Why migrate a website? The good reasons to do it
An outdated, slow or poorly mobile site, or one built on an end-of-life CMS: the good reasons to migrate, the ones that are not enough, and how they shape the project.
Migrating a site carries risks for its rankings, so the decision must rest on good reasons that justify the effort and shape the whole project. A migration made to improve speed is not prepared like a migration made to change brand.
For the definition, steps and risks of a website migration, see our reference article. Here, the reasons to go ahead.
An outdated design and navigation
An old site makes a poor impression and stands out badly from competitors. Moving to a recent platform lets you rework the visual identity, the templates and above all the navigation: more direct access to the pages that matter, to the customer area or to the checkout of an e-commerce site. This is the case of a design migration.
A site poorly suited to mobile
Most visits now happen on smartphones, and Google indexes the mobile version of pages first. A site not designed for mobile loses visitors and rankings: it is one of the most common reasons for a redesign.
A slow or technically limited site
Google's expectations have changed: load time, visual stability, responsiveness to interactions. A site built years ago meets them poorly, and undersized hosting makes it worse. Changing host or platform is then a chance to improve performance, provided you measure the before to compare the after.
An end-of-life CMS, or one that no longer keeps up
A CMS that is no longer maintained exposes the site to security holes, and a CMS without the features the business needs holds back its growth. Moving to a better-suited platform, such as WordPress for an editorial site, is prepared with the procedure for changing CMS.
A site that converts poorly
A migration can also target the conversion rate: shorter forms, a simpler checkout, clearer service pages. E-commerce sites are the most sensitive to it. In that case, measure conversions before the migration so you can judge the result.
Securing the site
Moving from HTTP to HTTPS changes the protocol of every URL on the site: it is a migration in its own right, which needs a redirect for each address. See our article on the HTTPS protocol.
An acquisition, a merger or a rebrand
Acquiring a company or changing name often leads to a new domain name, or to bringing several sites together into one to concentrate visibility. See migration after an acquisition or a rebrand and migrating several sites by merging them.
Content that needs sorting out
Over the years, a site accumulates duplicate or outdated pages, or pages competing for the same queries. An editorial migration lets you merge, rewrite or remove them. A prior audit tells you which ones to keep: see the content audit and editorial migration.
Reasons that are not enough
Changing CMS because you prefer another one, or redoing the design because the current one is three years old, does not on its own justify the risk to your rankings. Before deciding, ask what benefit you expect and how you will measure it. Starting an unnecessary migration is in fact at the top of the mistakes to avoid in a migration.
Once the decision is made
The reason for migrating determines the type of migration and its scope: see the types of website migration. Then comes the preparation phase, with the backup, the URL inventory and the redirect plan.
Your migration is decided? Swan matches the pages of the old and new site and prepares your redirect plan.
