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If you’ve been itching to give in to that little voice in the back of your head whispering “you should change website platforms” then this post is 100% for you.
As someone who’s helped many clients move from one platform to another plus doing it multiple times for my own studio’s - there’s a process that I usually follow for each migration that keeps me sane and makes the process as smooth as possible.
The overall goal is to decrease the amount of down time for the site aka the amount of time that an “under construction” page is up on the site.
In this post, let’s explore the reasons why people switch platforms, what you need to do BEFORE making the switch, and how to make the actual switch as smooth as possible for yourself.
Why do people switch website platforms?
I spend too much damn time on Threads tbh, and it feels like there are no shortage of people wanting to switch platforms for some reason - big or small. Many have shiny object syndrome, while others truly should make a switch because they’ve outgrown their current platform (from what I could tell by their post).
Then there are people that want to switch platforms because:
- They don’t understand their current platform OR
- They don’t want to better understand how to use the platform they are on OR
- They were put on a platform by their designer and they weren’t sufficiently taught on how to use that platform.
I went a bit of a rant about that last scenario in this blog post here: Website platform wars are stupid.
While I completely understand that the Threads algorithm is showing me these posts because I’m a designer so of course I think it’s happening all the time, but it doesn’t make the amount of those posts any less real.
Common reasons people switch platforms:
Design Freedom
Many people switch from one platform to another because of the lack of design freedom that their current platform has. While more design freedom is generally a plus, having more freedom doesn’t always equal a better user experience. Make sure to familiarize yourself with the tools the new platform has to offer when it comes to designing and building pages, so you can really evaluate if you find this new platform easier.
“Perceived” SEO benefits
If a designer, developer, or a SEO person tells you that one platform is better for SEO than another, they’re trying to sell you on their services and/or they’re just diehard fans of their chosen platform. I’d stay away from them or take their SEO advice with a grain of salt. Harsh but, they’re spreading misinformation.
No website platform will help you rank higher in Google search results.
Your ranking has nothing to do with the platform you use, and more about how YOU have optimized your site and content for Google to better understand what your site is about. Make sure you’re using your headings correctly (H1, H2, etc.), have done your keyword research, filled in and optimized your page titles and descriptions, your site title and descriptions, and your image ALT tags.
Modern website platforms give you all the tools you need to do those things. If your website platform doesn’t all you to do those things - you need to change platforms immediately.
E-commerce Features (or lack thereof)
If you’re thinking of integrating any e-commerce features into your business/website, make sure that the platform you wan’t to switch too has the selling capabilities that you need and that the set up of that shop isn’t overly complicated or overwhelming.
Every e-commerce platform or website platform with e-commerce functionality isn’t created equally, so if selling digital or physical products is important to you - then you need to make sure you’re making the right platform choice for your business now and in the long run.
My hard and fast rule when it comes to e-commerce is this: if more than half of your income is coming (or you want it to come) from selling PHYSICAL products, then you should be using Shopify. Because as your shop grows, you’ll need to have more of a need for the plugins that Shopify offers that no other ecommerce platform offers.
If you’re selling digital products primarily - I think you can have more flexibility as to where you go platform wise.
Better pricing plans
A common reason people switch platforms is because one platform may be cheaper than the other while offering the same or better capabilities. This is something that is purely up to you and your business finances.
For some platforms (like Wordpress) you’ll need to buy hosting from a third party, while others (like Squarespace, Showit, Shopify and Webflow) you don’t need to buy hosting, they provide that for you. However, Squarespace, Showit, Shopify and Webflow all have different pricing plans that you need to evaluate carefully and choose whichever one fits your needs the best. Depending on the plan you need, switching platforms may not save you much in the long run.
Should I switch website platforms?
If you’ve been eyeing another platform and you aren’t sure if you should switch or not, here are few questions to ask yourself to hopefully help with your decision:
- What features does this new platform have that my current platform doesn’t?
- How would I use those features and how would they benefit me?
The word “benefit” here includes tangible and intangible benefits. Tangible benefits are the actual features that help you conduct better/more efficient business on your site. Intangible benefits would be features that make maintaining, updating, and building new pages as tensionless as possible.
- How much time am I willing to spend on switching platforms?
While the set up time for a new platform can be minimal depending on how large your site is, it still takes time. And if you’re short on that, this may need to be something you could hire out for.
- What happens to the current design of my site?
Can it be a) replicated on this new platform pretty closely or b) do I want to go through a redesign? If your answer is B, refer back to question number 2: how much time and financial resources do you have to dedicate yourself to a redesign?
- Is this the right time in my business to be doing this?
This may relate back to question 2, but just because you could make the time to switch, doesn’t mean it’s the right time for your business. There may be more pressing things in your business or your personal life that may need more of your attention.
After answering those questions your answer is still “hell yea let’s switch!” then keep reading friend.
The remainder of this post is going to work under the assumption that you have already redesigned or recreated your site on the new platform. Below is the general checklist of what I do after developing the new site for myself or a client on the new platform.
Prep Work before Making the Switch
Write down your URLs from your previous site
No one likes a broken link! So make sure that the URLs for the most important pages on your previous site match the ones for your new site. If you’ve created brand new pages on the new platform, then no worries there.
However, sometimes broken links still happen, so make sure that you’ve designed and optimized your 404 page. Optimizing your 404 page (so it’s not standard and boring) should at the minimum include buttons taking the user back to the homepage.
