An innovative breakthrough in an ever-evolving ecommerce business in Dubai is to upgrade your website platform when you realise that the time is ripe for a change. Sometimes one feels that it is high time the present system needed to be upgraded. One main reason is that site owners, at the start of their business, chose low-cost “set-up-your-website-in-a-jiffy” services. In hindsight, that decision may not have been the best one. Later the site becomes inadequate when the business achieves success.
Go kaput, fall apart and stop working These apprehensions seize the owners when the site is operating beyond normal capacity. They become anxious about whether the change will work well and whether the new service provider will offer services according to the business needs or give problems. Let us face it; shifting (migration) is not always easy. It comes with new issues for adapting to the new system during the transition and afterward. We give some salient, tried and tested steps to move to a new platform.
1. Domain Name
When you have decided to move to an all-new e-commerce platform, get your domain name registered properly. There could be a problem with your previous provider who has registered your domain name. It may not be difficult to wriggle out but slightly tough negotiating in order to gain control of your domain. This has to be gracefully done in the initial stage in order to have a smooth start on this process early and to outwit glitches when you are ready to take the plunge.
2. Impact on Current Processes
When your business reaches the stage of expansion, it needs to explore new opportunities for profit. At this point, streamlining and automating your business processes in Dubai becomes essential. A little homework, if not complex research, about how your new e-commerce platform integrates with various processes like shipping vendors, accounting systems, payment processors, office administration systems, etc. As your business improves, it will become more elaborate. Over time, you’ll also need to make more modifications. Even before you migrate, please confirm that the new solution provides reports and systems that are compatible with your business in addition to third-party vendors that you currently use.
3. Security Certificates
The mandatory SSL, or secured socket layer, certificate of your current website has to be transferred to the new server. The status of the existence of an SSL can be looked up at checkout pages of your site to know if the URL in the address bar displays “https://” followed by your domain name. The catch would be only if the address shows the address of your provider and not your own domain; then you are likely to be using a shared certificate.
You have to decide if the new provider offers a similar shared certificate or if you are required to go for a new one. And, you do not want to overlook the certificate transfer or leave it for the last minute.
4. Moving the Data
Relatively speaking, any system change involves adapting to a new system. Similarly, site migration can be challenging and easy at the same time. One of the principal components is to know how easy it is to move your data from one system to the other. If at all possible, you can even export your products, accounts, and orders into a simple comma-delimited or tab-delimited format. Thereafter, import the data into the new system. The more complex your products are, the more difficult it will be to import your data when you have complex product options. Most e-commerce systems in Dubai will offer some explanations and charts/diagrams of their database structures. Mostly, the information could be confusing; it is therefore ideal to seek the help of a professional to get going. Product data is quite easy, but order and order history data differs from system to system. You may find that moving order data from your old system to your new system might not be as realistic as one would think.
5. Circumvent Search Engine and Linking Glitches
Your new system generates different page URLs. Your business has thrived on strong organic search engine placement, but that success could fade quickly. However, before making any move, ideally, study the page titles and URLs of some sites by using the new system. But ensure that you will be able to adjust the page titles and URLs so that they are identical and matchyour current site. But the next best option anyway is to install 301 permanent redirects of old URLs to new ones;
by creating a file on your server that will direct the web browsers and search engines to a new URL on your site which replaced a previous one; by indicating to them that the change is permanent. Double-check with your new provider to be sure that one of these options will be available to you.
6. E-Mail Disruptions
The site movement is quite an upheaval, but keeping your e-mail flowing is equally a task during this time. We would advocate that you make provision to check email on the old server and the new server. Alternately, in the interim, you can forward emails going to the old server for some time, say for 48 hours after the move. You have sufficient time to review all the accounts and pseudonyms that your company uses. Site owners often lose track of their multiple email IDs. As a result, they may set them up incorrectly in the new environment. Once the new site goes live, test every address and all the forms on the new site to make sure the email is functioning properly.
7. Determine the “Live” Date
Making a site transition happen quickly is a crucial step. You may require at least 48 hours before you move your site to the new e-commerce platform. Then log into the server management account at your old provider and update the DNS records so the time-to-live (TTL) is established within 300 seconds. By taking this crucial technical step, and when you actually update your DNS servers, the changed address information of your website should spread across the Internet within five minutes. If you can’t adjust the TTL, you’ll be dependent on the global Internet routing system. This determines whether visitors see your old or new site when they enter your address.
8. Test First
Even before commissioning your site to go live, place some test orders and confirm that the new site is connected with your payment processing system. It is always better to work out those bugs before actual customers are ready to place orders on you.
9. Schedule the Transfer
We would strongly vouch for doing the cutover very early in the morning, say much earlier than the crack of dawn, before most of your customers get active with their activity. Moreover, you can do your test orders and make sure that all the links are working correctly. You can see what is happening to the traffic in your site if you have access to the log files on the old and new servers of the e-commerce platform. Checking these files throughout the day is a good idea, as it will show you if visitors are getting to the pages that no longer exist.
10. Retaining the Old Site
It is in the fitness of things to keep the old site active for an overlapping month during the transition process. This strategy gives you time to archive all old files. It also helps ensure that you don’t miss any vital file, script, or piece of important information.
Summary
Challenges galore when migrating your website, but following these steps will, however, ease the transition and keep your website operating smoothly and seamlessly.