Still, there are times when a migration becomes effectively an imperative. Here’s what you should know about when it’s time, how to prepare, and how to vet a provider of website migration services, all from a very high level, of course.

When Website Migration Services Might Become Necessary 

There are some big indicators that might tip you off that it’ll be time for you to get off your current platform sooner rather than later. These are some of the most salient.

• Website support is ending or becoming untenable

Have you just been informed that your current platform administrator or hosting provider will no longer be able to support your website’s operations in the near future? This is one of the most straightforward indicators of all. If this happens (and it does, I’ve heard it from actual clients) then the case is not that you might need to migrate. You will have to.

• Your current setup can’t handle your website traffic

For any of various reasons, a hosting provider or even a platform itself might not be well suited to shoulder the amount of traffic your website gets. For growing eCommerce websites and blogs, this is a serious problem that will result in a poor user experience or flat out crashes. 

• Your platform is too limiting

Some platforms, for better or worse, are difficult to customize. This is particularly true of open-source platforms that require you to have a good deal of development experience to make even the most basic changes. In that event, it might be far more expedient for your business if you get your website onto a more amenable platform with templated solutions, sooner rather than later. 

• There are security concerns

If your website is experiencing a larger than average number of fraudulent attempts or transactions, you might need to get onto a more secure platform or hosting provider. A situation like this can be a ticking time bomb so it’s better dealt with sooner rather than later. 

• You need a more scalable solution 

There are many reasons that a website platform limits your ability to grow, either in terms of what you offer, how much traffic you bring in, or what changes you anticipate making to it. Either way, once your platform becomes the limiter, it’s time for a new one. The longer you put it off, the harder the migration will be in the long run anyway.

• You want to move to an eCommerce-friendly platform 

Some websites start on open-source platforms like WordPress only to realize that there are much better solutions for eCommerce, like Shopify and BigCommerce, that are designed for managing customer accounts, order data, payment processing, and managing an inventory of products. 

How to Prepare for a Website Migration

Once you know a website migration is an inevitability, there are things you can do to make the process easier on yourself, as well as more secure for you and your users. 

Here are some of the steps you’ll want to take, again, from a high level. 

• Set your goals 

You shouldn’t be migrating simply because you think it’s a good idea (although it may be). You’ll want to know why. Are you moving for greater scalability? To handle a heavier traffic load? To make it easier for you to customize your website? 

Whatever the case, make sure you know what the goal is so you can measure before and after success. 

• Establish a plan 

Are you going to handle the migration on your own or work with a provider of website migration services? This is arguably the most important question you will want to answer before proceeding. 

If you’ll be handling the migration internally, make sure you have the skills on your team that you’ll need and that each person knows what their roles and responsibilities are before you get the wheels in motion. At a certain point you won’t be able to turn back.

• Inform users of any expected downtime 

Once you decide to move forward with plan to migrate your website, make sure your users are well informed of any delays in user experience that might be caused. Send out an email and alert them on social media about the move and let them know when and if to expect downtime – if any is planned. 

• Freeze the site and back up data 

You don’t want any changes to be happening to the data on your website while you’re working on migrating, so it will become necessary at some point to freeze your website (that means no more posting to your CMS platform or accepting new client orders) and back up all your data.

• Setup analytics

When going through a domain migration, you’ll want to set up analytics beforehand so that you’re ready to start tracking traffic, sessions, conversions and revenue as soon as the new site is live. This is particularly important because migrations can affect SEO (search engine optimization) and generally not favorably, unless 301 redirects are implemented properly. 

• Test redirects 

As stated, anywhere there is a change to a URL structure, a 404 error will occur in the wake of a migration. Without 301 redirects in place, this will cause a massive drop off in traffic after the migration. Test them before launching. 

• Launch the new site 

Once you’ve backed up your data, set up analytics, put redirects in place, you can export the data from the old site to the new site – that is, perform the actual migration  – then launch the site. 

• Run post-launch diagnostics/check functionality 

Once the new site is live, check it to make sure everything is where it should be and spot check integrations and pages for display and functionality. You won’t be able to spot check everything, but if a large set of random checks doesn’t turn up any errors, you’re likely in a good spot. 

• Alternatively, work with a proven provider of website migration services 

While the high level pointers outlined here should give you a jumping off point for planning a migration yourself, a much safer avenue is to work with a professional provider of website migration services. A successful migration may hinge on their expertise. 

How to Vet a Company That Provides Website Migration Services 

While working with a provider of professional website migration services can help you avoid a disaster, it is equally important to make sure you’re working with one that can be trusted. Failing to do so can take a migration from bad to worse, and cost you money in the process. Here are some things to look for before signing with an agency. 

• Ask questions to be sure of the services offered

If there’s anything you need to be known about your website or hosting environment before migrating, make sure you ask. You can’t expect anyone else to know about the unique requirements for your project if you don’t publish them, but more importantly, you won’t know if the agency can handle the job if you don’t ask. 

• Make sure their services are SEO-friendly

Many agencies offer website migration services, not all of them are quality, and certainly, not all of them are executed with an eye on SEO. All in all, we are SEO experts here, even more than migration experts. We are no strangers to Google Analytics, Search Console, or implementing redirects. Call us and ask if you have concerns about drops in organic traffic before you enlist. We will be more than happy to explain any part of the process in detail. 

• Ask for case studies

Case studies are, in many ways, proof of the pudding. Talk is cheap when it comes to digital marketing services. Look for case studies that illustrate the process of a migration as well as what steps were taken to ensure that the project ran smoothly and as expected. 

• Read the scope of work 

The scope of work (SOW) will detail what the agency will be responsible and what (if anything) you will be responsible for. It is absolutely critical that you understand your role in the process before embarking. There are things an agency will not be able to do without your help. 

• Inquire into the migration process

Never sign with an eCommerce digital agency unless they have a proven migration process. I won’t pontificate. We have one – you can learn about our migration process right here – and we’ve handled hundreds. 

• Check reviews (offsite reviews are best) 

In the interest of fairness, I have to tell you to check reviews, and not just reviews that appear on our website. Check our offsite reviews, too. There’s no bias there, and you’ll get some insight into what clients that have actually worked with us thought of the interaction. 

Getting Ready for a Migration 

Just like so many things in life, though the prospect of a migration might be unwelcome, it’s best to just get it over and done with. Start planning the move and your reasons for it today, and if you need help, don’t be afraid to connect with a professional to shed some light on the anything that’s confusing you.

The post Website Migration Services: A Beginner’s Guide appeared first on 1Digital® Agency.

I’d even call it literally the same, except, one, of course, deals with physical goods, and the other with data. But they are both fraught with room for error and require complex protocols and processes in place to make sure everything ends up where it’s supposed to go. 

So let’s talk about the role of a data migration process in this big picture, and why it matters. 

Why a Data Migration Process Is Important 

Don’t let the apparently succinct nature of an online store fool you. There could be thousands, if not tens of thousands, of product entries, each on their own URLs, nestled under carefully organized categories. 

On each URL, there might be unique, optimized copy, titles, meta data, product imagery, and other user-generated content (UGC) like reviews and pictures. 

This alone is an immense amount of data to account for while migrating, but on top of that, there might be tens to hundreds of CMS pages, like blogs, user guides, and FAQs pages, along with thousands of entries associated with user account information, order history, pricing and options, and so much more. 

I am intentionally painting a curiously curt image of the sheer “amount” of data contained in your average online store, but even accounting for the glibness of my oversimplification, it is quite apparent to a reasonable mind that this is a monumentally large amount of data. 

Moving it, and putting it in the right place on a new platform or database is challenging enough, but then we have to deal with URL changes, which, in the absence of a proper redirect, will cause all that earned authority to collapse, resulting in massive drop offs in organic traffic. 

So, without overcomplicating it, these are some of the reasons that a data migration process is necessary to protect the functionality of your online store, provide for a continued positive user experience, and prevent a disaster with respect to SEO. 

Every provider might have its own data migration process, but now you know why it’s important, here’s ours. 

The 1Digital^Ⓡ Data Migration Process

I can’t stress this enough, but do not work with a digital agency that does not have a well-developed data migration process. You’ve been warned.

Now, to talk details, here are the phases of our data migration process.

1. Access to and Evaluating Data 

The first step in our data migration process is summing it all up. Our technical experts will need access to your data, either through your platform’s API (all in all, one of the best ways to migrate is an API transfer), through a CSV file, or through whatever external database/ERP you use. 

Once we have access to your website’s data, then we can account for some specifics associated with the platform, how the data is stored and arranged, and some other variables (many are unique to each project), we will evaluate it to determine whether or not the proposed method of transfer will be acceptable given the new platform’s constraints. 

