What are the common CMS Migration Challenges & How to Overcome Them?

The changing consumer behaviour has made businesses pivot towards using their website as the prime mode of communicating with the audience. It is also the primary means of gathering new leads to increase their revenue potential. As a result, your team may decide to alter the technology stack, and your team can face unique CMS migration challenges. 

If you feel that your current CMS hinders flexibility and scalability in your business, you can migrate the website to a new CMS. Moving to a robust like Drupal can help your team make website updates faster. However, your team must overcome a few CMS migration obstacles. We will discuss this and ways to overcome them.

Need for a proper migration roadmap

There are various reasons why a business would opt for a CMS migration exercise. It is an elaborate process and can help in providing an enhanced digital experience for its audience. However, the migration project requires proper planning. Not planning the migration can lead to the prolonging of the project and additional resources. 

Strategising the migration will require you to assess the current website, after which you can plan the migration workflow. You must evaluate whether to consolidate related web pages or drop them altogether. Also, finalise whether you will migrate the content using various applications or manually rewrite the content.

Handling migration of incumbent data Properly

Data migration in any project is risky and is one of the significant CMS migration obstacles. It is a reason why several migration projects are a failure. The issue starts with data quality, including inaccuracy and inconsistency of the incumbent data. Integration can face many barriers, including lack of knowledge of source data, absence of integrated processes, obsolete data, or metadata inconsistency. Conversion of the incumbent data presents a significant challenge during the migration project. The earlier structures may be no longer valid. 

The migration experts must check the backup and compatibility of the data files. Data mapping is a critical process in the entire migration exercise. It involves finalising where the data transferred from the legacy database will reside in the new one. Documentation of the incumbent data must be proper. Take adequate steps to fill in the metadata where it is missing. Undertake metadata enrichment, and any inconsistent metadata can be handled by mapping the legacy system into the new one.

Are all functionalities available in the new CMS?

Migration experts face numerous critical questions during such an exercise. One of the crucial CMS migration obstacles is whether the new CMS can address the advancements required to stand against its peers. Instead of flowing with the tide, the company must deploy the services of consultants who can assess whether the website will be better off with the new CMS. The relevant teams must come together to determine the outcome of the migration exercise and decide on the utilisation of resources.

The business must take proper decisions regarding the new CMS that will be beneficial to achieve their business goals. The CMS that you plan to use must support the required features on the website. Update the CMS with the latest upgrades and advanced features to keep up with the times. Adding new features to the new CMS must be an effortless exercise through extensions, plug-ins, etc. The learning curve must allow novices to master it quickly.

Understanding the SEO risks

Your SEO team must have undertaken several activities to provide your website with the necessary public relations brownie points it needs against its peers. You must be worried whether the website can hold on to the rank it enjoys currently. One of the significant CMS migration challenges knows whether the migration exercise will impact the SEO of the website. Migration to Drupal can help you use various Drupal modules to help website SEO.

A faulty migration plan can make the website lose the benefits it enjoys in search rankings. You must restore the earlier URL structures. The plug-ins that worked on the earlier CMS may no longer work on the new CMS. However, the new CMS must have advanced features to ensure the website is back on track relatively faster. For example, you must not have varied meta and H1 tags templates. You must also address the issues related to the XML sitemap and the robots.txt.

Having a poor content strategy can backfire

A proper content strategy can prevent additional challenges to the CMS migration team. You must finalise beforehand the content that must be prioritised and migrated first. It is another essential requirement in the migration exercise. If the content strategy isn't ready, it could lead to issues in the metadata of the source content.

Having structured content can help in ensuring a smoother CMS migration project. Storing the content in the database can decide how easy the migration project can be. Therefore, it becomes crucial that only the experts migrate the right content during this project. Drupal is a robust CMS that can handle content migration. You can also take expert help to carry out hassle-free Drupal content migration.

Build a comprehensive content strategy atop the SEO strategy. It can set aside the content that you don't want to migrate. A proper 301 redirect strategy and a detailed information architecture are necessary too. The information architecture will showcase the hierarchy of pages on the current site and where it will exist on the new site.

Addressing downtime concerns

Very few IT professionals even calculate the downtime of their website every month. Businesses are pivoting to using the website as a primary means of collecting leads. If the website downtime is sizeable, it could affect the number of website visitors and the number of prospects from the website. When you opt for CMS migration, remember that the website will be down for some time. 

Experts must plan the migration exercise properly. It will help to ensure minimal downtime for migrating to the new platform. The database migration must provide minimal time to migrate to the new platform.

Lack of technical experience

Several instances of an inexperienced services provider selection had marred the CMS migration project. It is essential to note that a migration project isn't like a design and development project. The project team's lack of technical expertise is a primary obstacle that few businesses may face when going for CMS migration.

The migration experts must understand the requirements of the exercise correctly. The client must also provide the requisite details required by the project team well in advance. For example, system dependencies or file formatting issues can need prompt redressal. Address the data quality problems readily. Before finalising the CMS migration services provider, do a proper background check. Also, request testimonials and references to ascertain their experience in CMS migration projects.

Conclusion

Businesses can face a dilemma when migrating to a new CMS. There is a need for expert guidance to overcome several CMS migration challenges to ensure the project is a success. Industry experts must supervise the exercise as there have been many instances where such migration projects have miserably failed. You can also outsource the project to a reputed agency capable of handling such critical tasks.

Experts must formulate a proper strategy that will mitigate the unique risks to clients. This article details some risks and the ways to overcome them. There can be other risks too, and they will require expert help. If you plan to undertake Drupal migration for your incumbent website, you can contact our experts. Drupal provides a robust and hassle-free framework for your website. Our experts will be happy to help you in your endeavour.