Website Migration Strategies

There are a variety of events that lead to a website migration, starting from a merger or acquisition to simply look for better performance from a software solution. There are three main approaches to website migration:

• Big Bang Approach.
• Parallel Approach.
• Phased Approach.

Each migration strategy comes with its own benefits and drawbacks and in every case, the migration can be really tricky. In order to ace your website migration, you need to have a solid plan that’s executed with military precision.

The increase in structures and layouts, contents, and data produced for companies is making migration a more significant event. Choosing the right path is generally the first step to enjoying the lowered costs, increased flexibility, and improved performance that can be expected. This article points to expose and give details of the most common migration strategies, big bang, parallel, and phased migration process.

Why website migrations are tricky?

When you’re making changes to pages (configurations, structures, and contents) that are ranking in search engines, you’re rocking the boat. There’s always the chance that you’ll lose your rankings when you start making changes. Yes, you understood right, there are absolutely no guarantees that your rankings will return to the same level after your migration.

That’s a scary thought and one that demands that even the most seasoned SEOs have a lot of hard times throughout the entire migration process.

The good news is that by handling website migrations well, you can ensure that there’s little effect on the website’s rankings.

Big Bang Approach

This approach has a single main milestone (the go-live). This all-at-once method has some benefits to offer, including a reduced cost of the total migration, and the ability to face down the project with a single deadline. It may be somewhat painful but will be limited in its timeline. You won’t need to run two websites at once or wait for months to see if you’ve achieved a positive return on investment.

The drawbacks are that a migration like this is usually completed in a single period of time, and if it encounters roadblocks, it is possible for a team to show up at the end of that period without a working system.

This type of migration is considered high risk and is best used in situations where there is a smaller set of layouts or structures, configurations, contents, or a system that isn’t critical for daily operations.

Big Bang benefits

• Resource intensive.
• When the project runs smoothly, a shorter implementation timeline.
• The project team can focus on one phase of the project at a time.
• Everyone at once allows better campaigning for more change management.
• Smaller cost of maintaining both systems for less time.

Big Bang drawbacks

• Small issues are seen by everyone (end-users as well as project stakeholders and HR team), potentially undermining the success of the adoption.
• Syncing data from the old system to the new system is a considerable undertaking, and a big bang approach leaves no overlap for parallel testing.
• One troublesome group of rules can delay the entire population.
• The entire project must be completed before ROI is realized.
• The project team focus must simultaneously focus on all populations throughout the project.

Parallel Approach

This method offers the lowest level of risk because the new website is run alongside the legacy website until all the bugs are worked out and the team can ensure that business processes will run properly.

The advantages of this choice are that the business is not disrupted during the migration, and any issues can be fully addressed before the legacy system is turned off.

The main drawback of the parallel approach is that it can get costly to run two websites alongside one another, and if it takes a long time to work out any problems, the company can really pile up costs.

Phased Approach

This approach has multiple milestones (mini go-lives). In this type of migration, the website is divided into segments, with phases designated by module, features group, or any other way that project owners define as a milestone division. As each segment of data, content or related structures and configurations are transferred, bugs can be worked out, which could make it easier to train employees on a new system.

The phased migration allows for celebration along the way as each segment is successfully migrated.

The drawbacks of the phased approach include its tendency to become expensive as the project is drawn out, but it may strike a nice balance between the big bang and parallel migrations in terms of cost and risk. The business can move one website at a time or start with less critical data and functionality to migrate to the new website and finally come up with a plan that balances risk, cost, and speed.

Phased Rollout benefits

• Allows for earlier realization of ROI from initial populations.
• Ability to get something out the door even if certain groups set for deployment in a later phase have unforeseen delays or complications.
• Additional time for change management initiatives.
• Allows targeting early adopters who may be more understanding of bugs.
• Overlap of system rollout allows more time for parallel testing.

Phased Rollout drawbacks

• The additional cost of maintaining your old system for longer.
  It makes the resource-intensive go-live phase longer and repeated.
• Employees transferring out of the live group into the non-live group can have a rocky experience or even be unsupported.
• When the project runs smoothly, it causes an extended project timeline.
• Attention becomes diverted when one group is live, and other groups are still rolling out and testing.

The right way to decide

The most important milestone in any website migration is the go-live. One of the most essential questions about go-live should be answered well in advance… Do I go live all at once, or in phases?

Trying to summarize, most of the benefits and drawbacks come down to risk and cost. Big Bang has the potential to be cheaper, but the simultaneous go-live has more significant exposure to risk. The phased rollout has the potential to be costlier, but with much better risk mitigation potential.

Some additional considerations when choosing a migration strategy include choosing the group of features that will be included in the initial production version of the website. One point to consider is whether to go live with a small set of characteristics or move forward with a large set of characteristics all at once.

Small feature groups work very well for debugging initial startup issues and system errors to help build confidence in the system once a larger deployment is planned. When you estimate a small group of features to implement, you can easily run a full test in parallel with the old system.

Instead, rolling out a larger initial set of features allows you to see the ROI on initial production go-live. This scenario exposes you to some of the risks of a Big Bang launch.

Regardless of the initial go-live approach you choose, smaller feature sets mean less risk but longer lead times. Finding the right balance of any implementation can be challenging.

Analyze budget constraints

Identify your stakeholders and get a good grasp of your future state (vision for how the system is meant to work).

Try and think of the different implementation approaches while keeping in mind that they only serve as baselines.

If you’re still not sure of the best approach for your team members, we’re here to help. We’ll work with you and come up with the best possible project plan for your implementation project.

Summary

I cannot say much about the parallel migration option as it can be very expensive and I have only seen it in a few opportunities with very large clients. The big bang strategy will allow us, with higher risk and lower cost, to see the benefits of the new website instantly. As for the phases, they will allow you less risk but at a higher cost, a more controlled and flexible migration.