If everything checks out, we can greenlight the next step in the process. 

1. Initial Data Transfer 

Once we have assessed the method we intend to use for the transfer, we can send over most if not all of your data to the new platform and check for accuracy, as well as to see that it all populated where it was supposed to. 

Our migration scripts do the heavy lifting here, and move the actual data. After it’s all transferred over, then the work of checking it all begins. 

1. Front-End Data Alignment and Testing 

Once we’ve run all our scripts and sent over all of your data to your new platform, we need to make sure that it went where it was supposed to go, which naturally will vary for each store and the each new platform.

If your project entails redesign and development work, this is also the point at which we will transfer the new design out of the sandbox and onto the new store so we can begin quality assurance testing. 

The data that will need to be checked will vary according to the project, but since many of our clients are in eCommerce, big things to check are product options, imagery, pricing, and items like that. 

Another aspect of this step in the process is sending out an email blast to your customers informing them that their account information has changed; the email will not be sent until the migration is complete but at this point we may ask your help in approving the copy.

1. Resync

During the time in which your new store was being built and all your data was being transferred, your “old” store was still live, which means it would still be taking orders, enrolling new customers, and going about the other day to day motions of an eCommerce website. 

Before the launch date of your new website we need to perform a resync to ensure all of that data on your new website is up to date, including all of the changes that have been made during the period associated with the initial transfer. That way, you don’t lose any orders or new customers during that period. 

This, however, requires a short freeze, known as a freeze period, during which your website cannot accept any changes. Our goal is to minimize this period so your website experiences as little downtime as possible, but we recommend that our customers manually track any new order submissions or new account sign-ups during this period so that they can be added to the new store once it is live. 

1. Front-End Alignment Testing – Resync

Most of the quality assurance testing we do comes right after we initially transfer your data, but there is still a chance that hiccups can occur after the resync and freeze period. 

For this reason, we do a second short QA after the resync, just to make sure everything is where it is supposed to be, and the integrity of the data quality has been upheld. 

This second QA testing must be performed during the freeze period, so our goal is to make sure it occurs as quickly as possible. 

1. Launch 

Now the fun part – this is when we go live. This is the point at which all of our efforts collectively pay off, but it is an intricate and intensive process made complicated by data migration. 

At this point, we will want to send the password reset email blast to your book of existing customer accounts so they know that in order to continue accessing your online store they will need to update their account with a new password.

We also recommend the implementation of 301 redirects as any part of a migration strategy. If you do not implement 301 redirects and any of your URLs are not exactly the same as the old ones, all of the authority of that page will be lost, and your SEO efforts will be wasted. A 301 redirect implementation strategy can help prevent this migration complication. 

We also monitor your Google Search Console for a period of time after we migrate data, that way we can check for crawler issues and make sure your website is being crawled as necessary. 

After that, if all else is in order, your new store is live, and your data migration project was a success. 

Questions About Our Data Migration Process? 

Given the scope of the different types of data migrations and application migrations, made more complex by the volume of data, the data format, the source and target systems in question, and the data migration tools being used, it can be stressful to move it all. 

That said, we are here to help and have handled hundreds of successful migrations in the past. If you are considering a migration and are unsure about the steps of a data migration process (or if it is worth it to move data in the first place) feel free to get in touch with us and one of our specialists will be more than happy to help. 

The post What Is a Proper Data Migration Process and How Does It Protect Your Online Store During a Migration? appeared first on 1Digital® Agency.

When it comes to eCommerce platforms, few offer the same level of raw functionality. 

But there’s a catch. Since the user is responsible for hosting the platform, security, speed, and functionality all come down to the user.

Some eCommerce merchants just can’t justify staying on a platform like Magento. For some, the convenience and cost savings associated with SaaS platforms like Shopify outweigh the potential benefits of customization and integration that Magento offers. 

So let’s take a closer look at why some merchants might benefit from a Magento to Shopify Plus migration, as well as how to prepare for it.

Advantages of Shopify Plus

There are a number of reasons that SaaS models like Shopify Plus are attractive to eCommerce merchants. 

Many of these are attributable to the fact that Shopify Plus provides all necessary hosting and infrastructure, performs load testing, and provides security patches and upgrades as necessary. That takes a load off the shoulders of the platforms’ customers. 

Shopify Plus also offers its users access to internal architects, Shopify Plus developers, and retainer-based consulting. 

In addition, the Shopify Platform: 

• Integrates with Google Ads.
• Has a native, built-in blogging engine, which supports SEO, content marketing, and other digital marketing efforts. 
• Offers 8 free themes and dozens of other premium themes. 
• Has a native coupon code feature (all subscription models).
• Allows easy HTML and CSS editing, which is necessary for developers to make customizations. 
• Has a live-chat integration feature. 
• Is easily integrable with a huge range of Shopify apps. 
• The platform has an abandoned cart recovery feature. 
• Shopify supports the use of multiple currency settings.
• Integrates easily with most major shipping carriers like UPS and FedEx. 
• Easily integrates with a large range of payment providers.
• Supports a large Shopify ecosystem of designers, developers, and digital marketing specialists.
• Has its own analytics reporting functionality. 

In addition to the general benefits of the Shopify platform, mentioned above, there are some exclusive benefits to the use of Shopify Plus, such as:

• Shopify Flow, an automation feature that enables users to automate workflows using premade templates. Workflow automation can also be customized. 
• Script Editor, which enables easy customizations to multiple aspects of your Shopify Plus store.
• Some apps are Shopify Plus exclusive. 
• It allows you to create unlimited staff accounts.
• And finally, a subscription to Shopify Plus gives you access to a dedicated account manager. 

Drawbacks of Open-Source (Magento)

For many eCommerce merchants, the reason a migration from Magento to Shopify Plus becomes necessary has more to do with the investment required to run a Magento store than from the specific benefits of Shopify Plus. 

While it is true that Magento’s open-source nature makes the most robust customizations possible, doing so requires no small deal of Magento development expertise. In fact, you need to be very code-savvy to do so. 

Moreover, since users have to host their own platforms, server loads, security, speed, and integrations can all become headaches quite quickly. 

There is a large community of Magento developers out there, but at the same time, some issues associated with managing a Magento store include: 

• Magento is associated with high development costs due to the complex nature of the platform.
• Becoming familiar with the platform entails a steep learning curve and a large investment in time. 
• Magento hosting is resource intensive.
• According to some users, Magento is far too over-engineered for average users – who, by the way, generally happen to be eCommerce entrepreneurs and not computer scientists. 

All of this might sound simple but really it adds up to one glaring truth: running a Magento store gets expensive, quickly. 

Why Magento to Shopify Plus Migration Can Benefit Your Business?

In terms of the cost and time investments it takes to launch and run a Magento website, we can break it down according to averages associated with how much it costs to launch, how long it takes to launch, and what the total monthly costs are. 

Of course, these figures will vary according to the scope of a store’s operations and functionality, but here are some basic figures. 

• On average, it costs about $75,000 to $170,000 to build a Shopify website, compared to $400,000 to $600,000 for a Magento store. That makes the Magento route up to 3 times more on average. 
• It takes on average 2 to 4 months to build a fully-functional Shopify Plus website, compared to 5 to 8 months for Magento. 
• And, on average, a Shopify Plus website costs $2,500 to $5,000 in monthly maintenance, compared to $10,000 to $15,000 for Magento. 

So, Magento is just more expensive (in both dollars and resources) to manage than Shopify Plus. That much is hardly up for debate. 

Here’s how to go about planning a Magento to Shopify Plus eCommerce migration. 

Planning for a Magento to Shopify Plus Migration

There is actually a way to manage your own Magento to Shopify Plus Migration. 

To do so, you will need to set up a Shopify account. You can actually start with a free trial that will let you get familiar with the platform before you choose the paid plan that works for you – though you will need to choose one before the trial is over. 

After you set up your Shopify account, the next thing you will want to make sure you do is to create a backup of your Magento store. This is perhaps the most important step of all because if something goes wrong (if anything goes wrong, really) and you haven’t made a backup, you could lose literally all of your product, customer account, and payment information, along with all of your CMS pages. 

You can back up your Magento store through the platform’s Admin sidebar – under System, Tools, and Backups. 

Once you’ve made a backup of your Magento website, you can use an app called the “Import Store” app for Shopify that enables you to migrate your data over to the new Shopify store once you’ve exported it from Magento. 

You can use Magento’s Admin sidebar to export your data, too, just like you used it to back it up. 