Determine if you need to write any redirects for blog posts
Depending on the platform you’re moving too, the structure of your blog post URLs may need to change. In the year of our lord 2024, most platforms give us much more freedom when it comes to blog post URL structure so that shouldn’t be too much of an issue.
If you have a lot of blog posts, make sure that you’re recreating them in the new platform with the exact same URL structure so your SEO hit won’t be too intense.
Export your product, customer and order data (if applicable)
If you have a shop currently on your website, you’ll need to export that data so you can import it into the new platform. Make sure to familiarize yourself with the import instructions of your new platform to minimize surprises during the official migration process.
Creating your switch day game plan:
Step 1: Decide on the day you wanna switch
Actually write that day down in your calendar or somewhere important. I’d suggest choosing a day towards the end of the week or whatever day of the week on average you have lower amounts of traffic. I usually do it later at night during that day to further decrease interruption to any visitors.
Step 2: Make a backup of your current site:
Your current website platform should allow you to make a backup of your current site that lives in your account just in case you run into any issues during the migration process. Making a backup could also be making a duplicate of your site.
Step 3: Make sure that you’ve paid completely for the month (or the year) for the new platform.
This will make it easier for you to confirm that your domain is pointing to the new website on the new platform and that your visitors are heading to the right place.
Step 4: Design an under construction page for your old website AND your new one. Make sure they’re published/live/visible on both platforms.
If you want to add a “Get in Touch” button to these you can just in case someone wants to contact you in the meantime. You can also add in your social media links/icons for visitors to contact you there as well.
Step 5: Connect your domain to the new platform.
Give yourself at least 24-72 hours for your domain’s DNS settings to connect to the new platform. Usually this process takes less than a few hours, but always prepare for any hiccups/worst case scenarios. In the area on your new website platform where they provide the DNS records for you to update, they should have an estimated time until connection.
Step 6: Add your analytics codes or IDs to the new site (Google analytics, Facebook pixels, etc.)
This is something I always remember with my clients, but always forget to do for myself so learn from my mistakes!
Step 7: Do a final responsiveness check on as many physical devices, browsers, etc. that you can.
You should be making sure that your site is responsive during the development/when you’re building it in the platform, but little things slip through the cracks all of the time. Break out any monitors, laptops, tablets, and phones that you have and check what your site looks like and how it functions on every device. Use different browsers whenever you can as well. It doesn’t matter the size of the devices you use to check either!
Use Google Chrome Inspector to check the responsiveness of the site for all the other devices and breakpoints that you don’t have physical devices for.
While you’re checking the site on other devices, make sure to click on all of the links to see if any are broken. You can also use this broken link checker as well.
Step 8: Do some functionality testing:
Nothing is more annoying than a contact form that doesn’t submit! Go through all of your newsletter embeds, contact forms, product pages, etc. and make sure that everything is working correctly. Especially if you’re integrating or connecting your forms or product delivery to any third party services or apps such as Zapier, Dubsado, Honeybook, etc.
Step 9: Test your site’s loading speed:
You can use the tools listed below to test your site’s loading speed. These sites will give you information on what’s impacting the loading speed and ways that you can help reduce it. Some of their recommendations you may not be able to do yourself, but here are some common reasons why your site speed may be too slow:
Images aren’t optimized and are too large: Use a site like ilovetinypng to reduce the size of your images.
Video files may be too large: your website platform should have recommendations on the configurations of your video files to make sure that they don’t impact your loading speed.
Unused Javascript code: I see this more so in Squarespace websites. Make sure that only the Javascript codes that you absolutely need are in your Code Injection area. If you don’t need them, delete them.
Sites to test your loading speed:
Step 10: Once your domain is connected, publish the new site and take down the under construction page.
I spend the next couple of hours on launch day randomly checking the site on different devices. I find that doing something else then coming back to the site with fresh eyes allows me to better catch any bugs or odd behavior. If you were diligent during the building of the site and during your responsive testing before launch - you shouldn’t find any issues.
Step 11: Cancel your plan with your old website platform
Now that you’re all switched over, you can cancel your subscription to your previous website platform. Double check that you don't need any information on any of the old pages that you chose not to migrate over to the new site since you may not have access to it after a certain period of time.
Step 12: Submit your site to google search console so Google can start crawling your new pages.
Over the next few weeks you may get emails from Google Search Console saying they can’t crawl some of the pages on your site. Don’t panic. Most of the time those are pages that you chose not to bring over to the new site, so that’s not an issue. Other times it may be actual pages that you want to crawl. Follow the instructions in the error and it should start working again over time.
The big SEO question: will my SEO rankings take a hit if I switch platforms?
Yes and no.
You should expect a slight dip in traffic after your switch that may last a few weeks. However, it’s not a permanent state (but if it becomes one that means there were some search optimization tasks that were missed or not done correctly when the new site was built).
The key to keeping this dip in traffic to a minimum is reducing broken links, maintaining the URL structure for your pages from the previous site, making sure your site and page titles and descriptions are optimized, and making sure that Google has access to your site so they can crawl/index it.
Switching website platforms doesn’t have to be this long drawn out and stressful process, especially if you develop a plan beforehand that you can follow to keep things smooth.
And if you find yourself wanting to switch platforms every couple of months, the issue you’re experiencing may not be the platform lacking in functionality, but it’s actually a case of shiny object syndrome! Website platforms are getting more and more powerful everyday, and with all of these cool features it’s no wonder we all want to give them a spin.
But sometimes staying wherever you are and becoming a better user of your current platform is the better option for your business. It truly is a case by case, business by business situation and there isn’t a right or wrong answer!
