow and your customer base increases, your focus must always remain on providing your visitors with the best possible user experience – even if it means migrating to a different platform.
While replatforming can be daunting, it doesn’t have to be. With the right tool, all it takes is a few simple clicks, and you’ll have your new store up and running in a matter of minutes (or a few hours if you have a large store).
Are you thinking of switching from your current shopping cart provider to a different eCommerce platform? Cart2Cart is an automated data migration solution that can help you do just that. Take the guesswork out of the replatforming process and migrate your eCommerce website quickly and safely with no risk of data loss or downtime.
Sign up for a Cart2Cart free demo today to see it in action.
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