Under System, go to Data Transfer, then Export. Select the entity type, then export it as an XML or CSV. format.

Log into your Shopify admin page, and under your apps, select Import Store; Upload the files through Magento and then select Continue Import. 

At this point, the technical aspect of the migration should be complete. Now you need to review your data and ensure that everything survived the migration. 

Then you need to customize and configure your new Shopify store and select a subscription plan before your trial expires. 

Now for the reality check. The process I just described for a Magento to Shopify migration might sound overly simplistic. It is, and on paper, the process is really very easy, but in practice, like so many other website administration “things,” there is actually quite a lot of room for error

And that room for error increases with websites that have thousands of products, variants, and customer accounts.

So, before you take up the banner, I highly suggest you reach out to one of our Shopify Plus developers to talk to us about our migration process. We’ve handled hundreds of eCommerce migrations in the past without a blip thanks to our watertight migration process that ensures no data loss and implements 301 redirects to address changes to URLs during the process. 

You’ll thank yourself later for letting professionals handle it. 

The post Planning for a Magento to Shopify Migration: What You Need to Know appeared first on 1Digital® Agency.

1. Data Loss

One of the biggest and most unexpected challenges associated with website migration is the potential for data loss. When migrating a website, all data must be transferred from the old site to the new one. This includes content, images, customer information, and other data. If any of this data is not properly transferred or is corrupted during the process, it can lead to a significant loss of data which can throw a massive wrench into business operations. 

2. SEO Issues

Another big challenge associated with website migration is SEO issues. When transferring a website, it is important to maintain consistent SEO elements such as page titles, meta descriptions, and URLs. If any of these elements are changed during the migration process, it can have a negative impact on the website’s search engine rankings. Additionally, changes to the website’s structure can cause issues with the website’s internal linking structure, which can also lead to SEO problems.

Another problem can arise from unexpected URL changes. If a URL changes at all during the migration process, it will result in a broken link whenever someone clicks on a link that hasn’t been updated with the new link address. This will create 404 errors all over your website which will tank your SEO scores. 

While this latter problem is common, an eCommerce digital agency with a well-establish migration process will implement 301 redirects for all of your old URLs, thus preventing a loss of SEO value or a drop in traffic. 

3. Security Issues

Website migration also carries the potential for security issues. When transferring a website, all of the old site’s security measures must be transferred and implemented on the new site. This includes setting up secure protocols, such as HTTPS, and ensuring that all user data is encrypted. If the new site’s security measures are not properly implemented, it can leave the website vulnerable to security threats.

4. Performance Issues

One of the most unexpected challenges associated with website migration is performance issues. When transferring a website, it is important to ensure that all of the new website’s elements are optimized for performance. This includes optimizing images, minifying code, and ensuring that the website is being served from the most efficient server. If the website’s performance is not optimized, it can lead to slow loading times, which can have a negative impact on the user experience.

5. Compatibility Issues

Another potential challenge associated with website migration is compatibility issues. When transferring a website, it is important to ensure that all of the new website’s elements are compatible with the various browsers, devices, and operating systems that the website will be viewed on. If the new website’s elements are not compatible with these elements, it can lead to issues such as layout problems and broken links.

Website migration is a complex process that requires careful planning and execution. While there are many potential benefits to be gained from website migration, there are also some unexpected challenges that can occur. 

Understanding these challenges is half the battle, as some eCommerce businesses may not even be aware that these hurdles and roadblocks exist. Being aware can help you prevent them, or at least enable you to search for a qualified eCommerce digital agency partner that has an established process for website migrations, who can effectively prevent these issues for you. 

How Can an eCommerce Digital Agency Help Prevent or Solve These Challenges?

An eCommerce website migration is not a challenge you should take on by yourself, especially if you have no technical abilities. Migrating an eCommerce website is a complex process that requires time, resources and expertise. It can be a difficult task to undertake, and if done incorrectly can lead to serious issues, some of which we have covered in this article. A qualified, experienced eCommerce digital agency can help ensure that the migration process goes smoothly and without any problems.

When it comes to web migrations, there are a variety of issues that can arise. For example, a website may suffer from a decrease in traffic and sales, or there may be a decrease in rankings due to search engine optimization errors. Additionally, incompatibilities between the new platform and existing systems can cause problems, as can issues with user experience and functionality.

To prevent these issues, an experienced eCommerce digital agency can help ensure that the migration process is done correctly. They can provide advice and assistance throughout the process, helping to ensure that all steps are completed correctly and in a timely manner. They can also provide assistance with the technical aspects of the migration, such as setting up the new platform and ensuring that it is compatible with existing systems.

The agency can also help to ensure that the website is optimized for search engine performance. This includes making sure that the website is properly indexed, optimized for the correct keywords, and that the content is properly structured. This will help to ensure that the website is properly ranked in search engine results and that it will reach the maximum number of potential customers.

The agency can also help to ensure that the website is secure and that any data is securely stored. This includes making sure that all passwords are secure, that any data is backed up, and that any sensitive information is kept confidential. This will help to prevent any potential data breaches or other security issues.

Finally, the agency can help to ensure that the website is optimized for user experience and functionality. This includes making sure that the website is easy to navigate, that it is accessible to all users, and that it is optimized for mobile devices. This will help to ensure that the website is usable and that customers are able to find what they are looking for quickly and easily.

Overall, an experienced eCommerce digital agency can help to ensure that the website migration process goes off without a hitch and avoids the problems covered here. They can provide assistance and advice throughout the process, helping to ensure that all steps are completed correctly and in a timely manner. They can also help to ensure that the website is optimized for search engine performance, secure, and optimized for user experience and functionality. By working with a reputable eCommerce digital agency, businesses can be confident that their website migration will be completed successfully.

Don’t stay on an eCommerce platform that limits the functionality of your business. It might be comfortable, but comfort can destroy user experience as well as your digital marketing initiatives. If your platform is too clunky to change easily, too slow, or doesn’t offer good scalability or security, it may be time to move. 

We have performed over 100 successful eCommerce website migrations in our history and our many happy customers are a testament to our rock-solid, watertight web migration process. If you’re considering a migration but still would like to consult an expert about the possibilities, please reach out to us at 888-982-8269 or at Sales@1DigitalAgency.com.

The post Solving Common Problems Associated with eCommerce Website Migration appeared first on 1Digital® Agency.

Here are the key steps to follow when migrating your eCommerce website:

Plan and Prepare

The first step in any migration is to plan and prepare. This means identifying the reasons for the migration, the goals you want to achieve, and the resources you will need. You should also consider the timing of the migration and any potential disruption it may cause to your business. Working with an eCommerce digital agency that has a proven migration process and has handled countless migrations in the past can, in the long run, save you time and money.

Export Data

The next step in migrating your data is to export it from your current eCommerce platform. This includes products, categories, orders, customers, and any other relevant data. You will need to use the export tools provided by your current platform or use a third-party app or tool to extract the data.

Clean and Organize Data

Once you have exported your data, it is important to clean and organize it to ensure that it is ready for import into the new platform. This may involve removing duplicates, correcting errors, and formatting the data correctly.

Import Data

The next step is to import the data into the new eCommerce platform. This may involve using the import tools provided by the new platform or using a third-party tool. It is important to test the import process to ensure that all data has been transferred correctly.

Update SEO

SEO is an important factor in the success of any eCommerce website, so it is important to update your SEO strategy when migrating to a new platform. This may involve updating your meta titles and descriptions, redirecting old URLs to the new ones, and updating your sitemap. This is a vital component of your eCommerce migration checklist.

Add Code Snippets

If you have any custom code snippets or third-party integrations on your current eCommerce website, you will need to add them to the new platform. This may involve updating the code to ensure compatibility with the new platform or using different APIs or libraries.

Update Design 

The design of your eCommerce website is an important factor in the user experience and the success of your business. When migrating to a new platform, you should update the design to ensure that it is consistent with your brand and meets the needs of your customers.

Integrate Apps 

If you have any apps or integrations on your current eCommerce website, you will need to integrate them into the new platform. This may involve updating the code or using different APIs or libraries.

Post-Launch Considerations 

When you’ve finally launched your new eCommerce website, the hard work isn’t over. There are still several important post-launch steps that need to be taken to ensure your website is running smoothly and efficiently. At 1Digital® Agency, we understand that eCommerce platform migration can be a daunting task, but we’re here to help make the transition as seamless as possible.

The first step after launching your new eCommerce website is to ensure that the content is accurate and up-to-date. This means double-checking product descriptions, images, and other information to make sure that everything is accurate. Additionally, you should review your website’s navigation to ensure customers can easily find the products they’re looking for.

