Will Switching the eCommerce Platform Harm Your Business?

When starting your online business journey, you’ll find that there are a lot of eCommerce platforms out there. Each one has its pros and cons. But what if you outgrow your current platform? Will it hurt your business to migrate to a new business?

All of this will be covered in this article.

Will Switching Plafroms Harm Your Business?

Unfortunately, there is no definitive answer to that! That depends on how you migrate to your new eCommerce platform. But what types of issues will you face when migrating? Here are two of them:

Issue #1 – Potential Loss of Traffic and Sales

That can happen for various reasons! However, this usually has to do with SEO. Since you’re directing your website visitors to an entirely new website, Google will lower your SEO score. That’s because they don’t know if this new site is a great one or not.

The second one has to do with familiarity. Since you’re changing from one platform to another, some things will change. That leads to people having to relearn how to use your website, which potentially loses some sales.

However, both issues can be solved with time as people engage with your site and get familiar with it. So it’s more of a short-term problem than a long-term one.

Issue #2 – Higher Costs

You probably started your eCommerce journey with a more affordable version when you first started! When migrating to a new site, you’ll have to pay more to keep it alive.

However, this might not become an issue if you’re not a relatively new store and seem to get consistent sales.

4 Steps for Migrating Smartly to a New eCommerce platform

Now that you know all the potential issues you might face, it’s time to learn how to migrate from one platform to another, so you’ll get the benefits of the switch while reducing the cost of the issues associated with it. You should follow these four steps:

Step #1 – Consider if it’s worth the change

The first thing we should think about is whether the change is necessary. That’s because a lot of the time, we might want to change because of the popularity of the platform or because we like it more.

Before you take any steps to migrate, you should first ask yourself:

• What issues is migration going to fix?
• And will I benefit from it in the long term?

If you’re still sure about the change, continue to the next step.

Step #2 – Test Out the Free Trial Before Switching

Now that you’ve understood that you genuinely need it, it’s time to take the first step. Before switching platforms entirely, we should test the new platform and see if it meets our expectations.

That helps us ensure that we’re not migrating just to become disappointed. So use the free trials most eCommerce platforms offer and see if the features and platform meet your expectations.

If it does, you can go to the next step.

Step #3 – Migrate/Build Your New eCommerce Store

Now that you’ve decided on using the new platform, it’s time to build the website and finish the migration process as soon as possible. That way, you can get people onto your new website quickly and start focusing on other things.

Some platforms offer quick migration services. For example, if you’re switching from Shopify to Shoplazza, you can migrate to us quickly with just a few steps.

Step #4 – Promote Your New Website

Now that your website is ready and live, it’s time to promote it as much as possible. That way, you will eliminate any issues you might be facing with platform migration.

So go to your social media sites and email newsletters and announce your new website. You could also create a new website sale to make your most loyal fans quickly familiar with your new checkout process.

Conclusion

Those are the issues you might face when switching from one platform to another. As you can see, these issues are primarily short-term; if you do it smartly, there shouldn’t be any problems!

(Contributed by Andreas Ojala & Hermes Fang)