Ahh the famed migration, whether you're moving to a new CMS or updating your current website on the existing platform, there's a lot to consider. Image resizing, new designs, responsive designs, getting your content in order, endless testing and the redirects (Dear Lord, don't forget the redirects! )
Obviously such a huge amount of effort leaves you open to all sorts of errors. In fact, there are those who believe that there is a cost to progress. That no matter how you cut it, a migration means a slight and temporary dip in traffic. Rocket Digital is not one of those agencies.
Every successful project can only happen because of the people who are involved from the outset. You're at the very least going to have you're developer, a decision maker in marketing, an SEO if you have one and you're hosting company on speed dial. Little things can crop up that can cause big headaches down the line.
Make sure that everyone is singing-off the same sheet.
Migrating from an old site to a slower new site is going to kill your organic traffic efforts. Ensure you speed testing everything on the new platform before you move it on over. If you are paying similar buck for your hosting you need to get the dev team and hosting company on a call an iron out the issues with speed. It could be something as simple as uncompressed images, or a larger architectural fault with where it's hosted. Either way, don't press go on the migration until this is ironed out.
Make sure you keep track of every redirected URL, including images and take that with you to the new site. It is a golden rule in Rocket digital that you never sacrifice redirects. We've had so many clients in the past who discounted their importance and lived to tell of the 50% or more traffic drop. redirects point link value from old addresses to new address.
For example:
/old-product-page -> new-product-page
If you run old-product page through and SEO tool you'll find that it has many high value links from marketing campaigns of the past. Google uses liks to reward and rank sites. If you sever the link by failing to put a redirect in place, it will directly and severely affect you rankability. You're average position in search will be decimated and another site will come along to replace you on Google's first page.