The second step is to conduct thorough testing to make sure that the website is functioning properly. This includes testing the website’s responsiveness, performance, and security. You should also test the website’s checkout process to make sure that customers can purchase products without any issues. This is an important component of customer support that you should never overlook in order to ensure long-term success.

Third, you should analyze the website’s analytics to get a better understanding of how customers are interacting with the website. This will help you identify any areas that need improvement and make changes accordingly. Additionally, you should also set up goals and conversions so you can track the success of your website.

Finally, you should keep an eye on your website’s performance and make sure that it’s running smoothly. This includes monitoring the website’s uptime, page loading times, and any errors that may arise. Additionally, you should also keep track of any customer feedback and make changes accordingly.

By following these steps, you can successfully migrate your eCommerce website from one platform to another, while minimizing disruption and maximizing the benefits of running your eCommerce business on the new platform.

Preserving Your Search Engine Rankings with 301 Redirects: A Guide for ECommerce Data Migrations

A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect from one URL to another. It is important to use 301 redirects when you are migrating your website from one eCommerce platform to another because it helps to preserve your search engine rankings.

When you migrate your website to a new platform, the URLs of your pages will most likely change. If you don’t set up redirects, search engines will see the old URLs as dead links, and your website’s ranking will suffer. With a 301 redirect in place, search engines will know that the old URL has been permanently moved to the new URL, and your website’s ranking will be preserved.

To set up a 301 redirect, you will need to modify the .htaccess file on your server. If you are using Apache, you can do this by adding the following code to your .htaccess file:

Replace old-url.html with the URL of the page you want to redirect, and replace http://www.yourdomain.com/new-url.html with the new URL.

If you are using a different server, you may need to use a different method to set up your redirects. It is a good idea to consult your server’s documentation or contact your hosting provider for more information.

It is important to note that setting up redirects can be time-consuming, especially if you have a large website with many pages. However, it is worth the effort because it will help to preserve your search engine rankings and ensure that your website’s traffic is not disrupted.

Expert eCommerce Migration Services from 1Digital® Agency: A Trusted Partner for Smooth Transitions

Over the past 10 years, 1Digital® Agency has successfully migrated hundreds of eCommerce websites from various platforms including Magento, Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce. Our team has extensive experience in migration projects of all sizes and complexities, and we have developed proven processes and strategies to ensure a smooth and successful transition.

When working with 1Digital® Agency, you can expect a consultative approach to your migration project. We will take the time to understand your unique business needs and goals, and outline a customized migration plan with clear timelines and scope of work. Our team will work closely with you to ensure that all aspects of the migration are carefully planned and executed, including the transfer of products, order history, customer account information, and other important data.

In addition to our technical expertise, 1Digital® Agency also has a deep understanding of the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) during a migration. We will work with you to ensure that your website’s ranking is preserved through the use of 301 redirects and other best practices. (We also offer free SEO audits, too, for the benefit of those online businesses who want some insights into the performance of their eCommerce stores.

Overall, 1Digital® Agency is a trusted partner for eCommerce migrations. We have the experience, knowledge, and resources to ensure that your migration project is a success. If you are considering migrating your eCommerce website, we encourage you to reach out to our team to learn more about how we can help.

The post Navigating the Challenges of eCommerce Website Migration appeared first on 1Digital® Agency.

But when business grows – and for Perfectly Priscilla, operating from PerfectlyPriscilla.com, that offers unique designs in clothing, footwear and accessories, it did – it can create growing pains, if you’ll excuse the pun. Selling online requires a pleasant user experience, one in which the customer feels a connection to the seller, even if they’re only purchasing through a screen.

This was one of the main reasons that Perfectly Priscilla partnered with 1Digital^Ⓡ Agency. They wanted to migrate from their BigCommerce store to a newly designed and developed Shopify Plus website which, they hoped, would better align with their brand, present their visitors with updated and relevant imagery, and provide UX-enhancing, conversion-boosting functionality. They’d need a Shopify migration agency that provided holistic eCommerce web design and development services as well.

Partnering with a Shopify Migration Agency to Shift the Focus to a New Platform

Perfectly Priscilla had determined that the basic B2C-friendly features of Shopify Plus were better aligned with their long-term strategy. The problem is that the company fielded countless orders on a daily basis, managed thousands of different products, and had a significant corpus of content as well. Getting from BigCommerce to Shopify Plus, notwithstanding a redesign and the advanced development that would go with it, would be no small feat.

Poorly planned migrations can spell various disasters for eCommerce businesses. Without proper protocols in place, including established processes for accounting for data and ensuring it syncs properly, customer accounts can be lost, products can be lost – even orders can be completely lost, especially during the time that the migration is occurring. It takes a skilled Shopify migration agency with a well-developed process to deliver results without any hiccups.

Even worse, a poorly planned migration that does not establish 301 redirects in its wake can destroy all of an online business’s organic rankings. Luckily for Perfectly Priscilla, which had countless pages of products and categories in addition to plenty of blog content, 1Digital^Ⓡ Agency’s process was watertight.

To say that the corpus of data that we migrated for Perfectly Priscilla was large would be a comical understatement. Their website contained over 70 categories of products with over 1,000 product entries, containing sensitive information associated with SKUs, price, imagery, descriptions, and more, including SEO-sensitive data.

The scope of the migration also had to account for over 80,000 customer accounts and order history associated with more than 140,000 orders. We also migrated more than 200 blogs for the client.

Ensuring that all of their data would populate in the proper locations on the newly established Shopify Plus store required our migration specialists to perform more than one resync, even after all of the data had been migrated over in the first place. By the time we had completed the first data transfer, between 20,000 and 30,000 new orders had been placed. This required our team to do a resync to ensure that the original information had been migrated successfully, but that all of the orders placed in the interim would not be lost or corrupted.

During the migration, we also implemented a 301 redirect for every URL that was moved over to the new Shopify Plus website so that Perfectly Priscilla would not lose any domain authority as a result of the migration. We even monitored their Google Search Console just to keep a second pair of eyes on traffic in the wake of the migration.

Of course, building a better store for Perfectly Priscilla only began with migrating them to a platform that was more closely aligned with their objectives. We also created a brand new eCommerce web design and developed a brand new look for their online storefront.

Tweaking UX with Updated eCommerce Web Design and Custom Functionality Features

In conjunction with this migration, 1Digital^Ⓡ Agency performed a full website redesign for Perfectly Priscilla, updating all of the major aspects of their eCommerce web design, including their category and product pages as well as their content pages, about us page, and of course, their homepage.

Their homepage was originally more neutral and lacked bold, direct imagery that the client felt would be appealing to its customers. As you can see from the before and after pictures below, we used larger, brighter imagery in their branded design of their new homepage, especially in the creation of the custom banners that accompanied the redesign.

As you can see from the picture of their new homepage design below, the overall look is brighter, more colorful and more engaging, with bolder, larger pictures and imagery. Our client felt that this aspect of the redesign was necessary to create a better, more personable user experience.

We also updated the design of their mega menu to encourage customer engagement and navigation. Previously their mega menus offered only a simple, text-heavy drop-down. Our updated mega menu design offered a more user-friendly interface. It fills more of the screen, separates the categories more effectively, and augments the experience with colorful, brand-aligned visuals.

This client was also interested in the additional services of our Shopify migration agency as a Shopify Plus developer for creating custom features that would enhance the online shopping experience and foster additional conversions. For example, we created a pop-feature that displays at the right side of the page when a user adds a product to the cart, informing the customer of the additional order value required to attain free shipping, as shown below.

This feature offers two key benefits, despite the basic simplicity of the design. One, it informs customers that they may be eligible for free shipping – and all online shoppers want that – and secondly, it encourages additional conversions in order to get the order to qualify. It serves the needs of both our client, Perfectly Priscilla, and their customers.

We created other conversion-boosting features for this client, including a tool that would recommend additional products by popularity, based on the items in which a visitor to their website showed interest. Even better, we created a “Buy the Look” feature, enabling customers to purchase all of the clothing accessories displayed by a model in their product pages. For example, if a visitor to their website wanted to purchase the entire ensemble in the image shown below, they would need only to scroll down the page to see all of the products included in the ensemble. This significantly boosted customer engagement and satisfaction.

In order to further refine the customer experience, we also implemented faceted search features for the client, allowing for advanced filtering to provide a better customer experience by refining the accuracy of their search results. We also implemented a lazy loading feature for their search results pages, creating a scroll-friendly design that continuously loads the search results as a user scrolls down the page, eliminating the need for pagination.

