- Original Poster
- #1
No question here, just a brief comment on the impact to our business of changing from Actinic to a custom Ecommerce platform. Hopefully others will find it useful.
Our shop was originally set up in 2002 and has used Actinic since version 5. We had a choice to upgrade again from a heavily modified version 8.5 to 11, or finally take the plunge and move to a more flexible Ecommerce system.
The primary concern in changing platforms was the potential impact to our shops unrivalled listings on Google, with page 1 on dozens of primary search terms. Other stuff like data migration out of Actinic was straight forward, as was setting up the new stock control processes.
Our process was:
1. Migrate the shop to the new system and test it worked in a sandbox environment.
2. Identify the primary 50 or so landing pages and prepare the 301 redirects to the new equivalent pages.
3. Generate a new site map for Google Webmaster Tools and a new product feed for Google Merchant Center.
4. Pause and update marketing schemes to point to the new pages.
5. Choose a 'switch over' date and time during which there was historically less traffic.
5. SWITCH THE SHOPS OVER!!
What happened next?
A mild form of blind panic because the number of 404 not founds in Webmaster Tools reached just north of 5,000 pages. The number of 501 server errors hit a few hundred pages and orders dropped off a cliff.
It took about 10 days to get a suitable technical answer to the thousands of missing old pages and unforeseen server errors (caused by moving from CGI to .Net), meanwhile the number of customer enquiries about broken links and old orders increased through concern at the changes.
We're a few months into the new system and business is climbing rapidly again (about 75% of previous), our SERPS are almost back to pre-move positions and Webmaster Tools is not reporting any (well ok a few) missing or erroring pages from the old system.
Lessons learned:
This cannot be done without an impact to your business but for us the potential upside being on a new system far outweigh's the short term drop in sales and occasional screaming nightmare.
If I was involved in a project like this again I would recommend:
1. Give your customers advanced notice of the changes, assuring them of continued business, changes are for their benefit (etc) and not to be alarmed.
2. Spend MUCH MORE time preparing 301 redirects from old pages to new. It is quite frightening to see how quickly things move when you throw that switch from old to new.
3. DON'T PANIC! Something unforseen will happen, but analysing the consequences of the changes through free Google tools and if you have the technical ability, server logs, the impact can be minimised.
4. Keep focused on the reasons for changing in the first place. We can now seamlessly integrate with multiple sales channels, spawn a gazillion affiliate resellers, integrate with back-office processes and control the functionality of the website.
5. Most importantly, the TRUE COST of a project like this is not just the price of the Ecommerce package, you have to include the loss of trade and sheer number of man hours needed to get your ship sailing in the right direction.
The real short term cost with lost trade and man hours will come in at around 20k, the long term benefits will be many multiples of that.
Our shop was originally set up in 2002 and has used Actinic since version 5. We had a choice to upgrade again from a heavily modified version 8.5 to 11, or finally take the plunge and move to a more flexible Ecommerce system.
The primary concern in changing platforms was the potential impact to our shops unrivalled listings on Google, with page 1 on dozens of primary search terms. Other stuff like data migration out of Actinic was straight forward, as was setting up the new stock control processes.
Our process was:
1. Migrate the shop to the new system and test it worked in a sandbox environment.
2. Identify the primary 50 or so landing pages and prepare the 301 redirects to the new equivalent pages.
3. Generate a new site map for Google Webmaster Tools and a new product feed for Google Merchant Center.
4. Pause and update marketing schemes to point to the new pages.
5. Choose a 'switch over' date and time during which there was historically less traffic.
5. SWITCH THE SHOPS OVER!!
What happened next?
A mild form of blind panic because the number of 404 not founds in Webmaster Tools reached just north of 5,000 pages. The number of 501 server errors hit a few hundred pages and orders dropped off a cliff.
It took about 10 days to get a suitable technical answer to the thousands of missing old pages and unforeseen server errors (caused by moving from CGI to .Net), meanwhile the number of customer enquiries about broken links and old orders increased through concern at the changes.
We're a few months into the new system and business is climbing rapidly again (about 75% of previous), our SERPS are almost back to pre-move positions and Webmaster Tools is not reporting any (well ok a few) missing or erroring pages from the old system.
Lessons learned:
This cannot be done without an impact to your business but for us the potential upside being on a new system far outweigh's the short term drop in sales and occasional screaming nightmare.
If I was involved in a project like this again I would recommend:
1. Give your customers advanced notice of the changes, assuring them of continued business, changes are for their benefit (etc) and not to be alarmed.
2. Spend MUCH MORE time preparing 301 redirects from old pages to new. It is quite frightening to see how quickly things move when you throw that switch from old to new.
3. DON'T PANIC! Something unforseen will happen, but analysing the consequences of the changes through free Google tools and if you have the technical ability, server logs, the impact can be minimised.
4. Keep focused on the reasons for changing in the first place. We can now seamlessly integrate with multiple sales channels, spawn a gazillion affiliate resellers, integrate with back-office processes and control the functionality of the website.
5. Most importantly, the TRUE COST of a project like this is not just the price of the Ecommerce package, you have to include the loss of trade and sheer number of man hours needed to get your ship sailing in the right direction.
The real short term cost with lost trade and man hours will come in at around 20k, the long term benefits will be many multiples of that.
