The procedure for migrating a website's design
La migration du design d'un site web est le processus qui consiste à remanier votre site web pour qu'il reste frais, à jour et convivial. Alors que votre site web était peut-être considéré comme un site de pointe il y a…
Website design migration is the process of reworking your website so that it stays fresh, up to date and user-friendly. While your website may have been considered cutting-edge a few years ago, times change quickly on the internet. Migrating your website's design is necessary for your business to stand out from the competition.
There are 4 main types of website migration, namely: hosting migration, domain name migration, content management system (CMS) migration and design migration.
It often happens that a website is reworked because its design looks outdated, but the new site does not perform as well as the old one. The need to design a new website should be backed by evidence. For example, organic search performance has declined because of a poor site architecture, the CMS lacks certain features that would increase user engagement, A/B split tests suggest that conversion rates can still be improved, and so on.
You also need to find a solution that involves as little risk as possible. For example, the redesign and design migration of your website can be carried out with data migration tools such as HubSpot.
It is also worth stressing that the goals should ideally take into account both SEO objectives, such as maintaining organic traffic levels or improving key rankings, and engagement and user experience objectives, such as reducing the bounce rate, increasing conversions, optimising content, and so on.
Examples of measurable user engagement goals include increasing user engagement, reducing form abandonment and lowering the exit rate of key pages.
Why? Because the former affects traffic and the latter conversions, and there is no point trying to improve one without the other.
Be aware of your strengths, weaknesses and limits
Every website migration is unique and must be handled with a great deal of thought and care. Setting realistic goals requires a good knowledge of your website's strengths and weaknesses, as well as a thorough understanding of the competitive landscape. It would be unrealistic to expect organic traffic to grow after a website migration if you are competing with bigger, more established brands in a highly competitive vertical.
Failing to take into account the strengths and weaknesses of your online competitors can easily lead to setting unrealistic goals. Growth in saturated niches can be difficult, and the decision to carry out a web redesign must weigh the pros and cons.
One thing to keep in mind is that growth is most likely the main goal of all your competitors. Make sure you are realistic about your true position in the market. Are you really in a position to challenge your competitors? If not, investing in a new website is unlikely to be very profitable.
Do not let technical constraints hold back your online growth. Our tool is the key to a smooth transition and the continuous optimisation of your digital presence.
Finding the right balance between UX and SEO
For most websites, it is essential to try to find the right balance between UX and SEO. Too much focus on UX can lead to a drop in rankings and traffic, while focusing exclusively on the SEO strategy can easily hinder user engagement. Be careful not to create user dissatisfaction when migrating your website, as explained in this article.
Website redesign and migration projects led by UX teams often see their organic traffic suffer after the new site goes live. On the other hand, website redesigns led by SEO teams often see their conversion rate drop. In both cases, revenue falls and the outcome of the website migration is negative.
It is essential to find the right balance between organic and paid search so as not to risk losing your product data, your hard-earned rankings or your customer file for your marketing strategy.
To reconcile UX and SEO properly, link cloaking is recommended. The purpose of obfuscating links is not to hide content from search engines, but simply to make the site more accessible to robots without encroaching on the graphic or visual side of the site for users.
Transform your website today and enjoy a better user experience and greater visibility.
Assessing the new content strategy
When they are not well thought out, content strategies can doom a website design migration to the failure of the whole migration project. Deciding to move, delete or consolidate a significant part of a page's content without considering the consequences for UX and SEO is a classic mistake. Before changing anything on your site, it is wise to keep a backup of all your data. The safest technique is to back it up in the cloud.
A new content strategy can significantly influence a site's information architecture, page structure and internal URLs. It can therefore have a major impact on the various user journeys, but also on the way search engines crawl the site's pages.
To avoid unpleasant surprises later on, content strategies must be discussed and assessed at a very early stage, before moving into production. Drawing up precise specifications is essential for your website redesign and your new content strategy. Find out how to create yours effectively in our dedicated article "Writing the specifications for a website redesign". The SEO and UX teams must examine the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed content strategy, flag any potential issues and make recommendations where necessary. Anticipating traffic loss or identifying user experience flaws at this early stage will be far more beneficial than dealing with these potential problems after the new website goes live.
Testing the new design and new features with real users
There are many ways to make sure that the new version, the user experience, the site navigation and other essential features are right. Above all, user testing must be carried out by users who match the demographics of the website's real audience.
Large organisations must invest time in testing with real users, while smaller ones can get by with remote online user testing, which is very cost-effective. It is essential to identify usability problems in the user journey during the design phase so that any issue can be addressed and resolved before the new website goes live.
Making sure the new site is properly optimised
Launching a poorly optimised new website will certainly lead to a loss of traffic. Poor optimisation often comes down to very simple mistakes. Time pressure is a very common reason why a site's optimisation is neglected. A deadline has passed and you have to put the website online. Yet putting a site online without the best possible optimisation is a mistake.
Lack of expertise is another frequent reason why website design migrations fail. Google's documentation on this subject is insufficient and cannot address the specific requirements and characteristics of each website.
Complex website migrations can be very difficult because of the number of ranking signals that change overnight. An experienced website data migration specialist must be able to offer a tailor-made website migration process, but must also make sure that any potential issue is identified as early as possible.
Predicting how users or search engines such as Google will react to a website migration and redesign can be difficult. Relevant experience in this area can prove invaluable, so that if things do not go as planned, a well-thought-out recovery plan can be put in place quickly.
You can migrate your website's design yourself if you have some knowledge of development, CMS, source code or simply of WordPress if your platform runs on WordPress. However, it is advisable to call on a marketing agency with expertise in the field for this type of work. You may need to add a blog, a shop or other features, and only a team of professionals will be able to help you design them. If your budget is limited, you can always turn to freelancers working in France, provided you make a few comparisons. Some offer quality services and can complete these migration projects without difficulty. Others may be self-interested people who only think about money, without necessarily having any knowledge of development, CMS, design, systems, integration and so on, and who want to rely on their "expertise" to sign up clients.