In addition to completely redesigning this client’s website and implementing all of the custom features enumerated here, our Shopify Plus developers also integrated a wide range of business-critical apps to ensure the website functionality they wanted to offer to their customers.

In order to improve a variety of customer experiences, we implemented Amazon Pay, customized an add-to-cart pop-up and added InStockNotify functionality to their website. 1Digital^Ⓡ Agency also implemented a wish lift feature for the product page, displayed product reviews on their product pages to encourage conversions, and integrated Google and Facebook analytics to facilitate the client’s management of the platform.

By the end of the project, Perfectly Priscilla enjoyed a thoroughly rebranded, redesigned website that was more closely aligned with their customer expectations, integrated with tools to facilitate management and improve the customer experience, and suffused with custom functionality that created a delightful online shopping experience. Most importantly, they had settled on a platform that would meet their needs more effectively as the business grew – and it has.

The success story of Perfectly Priscilla is one that plays out for our customers time and time again. We’re not just a Shopify migration agency; we’ve migrated clients to newly designed and developed websites, offered our services as an eCommerce development agency to build custom apps, and created strategic partnerships with online merchants, offering eCommerce SEO and PPC management services that propel them to new heights – and we can do the same for your organization.

To learn more about our various client success stories, visit our collection of eCommerce case studies to learn more about the different projects we’ve completed for clients in a wide range of different industries. There’s probably one that illustrates your plight – and if not, your business may as well be the next 1Digital^Ⓡ Agency success story. Call our team at 888-982-8269 or message us at info@1digitalagency.com to get started!

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The post How our Shopify Migration Agency Vastly Improved Our Client’s UX appeared first on 1Digital® Agency.

With growing sales and operations through 2020, Stover & Company knew that something would have to give soon. For years, their online store had been hosted on Magento, an eCommerce platform that is extremely robust and allows for limitless customization. However, with an open-source platform like Magento, that capability comes at a price.

With Magento, users need to provide their own hosting infrastructure and security and need to devote an uncommon measure of resources to development and support. Sure, the code is out there for anyone to inspect, but without a pool of dedicated developers, keeping up with a Magento website is a true labor of love.

Stover & Company had those resources, business was growing, and they wanted to allocate them to business development as well as a website that better reflected their growing capabilities and was easier to manage.

Unfortunately, despite Magento’s glaring capabilities, it was too resource-intensive to maintain. Stover & Company needed to move to a platform that could offer similar customization and would be easier to keep up with, and for that, they chose the BigCommerce platform.

Ideally, they’d want to get their website up and running on a newly designed BigCommerce store without any disruptions, which is quite a task for an established online store with a huge volume of sales and customer accounts. What they needed was help moving from their old store on Magento to their new store on BigCommerce with no hiccups.

Lucky for Stover & Company, 1Digital^Ⓡ Agency has experience in that arena.

Making the Move

Stover & Company was operating a large, complex eCommerce website on Magento. To say it was full of data, product and account information and a variety of content would be an understatement. To make matters more complex, being an established business with a powerful online presence, Stover & Company had appreciable traffic to their online store that they couldn’t risk compromising – as in other businesses, web traffic to an online store is dearly earned and brings in revenue.

1Digital^Ⓡ’s specialists conducted a complex and thorough data migration for Stover & Company’s website, carefully transferring each item of valuable data to the correct location in their new BigCommerce store.

The scope of their eCommerce migration consisted of over 150 categories, 900 products, 15,000 customer accounts, and nearly 33,000 orders. Special steps had to be taken with each category to ensure the timely and accurate migration of the data.

For example, in order to protect the SEO value of Stover’s category structure, we had to take care to transfer not only the categories and descriptions themselves but also to move over the category metadata, including titles, descriptions, and keywords. We then did the same thing with their product information, taking care to preserve the fidelity of names, prices, images, descriptions, and options.

We also uncovered group products in Stover’s Magento store, which required careful configuration before being transferred. In order to be compatible with BigCommerce, we had to convert them into simple products and manually sync them to the BigCommerce store before combining them with BigCommerce’s product options.

Our process for migrating Stover’s customer and order information was every ounce as thorough. We took care to meticulously migrate names, addresses, email, and phone numbers, even sending each customer account an email informing them that they would need to change their account password since we would not be able to migrate the original, encrypted passwords.

No Traffic Left Behind

When executing a migration, especially for a well-established business with a successful online presence like Stover & Company, taking steps to ensure that no traffic is lost is critical. As a part of the migration process, we followed two particularly important protocols to ensure Stover & Company would not lose any traffic as a result.

For one thing, we scrupulously compiled all of Stover’s Magento URLs and created standard 301 redirects to all of the BigCommerce URLs that would correspond to them. This is a crucial step to ensure that Google knows where to send traffic when a user searches for a URL that may no longer exist. When done properly, it can completely prevent any loss of traffic that would otherwise result from a poorly planned migration.

In addition, after the migration, we monitored their Google Search Console for any potential shifts in traffic, as well as allocated a period of support to it in case any issues would arise or be uncovered. Needless to say, the migration and ensuing redesign and development projects were successful in tandem, and the company not only saw no loss of traffic but a boom in traffic to their online store.

Advanced Design and Development for Better Branding and More

Stover & Company wanted two things in particular from their new BigCommerce website. They wanted it to put forth a more professional, capable, front, and they wanted it to be better equipped to handle an influx of online orders as they planned for growth. For that, they’d need the help of an experienced BigCommerce partner. In conjunction with their migration, our designers and developers were busy at work creating a brand new BigCommerce website for Stover & Company that offered the same functionality as before, and more, for a significantly improved customer experience.

While our BigCommerce web design specialists updated the overall appearance of the entire website as can be seen from the image below, they also designed and developed some new features for their website to boost engagement, improve UX, and put forth a more professional front.

One of the big-ticket items that we created for Stover & Company was an advanced mega menu. Enhanced navigation is well known as a critical component of the customer experience, and this mega menu was reorganized to facilitate a customer’s search and pushed their highest selling category (chocolates) to the top, as you can see below. This new mega menu also featured updated imagery and eye-catching colors to hold attention and sync up better with the color scheme of the overall website.

Moreover, this advanced mega menu contained several different features and effects. You can see at the top of their homepage the way the menu displays; it expands with a second display of subcategories when the user clicks on “Shop by Category.” A third display of subcategories will appear when the user clicks on the category of interest. This is a significant experience-booster for Stover & Company’s users, as the company offers such a diverse collection of different bakery supplies.

As an additional positive effect on the navigational hierarchy of the client’s website, we also created subcategory landing pages. For example, if a user selects “Chocolate & Caramel” through the mega menu and then selects “Compound Chocolates” as a subcategory, the page to which the customer will be directed displays a variety of different subcategories within the original subcategory.

This facilitates a customer’s search, for example, for “Dark Compound Chocolates” or “Flavored Wafers,” which otherwise would be lumped together blindly into one collection. This neat and comprehensive compartmentalization of Stover’s products created a much better searching and shopping experience.

In accordance with the wishes of the client, we also created a Quick Order page to enable customers to complete large, complex purchases as easy as possible. Since many of Stover’s clients are also large businesses, many of them return frequently to make the same or similar large purchases. Streamlining this process, at least for these accounts, was a highly valuable initiative that we designed and executed for them.

In addition to redesigning their homepage, mega menu, subcategory pages, and more, we also created a few additional items that advertised their capabilities and customer service. For example, we created a new banner for the homepage highlighting some of the selling points of their business, such as their warehousing capabilities.

In addition, we created special badges for some of their product pages, such as what you can see in the image below. This particular product page, for one of their most popular products, shows the user that the product is in stock and also gives the option to add cold packing to the order, advertising the robust capabilities of the client and boosting confidence in their operations in specific and their brand in general.

1Digital^Ⓡ also completed several additional critical development items for Stover & Company, including business critical integrations and configurations. For example, our BigCommerce developers implemented ShipperHQ and configured it to their new BigCommerce store. As large businesses often rely on the operational efficiencies afforded by the shipping-based economy of apps like this, ensuring it was installed and configured correctly was critical.

The advanced mega menu described above was not the only item in the project that helped to foster a streamlined and effective navigational process for the client’s users. Our team also integrated and configured Nextopia into their new BigCommerce store so that they could afford their customers additional powerful site search features as a part of the navigational hierarchy.

To ensure the highest level of security possible for their online store, we also made sure that a new EV SSL was issued for their new online store, and then installed and configured properly on the Stover & Company BigCommerce website. We also added a few complimentary development items as a part of their larger project, including a new Favicon for their website and a reorder button for customer accounts, to improve customer engagement and retention.

