Developing and launching a website is not where the work stops. Besides, you have to maintain it constantly and implement profound changes. As for the latter, sometimes you may need to do something more than a simple redesign, and that may be a switch from one CMS to another.
If your e-commerce business is continuously evolving and growing, it brings along more work to do. New technologies are always here to make your life easier. When it comes to CMS, there is also a great variety of opportunities you can use.
In this article, we will walk you through the reasons, things to consider, and steps of CMS replatforming.
What is CMS Replatforming
Before beginning replatforming a website, it is important to understand what it is all about. CMS replatforming stands for the process of relocating all your website data from its current content management system CMS to a new one.
We are not talking about the redesign in this case. Replatforming accounts more for managing the site or application and their visibility online.
A great number of businesses that use outdated CMS face the various bottlenecks on their way, as they are not their abilities to satisfy all rising customers’ demands are becoming weaker. In such a case, it’s a good idea to consider website replatforming.
Reasons why eCommerce switch from one CMS to another
As every change in e-commerce industry stands for a reason, here are some you need to know about the triggers to start replatforming:
A change in CMS/platform. Most companies may not be pleased with their store’s current platform, or they just scale fairly well and need a more efficient alternative. Therefore the act of shifting the site & store from one platform to another counts as one of the site migration types.
HTTP to HTTPS. As more and more non-HTTPS websites are being flagged as “dangerous” websites, making sure that you are dealing on a website with an SSL certificate is more critical than ever. Migration is required to use Secure Sockets Layer certificate.
Change of domain. You may have rebranded, or you just don’t like your old URL, and that’s cool. But you will need to move all URLs and links to a new domain to preserve the current SEO interest.
Signs that tell you it’s time to replatform your CMS
How can you know when it’s the time to take up replatforming seriously? Our e-commerce development team has prepared a set of signs that can help you to define the right time to give it a start.
Financial signs
Expenditures for the website maintenance can never stop, particularly if you have an open-source CMS that requires constant security improvements and updates of functionality, all of which take up your money and time.
As well as the costs of upgrading your program from version to version if you are using versioned applications such as Magento or Drupal, there are license renewal payments that need to be dealt with.
Putting an exact number on the cost is difficult, as each project is unique. If you hire a contractor whose main role is to operate your processes, though, you do know that you are spending on this front.
Technological signs
Nearly half of web users expect a page to be launched in 2 seconds or less, and will completely abandon a website if it does not launch in 3 seconds.
Furthermore, if you don’t have a headless CMS or a decoupled CMS capable of delivering content to IoT platforms such as Amazon Echo, interactive digital signage, and so on, the brand is already diminishing, as you have zero visibility at the fastest growing touchpoints.
Another point to consider is that the older a network becomes, the more vulnerable it becomes to cyber-attack — which is bad news as you try to maintain compliance with GDPR, not to mention a sense of consumer faith.
Ultimately, if your CMS finds it difficult to interact with platforms such as Slack and Salesforce, it’s also likely to keep the employees from being as successful as they can be.
Marketing signs
Sometimes marketing departments show some warning signs too. In fact, your website is a marketing tool and the advertisers must be able to:
Update site content quickly and easily;
- Publish blog posts, videos, and podcasts;
- Integrate with social media scheduling tools;
- Build landing pages and microsites quickly;
- Personalize content through audience segmentation;
If your advertisers are failing to do any of these, it’s another clear indication you need to repeat your website.