Are you thinking about migrating or redesigning your Shopify website to improve your SEO? With the right changes, you can boost your SERP rankings by resolving technical issues and improving your page experience, increasing your organic traffic in the long term. You might be rebranding and need a fresh new design, user journey and site architecture to match your new business priorities. Or, you may even be making the move to Shopify from another website builder.
Since consistency is important for customers of eCommerce businesses, big changes like these can unfortunately be a little tricky, especially if it’s a technical site migration, and, if not done carefully, can damage your SEO rather than deliver the benefits you were looking to achieve. Thankfully, this can be avoided with a solid plan, rigorous testing and keen attention to detail.
With the help of this guide by SEO app, SEOBooster, here are 5 essential steps you should be ticking off your relaunch checklist to migrate or relaunch your website smoothly and successfully:
- Create a detailed plan
- Do comprehensive research
- Create a baseline
- Pre-launch on a staging environment
- Test at every stage
Create a detailed plan
To start, ask yourself the most important question: why are you relaunching the website? And also, is it actually necessary? Your answers will set your objectives and you can start assessing your current website from there, deciding what pages need improving, deleting or something else entirely. Think about what changes you want to make to the design and architecture and whether they align with your objectives.
Do comprehensive research
Competitor research is incredibly useful in influencing your relaunch decisions. Look at your highest performing competitor – what are they doing that you could be? Websites in unrelated industries can also be a good source of insights and inspiration. Research what your target demographics are interested in and what will make them choose you. Use your findings to set your relaunch objectives.
It’s also worth checking whether your hosting provider can help you with your site migration. If they can, this can make the process much easier.
Create a baseline
The only way to truly know if a relaunch has been successful is to have baseline metrics to compare your new data to. Collect data on your important SEO KPIs including keyword ranking, organic sessions, conversion rate, site speed, bounce rate and more so you can assess your growth post-relaunch. You should also map your internal linking and test your redirects. After your relaunch is complete, you’ll need to make sure these are all working as they were/should.
Pre-launch on a staging environment
Before you relaunch, it’s a good idea to have a pre-launch as a practice run for the big day. To do this, be sure to set up a staging environment for your site as soon as possible and always test your changes there. This way you can test performance and identify pain points without risking your current site and traffic.
Test at every stage
Testing will be where you spend the most time. It should be done pre-launch, post-launch and continue for the foreseeable. Does each page look right on all browsers and mobile devices? Are page speeds within an acceptable range? Is everything functioning the way it is supposed to? You may want to consider conducting user testing.
Site migrations, rebrands and relaunches are a part of healthy growth for a business, so it’s worth investing the time of yourself, your developers and your other teams to get each stage right so you can get the success your brand deserves.
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