Growing Organic Traffic with SEO

Stover & Company has been growing and planning for growth; in addition to setting aside funds for migrating to a more capable and freshly designed and developed website, they set aside some investment for digital marketing. Knowing that SEO is a long term gain that affords many business steady growth over time, they chose to partner with 1Digital^Ⓡ for BigCommerce SEO services for a particularly large SEO campaign targeting 120 keywords.

As with all of our comprehensive SEO projects, we conducted thorough keyword research and analyses before even beginning with onsite optimization and content publication. We began by identifying a large collection of carefully chosen keywords that were relevant to their industry, according to their product selection and customer searches.

We also conducted a competition analysis and initial benchmark to show the client where they stood in relation to key competitors and current rankings. Once we had identified key areas for improvement and keywords to pursue, we were ready to begin with our onsite optimization processes. Simultaneously, our content creators began suffusing their website with original content and building links to their website through the publication of offsite content.

As with our other SEO projects, regardless of the size, we audited Stover’s URL structure in order to uncover utilized keywords and room for improvement. We also conducted a site speed optimization discovery touching on numerous items that affect site speed so that they could be rectified and addressed.

As an additional component of onsite optimization, we audited the site for toxic backlinks and broken links and removed or disavowed them wherever found. As this was a brand new BigCommerce store, we were able to optimize title tags and metadata like meta descriptions, to ensure that pages were properly cached and that onsite content was visible both to site visitors and to Google so that it could be crawled and indexed.

In addition to this, our professional content creators undertook the process of creating a variety of onsite content to enrich Stover’s website and make it more attractive to search engines. We created a variety of long and short form content, including category page content and several different types of blog content, carrying both in length and keyword density.

In tandem with these other processes, our specialists also pursue an aggressive backlinking strategy to boost authority. Targeting a broad sweep of keywords, many of which were shared with onsite content, we created a variety of offsite posts and items that were distributed across a number of third-party sites containing backlinks to stovercompany.com.

We Can Tie It Together for Your Business

These are the types of multifaceted digital marketing projects and results we can accomplish for your business, whether you operate in a similar sphere as Stover & Company or in an entirely different industry. Our collection of eCommerce case studies is a sturdy testament to that claim.

Without lauding ourselves too immodestly, we welcome you to check the case studies link above. There, you can see some of our case studies and filter them by project and even platform. If you’re interested, you can also see our SEO by industry page, where you can find some of the industries we serve.

Our talented team of eCommerce web design and development professionals, much like our experienced team of digital marketing eCommerce SEO and PPC specialists, only wait for a call from you to get started achieving similar results for your online business. Whether you need a full-scale redesign or want to see how SEO can work to grow your business in the long game and connect better with your customers with targeted content, it all starts with a call. Contact us at 888-982-8269 or info@1digitalagency.com today.

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The post Scaling with Migration and Advanced Development appeared first on 1Digital® Agency.

Paravel needed a lot of basic eCommerce functionality to make it possible to run practical operations through its online store. Originally, they were built on an open-source platform called Spree, which has a lot of adherents and supporters because of the very fact that it is an open-source platform.

Spree, like other open-source platforms such as Magento, is extremely customizable. It can also be integrated with a very large number of third-party plugins and apps, it is highly scalable, and it exhibits a level of UI-intuition that makes developing a mobile-friendly interface easier.

While this is just a quick snapshot of the various functional features of Spree, some of them come at the same high cost as other open-source platforms. They may be nearly limitless in functionality, but they require a lot of development time and even more experience to accomplish. Without extensive coding experience or a background in development, platforms like Spree can quickly exhaust resources.

Paravel needed that one-of-a-kind shopping experience, but they also needed an out-of-the-box solution that offered a lot to their eCommerce merchants. The trouble for them was how could they get their already meticulously designed and developed eCommerce store from Spree to a more capable platform?

A Thorough Migration Process

After communication with our sales team, Paravel decided that a move to Shopify Plus was the answer – with a few stipulations. Among other things, Paravel did not want to experience any negative effects from the migration and they wanted their new store to offer all of the functionality of their Spree store and then some. To do so, Paravel needed more than a Shopify Plus partner – they needed a Shopify Plus expert.

While Spree offered nearly limitless options for customization, Shopify Plus, as a hosted eCommerce SaaS platform, could offer them so much more. With the help of a development team like 1Digital^Ⓡ, Shopify Plus could offer them all of the customizations that Spree offered and more. Shopify Plus also offered heightened security features, guaranteed uptime, fast site speed, similar compatibility with third-party apps and plugins, acceptance of a number of payment options, immense scalability, and much more. Paravel was, at this point, tasked with moving their existing Spree store, and it’s design and functionality, to Shopify Plus.

For some, the process of a website migration is harrowing, but we knew otherwise. With hundreds of successful migrations in the rearview and a team of developers to back our efforts, we knew it could be done with no trouble whatsoever. It just would take a thorough process.

The process was intensive, but nothing 1Digital^Ⓡ Agency couldn’t execute with flying colors. The project required the migration of 32 product fields (including names, descriptions, images, prices, and more) as well as more than 4,000 customer accounts and orders each. To do this, we set up a temporary Linux server and wrote a custom script to draw and categorize this information from the Spree inventory of their original site.

To move it over, we created another custom script to connect to the Shopify API before properly importing all of the relevant fields. During the process and afterward, data was checked in order to ensure that it was landing correctly in the new store, so that not only would nothing be lost, but it would all populate where it was supposed to go.

Our thorough process prevented the loss of data, but what about the loss of traffic? If there’s one thing that turns off eCommerce clients from the prospect of a replatforming (even if it will come with huge benefits), it’s the fear of losing traffic or domain authority.

Luckily, our migration process prevents damage to SEO as meticulously as it prevents data loss. With Paravel, as we have done with every migration project, we collected all of the URLs associated with their website and then set up 301 redirects to the associated URLs on the new Shopify website. Unsurprisingly, Paravel suffered no loss in traffic or fluctuation in ranking after the migration was complete.

Support – Just in Case

Migrating to Shopify went along without a hiccup, and Paravel was well on its way to a new Shopify Plus store with enhanced functionality and a better user experience, but just to be safe, we included a free 30-day support period with the migration project. Any Shopify migration agency with a proven process should do so; it’s just part and parcel of a successful migration strategy.

The length of free support periods vary according to the scope of the project, but in the case of Paravel’s migration, we allotted 30 days. This gave them a full month’s time to investigate their new website and address any migration bugs that might pop up – which we would fix, free of charge.

Even after, we allowed them to remain on retainer, asking no deposit of them; simply billing for any changes that they would log after the free website support period ended. Little things like these go a long way towards ensuring good customer service, and we aim to ensure that migrations go smoothly, even when everything is checked, double-checked, and checked again.

A Newly Developed Website

But it wasn’t over with a migration. Paravel had criteria for the move associated with the customer experience that the new site would offer, and to ensure that, we had to develop a brand new Shopify Plus website for them.

As part of their project, 1Digital^Ⓡ Agency’s developers crafted a brand new homepage for them that was better brand integrated and helped to position their products in a more desirable light. It featured updated product and background imagery that better aligned with the interests and perceptions of their target market. Consider the sleek, sophisticated impression of the new homepage, below, with a still of the old homepage beneath it.

For visitors to their homepage, the new layout is immediately striking not only for the superior aesthetics of its imagery but for the most concerted effort it makes to place the value of Paravel’s products front and center. You will also note that there is a menu at the top of the new homepage layout that was lacking in the previous design; the way to access their products previously was by scrolling down the page to where there was a button labeled “shop the collection”. The new page features much better site navigation features, as you can see above.

Scrolling down the homepage, visitors can see reviews via a sliding banner, learn more about popular product categories, and even see how customers are using the products via social media, as you can see in some of the screenshots below.

In addition to the homepage, 1Digital^Ⓡ crafted a new category page template along with an “Our Story” page for Paravel, on top of several other system pages. Among those pages that were developed were their cart and checkout pages, login pages, gift certificate pages, and “Thank You” pages. Finally, we customized a number of content pages including their “FAQ” and “Terms” pages.

The importance of a high-quality responsive website design is critical to eCommerce nowadays, and 1Digital^Ⓡ developers were careful to prepare an updated responsive website for Paravel as part of the project. In the interest of Paravel’s user experience, the new responsive design by 1Digital^Ⓡ automatically adapts to smaller screens, resizing and reformatting text accordingly.

Advanced Development – Category Page Functionality

When 1Digital^Ⓡ developers transferred over all of the information associated with Paravel’s product categories, we also added in some new functionality for them to pass along to their customers thus improving customer experience.

We installed a Metafield Editor into their category page template so that Paravel could make quick changes to some of the badges that appeared on their category page display. This allowed them to edit custom fields so that promotions associated with “new,” “bestseller,” or “featured” products could be more prominently displayed.

This seemingly simple feature gives a lot of power back to Paravel’s admins to make quick and easy changes to the display of their website without working with a developer. A man can be given a fish or taught the art, and we provided detailed instructions to Paravel on how to use and manage the app so that they would easily be able to make changes even after the project had closed.

Similarly, 1Digital^Ⓡ developers created Product Swatches and Quick View functionality on Paravel’s collections pages. We created a custom script for their Shopify Plus collections page that was able to fetch and display the desired information.

The script for these swatches also ensured that when a customer clicked on the swatch associated with the color of interest, the product image would be displayed in that color. In addition, it would display the applicable pricing associated with the change as well as any options for “personalization,” or, if necessary, an “out of stock” message.

Advanced Development – Product Page Functionality

Paravel places a huge emphasis on customer experience, and as such, they required a great deal of additional functionality out of their product page template, including added abilities to help personalize the shopping experience.

Therefore, as part of the advanced development aspect of the project, 1Digital^Ⓡ helped create a new and better set of features to personalize the shopping experience on their website, specifically on their product page.

We configured their product page template so that it displayed similarly to their old Spree store. We then created a stick “add to cart” bar that would remain at the bottom of the product page display. That was the easy part.

We also developed a tool for their product page template that would allow shoppers to personalize their shopper experience and make it more realistic. In addition to offering their customers the ability to see what a given bag (or other product) would look like using the swatch functionality described above, Paravel also gives its customers the ability to personalize their products.

Paravel was interested in the conversion-boosting features of a realistic tool that would allow its customers to actually see what their products would look like once personalized, so we created a tool enabling them to do so.

The tool we built for Paravel displayed a popup with the words “Personalize” when a customer visited the product page We then created a tool that would enable the customer to personalize the product according to the style and color of the lettering that would appear as a monogram with their initials.

This tool displays as a widget on the product page after the customer clicks on “Personalize” and is very easy to manipulate and customize according to their preferences. In order to ensure that the product would display the personalization properly, we had to create a custom script that would accurately display the letters that the customer had entered, in the style they selected, over the right area of the product, as can be seen in the image below. As a final level of functionality, we created a “Nylon Template” that would enable Paravel’s customers to customize their products with embroidered letters instead of hand-painted letters or Appliqué.

There were a few more customizations we created for Paravel’s product pages, including the implementation of four tabs from the product pages on their old Spree store via HTML coding. We also recreated the “Choose Your Own Adventure” functionality from Paravel’s Spree store, which enables customers to further personalize Paravel’s products with Applique and hand-painted designs, on top of a few other customizations to preserve the integrity of the original functionality that appeared on their Spree store.

Integration with Critical Apps

To secure the functionality of their new Shopify Plus store and ensure a smooth, enjoyable user experience, 1Digital^Ⓡ Agency had to integrate Paravel’s new store with its business-critical apps.

Among other things, Paravel’s customers relied on reviews and testimonials that Paravel was able to draw and display via YotPo, which we ensured was seamlessly integrated for them. Paravel also relied heavily on the use of Zaius for customer engagement and CRM, so we performed that integration as well as the aforementioned.

On top of these, Paravel makes use of the functionality afforded not only by RJ Metrics but also by Talkable. These apps provide valuable data to Paravel’s admins and allow for secure referral marketing programs.

1Digital^Ⓡ Agency integrated all of these apps with Paravel’s new store in addition to  coding and developing their new Shopify Plus website. We concluded this project, comprehensive in scope, entailing a migration and advanced custom development, with no hang-ups. That is to say, the client experienced no undue interruptions in business, no loss in traffic, and moved onto a newly developed store with advanced custom functionality without so much as a hiccup. To do that takes experience and thorough processes, both of which 1Digital^Ⓡ integrates into our workflow.

The Complete Solution

Some providers tune their services to one or two highly specialized services, but we know that the problems faced by eCommerce merchants are diverse. If we were only able to offer development services, we wouldn’t have been able to migrate Paravel from Spree to Shopify Plus, which is one of the leading eCommerce platforms for online merchants. Similarly, if we limited ourselves to performing migrations, we wouldn’t have been able to customize their new store the way they wanted.

Shopify Plus design and development services, even when paired with our migration services, are only a small snapshot of what 1Digital^Ⓡ Agency offers. On top of our Shopify custom design services, we also offer comprehensive digital marketing campaigns including highly competitive, thoroughly researched, and targeted SEO and PPC campaigns.

This success story hinges on the fact that we were able to migrate Paravel off of Spree and onto a newly developed Shopify Plus store with advanced functionality. Many of our other eCommerce case studies focus on other eCommerce platforms like BigCommerce design and development, similar Magento services, and digital marketing campaigns. Take a look through our repertoire, and if you want to see how we can solve the problems that face your online business, give us a call at 888-982-8269.

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Complicating the matter, when a business needs to migrate from one platform to another for reasons associated with scalability and functionality, but may have concerns about loss of traffic, brand integrity of the new site, and custom functionality of business-critical apps.

Some development agencies specialize in a few different areas; others, like 1Digital^Ⓡ Agency, are well equipped to tackle complex projects with multifaceted points. One such project we performed for a client, ShadesDaddy.com, was in need of migration services and extensive custom design and development.

ShadesDaddy.com, a company that sells designer sunglasses and accessories online, was working with a Volusion store, on which they had been operating for some time. However, they were looking to take advantage of some of the enterprise functionality Shopify Plus offered to high volume merchants, but to do that, they needed a platform migration.

Shopify Plus offers a number of unique features that give it advantages not only over platform competitors but also over more basic versions of Shopify. For example, Shopify Plus allows merchants to clone their stores, which is a benefit for large merchants conducting international sales. Shopify Plus also offers unlimited staff accounts, charges lower transaction fees, provides faster API calls, and better support. All of these features come on top of Shopify’s already excellent customization features, security, high-uptime, and ability to integrate with a number of critical apps.

To get to Shopify Plus, ShadesDaddy would need the help of a Shopify Plus Partner with a long history of successful migrations and a proven migration process. Though their story ends with a complete redesign and rebranding and the development of custom functionality from a newly developed app, it begins with the tale of their data and platform migration.

Volusion to Shopify Plus Migration

The thing about data migration, especially for a large eCommerce business like ShadesDaddy.com, is that there is a lot of data to move. That’s not all, though. Businesses, ShadesDaddy included, are concerned with the potentially damaging effects that a migration can have on their eCommerce traffic.

These concerns are valid, especially when you consider some of the practices in the industry that cause these problems to arise during or shortly after a migration.

The scope of the data migration alone was significant. We had to successfully move over more than 900 categories and nearly 36,000 products, including descriptions, images, prices, SKUs, and more.

Other service providers might use a cart-to-cart tool to collect data from the Volusion store and then transfer it to the new Shopify Plus store. The idea of this is nice and simple, but the reality is that since platforms like Shopify Plus and Volusion are entirely different, data will not synch well between them. Any incompatibility between the fields of the system would cause an issue in the new store, and when one is working with tens of thousands of fields, issues like these are inexcusable interrupters of business.

Our data migration process is not just comprehensive and thorough but substantiated by our successful migration projects in the past. When we export data from one store, we then field map it according to the specifications of the new platform destination to ensure that data populates properly and where it should, the first time around.

After field mapping, we import the data to the new store using that platform’s API, which, in this case, is Shopify Plus. This is much more accurate than using a CSV file and hoping for the best; by using the new platform’s API, we can ensure that the data lands where it should, displays as it should, and accurately at that.

Even after uploading the data to the new store, we do any necessary debugging to ensure a migration that is not only painless but quick and effortless for the client. Before allowing the new site to go live, we perform a resync so that any changes to data that occurred after the initial data transfer will be updated and reflected when the store goes live.

Preventing Loss of Traffic

One of the biggest concerns that many clients have when faced with a migration is the potential to lose website traffic. When an established website moves to a new platform, Google may not recognize the new URLs and will not transfer authority; if that happens, a website that was once generating a substantial amount of organic traffic could lose all of it if 301-redirects are not properly implemented, even after a successful migration

As part of this migration project, as with all of the migrations we have performed over the years, we took a comprehensive analysis of the old and new URLs. In this case, we compiled all of the old URLs from the Volusion store, aligned them with the corresponding URLs of the new pages on the Shopify store, and set up the 301-redirects properly. To make short of a lengthy process, the result is that ShadesDaddy lost none of their traffic or domain authority in the wake of the migration, and this effect was not unique to their project.

We then take this level of support a step further by monitoring their Google Search Console for a month after the migration to ensure that there are no changes to their performance or any loss of traffic. This requires a large amount of attention and resources, especially for an established brand with a significant presence and flow of traffic. Effectively, we performed a successful eCommerce platform migration for them that was unnoticeable from an outside perspective.

Custom Design

ShadesDaddy.com didn’t just want to move off of Volusion and onto Shopify Plus in order to reap the benefits that Shopify Plus could offer enterprise eCommerce operations, they wanted a website redesign as well. Luckily, ShadesDaddy.com also had access to a Shopify Plus Designer with 1Digital^Ⓡ Agency. We rebranded and redesigned the entire website.

ShadesDaddy’s original logo, which you can see in the screenshot below, was somewhat abstract. When they migrated, we built them a new website that was brand integrated with their more formalized, black and white styling. The new website which we created for them was sleek, modern, and more appealing, with less clutter and more emphasis on their product brands, the experience they could provide, and the idealized image of the user.

The custom design of the website was also developed in a way that the imagery and calls-to-action could easily be manipulated. The template that we used and the design we created enabled ShadesDaddy’s administrators to easily switch out featured or promotional imagery, calls-to-action, and other visual features of their homepage. This feature is critical for ShadesDaddy to keep its visual content fresh, in line with its top-selling brands, seasonally relevant, and up to date.

As you can see from the image above, the layout of the website, which is not only appealing but simplified, is also easy for our client to manipulate and customize. Though the theme cannot be easily changed, they can easily make changes to the areas highlighted in red, as detailed above.

Compare the new design of ShadesDaddy.com, which is more contemporary as well as more streamlined, with the earlier version of their website, shown below. Their earlier website may have offered some of the same functionality, but it did so at the expense of a less intuitive, less pleasing design.

Website Development

Their new website needed some custom development work as well in order to guarantee the functionality they needed to offer their customers an enjoyable shopping experience. Among the projects we tackled for them, several were development items.

For example, we created a custom newsletter popup to enhance ShadesDaddy’s lead capturing initiatives to expand their customer base. This popup, which displays on the homepage as shown here, not only captures leads for ShadesDaddy, but we also integrated their Shopify Plus store with a third-party email service to easily store and manage customer emails.

Some eCommerce businesses use LookBooks in order to make their products and brands seem more personal and approachable. This is a great way to make the digital shopping experience more realistic. ShadesDaddy used LookBooks on their website, and as a part of their project, our team migrated their LookBook page and configured the application on their Shopify Plus store.

Custom App Development

Many businesses, like ShadesDaddy, rely on the functionality of existing third-party apps to run their online stores and provide a high-quality user experience. 1Digital^Ⓡ Agency’s services were vital in integrating some of ShadesDaddy’s business-critical third-party applications into their new Shopify Plus store.

ShadesDaddy relied on the functionality of third-party apps such as Criteo Remarketing and PriceWaiter, all of which we integrated into their new store. In addition, ShadesDaddy uses SolidCommerce ERP, which we integrated and configured into their new store.

Sometimes, however, a business cannot achieve the level of functionality desired from a pre-existing third-party app. In addition to the migration of their eCommerce store from Volusion to Shopify Plus and redesigning their website, our development team also created a custom app for them. This app not only enables ShadesDaddy to provide a higher level of customer service to their clients but also enables them to extract the highest possible willingness-to-pay from interested parties, serving as a significant conversion booster.

The app is a simple but highly functional tool that appears on certain product pages as a button encouraging the visitors to “Click here for VIP pricing details.” It then asks the visitor for the price at which they were hoping to get the pair of sunglasses in question.

After the visitor enters the desired sale price, the app compares this price to a database compilation of prices it holds in storage. If the price the customer enters is within an acceptable range, the app will send an email to the client informing them that they have secured the pricing desired, along with a link to the product page; only then would the product page list the product at the customer’s desired price.

The private app that we developed communicates with a separate database that we built which contains all of the product data they had in Shopify and provided an extra option for ShadesDaddy.com to offer those products at a minimum or “bottom dollar” price. When the customer enters a price, the app compares that to ShadesDaddy’s minimum price, and if the client’s price is above it, it will grant the customer the price desired. As you can see from the interface of the back end of the app below, it contains a listing of relevant products and gives ShadesDaddy the ability to list the lowest price they would be willing to accept for any given model.

Another level of functionality we built into this app gives ShadesDaddy control over whether or not the app displays for a given product, all of which they can easily manage. In the screenshot below, which shows the backend of the version of the app that we created for ShadeDaddy and DesignerEyes, you can see how ShadesDaddy’s admin can easily manipulate the emails that get sent to their customers, along with a better price.

While this app might appear to offer only simple functionality, it is actually a business-critical function that connects a prospective buyer’s willingness-to-pay with ShadesDaddy’s willingness-to-sell. Normally retail is a guessing game, but in this situation, ShadesDaddy is able to communicate directly with its customers through this app so that willingness-to-pay and willingness-to-buy are aligned. Not only does this maximize conversions for ShadesDaddy, but it also significantly improves the customer experience.

After we concluded development for this app, we got to work helping the other half of ShadesDaddy. We created a clone of this app with the same functionality for ShadesDaddy’s parent site, DesignerEyes.com, in order to boost that site’s functionality and user experience as well.

In Need of Migration and More?

While it is critical to the execution of a successful data migration and eCommerce replatforming that protocols as thorough and comprehensive as our own are followed, sometimes a business is in need of more. Sometimes getting off of one eCommerce platform and onto another is just the beginning. When you need to not only change platforms, but also web design services, app development services, or the help of a Shopify Plus developer, you could end up working with multiple different Shopify Plus Agencies at the same time.

Alternatively, you could call a team of Shopify Plus experts that know the eCommerce platform inside and out. 1Digital^Ⓡ has concluded many platform and data migrations and joint design and development projects like this in the past. Our web design portfolio and our collection of case studies are both a testament to the success of our ventures.

Many eCommerce organizations are interested in growing their businesses, and the next step is a migration to a more capable platform. If you are one of these businesses but are worried about the potential pitfalls of a migration, don’t be. Get in touch with one of our team members today at info@1digitalagency.com or at 866-972-2385 and talk to us about what you need. We listen first, and then we deliver.

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This success means that KM Herbals has to scale its business and continue to invest in its online website. As part of that investment, KM Herbals decided it was time to find a digital agency to help them upgrade their brand and migrate their online business to BigCommerce, a platform capable of growing with them. To achieve their design vision and the delicate process of data migration, KM Herbals turned to 1Digital^Ⓡ’s team of designers, developers, and migration specialists. As an elite BigCommerce partner, 1Digital^Ⓡ Agency specializes in helping businesses interested in migrating to BigCommerce. With the completion of a successful redesign and platform migration, KM Herbals has decided to continue working with 1Digital^Ⓡ for SEO marketing.

SEO is one of the most effective forms of digital marketing in terms of long-term value. Instead of businesses paying for website traffic, SEO helps interested parties find those businesses easier through organic search. The team at 1Digital^Ⓡ has specialized in creating tailor-made SEO campaigns for their clients since they first opened their doors in 2012. For KM Herbals, this means receiving a campaign strategy that focuses on relevant but achievable keywords and goals to begin building online authority and increasing organic traffic.

Beginning a digital marketing plan after successfully redesigning a website is always a great call. After all, why create a gorgeous website if you don’t want to attract more traffic to it? 1Digital^Ⓡ’s SEO specialists are already working on keyword research to create a list of keywords that will help attract qualified traffic to the KM Herbals website, help them outrank the competition on search engines, and increase their conversions. Combined with their beautiful new redesign, the suite of functionality from BigCommerce, and 1DigitalⓇ’s continued support, their team is preparing for a bright future.

If your eCommerce business requires any services, 1Digital^Ⓡ is ready to help. Every member of their team comes from an eCommerce background and they specialize in design, development, marketing, migration, and support services for enterprise-level eCommerce businesses. After completing a project with 1DigitalⓇ, many clients enjoy the benefits of working with a professional team so much that they hire them to manage their next project just like KM Herbals.

You can reach one of 1Digital^Ⓡ’s eCommerce experts by calling 215-809-1567, visiting their website or sending an email to info@1digitalagency.com to find out how they can help your business achieve online success.

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