Buckle Up for Change: Tips for Transitioning Your Website Provider

Buckle up, babes - it’s time to talk change. With the beginning of the new year comes new goals, and mine include rebuilding my brand and my website. What in the world am I thinking? Any time you want to change website providers it can be such chaos. So, let’s talk about the in’s and out’s of what you should know before you switch website providers.

For context - I’ve decided to change the focus of my business. I went from selling office supplies and physical goods to wanting to only sell digital goods, courses and content. The platform I was on wasn’t financially feasible to support my new needs, so I had to branch out and find something new. That said, I am still maintaining my domain at its original home, so this actually makes the transition a little easier. I’m really only changing how I build out my website’s data…not where my domain is held. 

Side note: Transferring your domain to another provider can be a long and arduous process. We’ll revisit that in a future blog.

Obviously making a change to your website is a big deal. It can feel like an especially big task. Before you start, I highly recommend you assess what you actually need. Consider the following questions:

• What pages are you keeping?

• What kinds of pages do you need to add? For instance, I wanted to add a blog, a vlog and a podcast page.

• If you are selling products, what kind? Digital, physical or both?

• Do you need a membership?

• Do you need to add the ability for your clients to book services with you?

• Do you need to post a schedule?

• Are you hosting heavy content - ie. Video’s, Large Images, downloadable files, etc?

These are just a few of the questions I can think of off the top of my head. BUT - it’s also important to consider your capabilities. Are you able to understand and edit code? If not, then you may want a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) Builder. Your drag and drop website builders are WYSIWYG’s. Shopify and Squarespace both fall into this category, but a traditional WordPress site would not. Okay, it can…but it takes finding the right integrations to make that work. More on that another time.

Once we know what we want, where the heck do we begin? Unfortunately, this is the part where you work before you work. It’s time to put in the hours of research. It can be really easy to do a Google Search and just go with whatever the first listing is, but this may not meet your needs. 

In a future blog, we’ll be going over a brief Compare & Contrast of the major website editors out there. But I will tell you - even a brief comparison is no easy feat. There are soooo many options out there. There is no one size fits all that I can recommend to you. It ultimately comes down to your own needs. Here are a few things to consider, aside from the above questions:

• Features - Will the features fit your needs? Ie. Blogging, E-Commerce, Landing Pages, Membership Pages, Password Protection, etc.

• Pricing Plans - Can you afford what you need? Is there an option to start cheaper and build as you go? Are the sales fees reasonable?

• Customer Support - Do they have any to begin with? Are the reviews of their support any good? Are they able to help you with your website build?

• User Reviews - Do users like using their builder? Are there known issues? Are there reports of lots of down time?

For my own purposes, I really didn’t care about Data Migration. What is Data Migration, you might be asking…maybe? It’s simply the transition of your files from one location to another. It’s also not that simple. Your data can include the transition of just blogs, videos or images. Or, it can include trying to migrate all of your products from one website to another. Or, it can be as drastic as trying to completely copy your entire website (page by page, product by product) from one provider to another.

Now that I’ve likely frightened you - let’s delve in a little deeper. The amount of data I wanted to migrate I think included one page - my about page. Even then, I still rewrote it a little bit. It generally ended up being a copy and paste situation. For you, though, you may want to see if there is a tool out there to transfer data. Especially if you have product listings. It can be a lot of work to move all of your products from one provider to another. In fact, this is usually the reason most people choose to not transition at all, even though they may be experiencing pain points with their current provider.

If you truly want to migrate your data, I highly recommend you look into a tool to do a majority of the migration for you. Try Google Searching “Data Migration for X to X”, with the different providers replacing the X in that formula. Alternatively, you can hire someone to do this for you. That would look like someone on Fiverr, maybe a college or high school student looking for some extra work or even hiring a Website Developer or Designer. It can be cheap or it can be pricey. Ultimately, you need to understand that you are still going to have to be a part of this process. It’s tedious and time consuming and usually there is no easy way out. But, if you need a change - I promise it will totally be worth it!

One thing to note, before you commit to a platform and start the transition, you should really take the time to test it out and see if you like the features. Shopify and Squarespace, for instance, both offer a trial period. I recommend starting a trial and trying to build out your homepage. This will quickly give you an idea of whether or not this website builder’s features are going to work for you. Also, consider if it has templates you like. Do the e-commerce functionalities work for your needs? It usually only takes a day or two to figure out if this is going to work the way you want it to. If it’s too much frustration, it might be time to move on or check out some YouTube tutorials. 

At the end of the day, switching providers can be quite the undertaking. It requires so much research and planning. It took me a couple months of talking it out with other people before I finally decided to make the move - and I’m a seasoned website designer. It’s also taken me over a month just to get the basics of the website up and ready to launch.

Take your time, assess your needs, research Alternatives, make sure you can move your data, and don’t forget to test it before you commit. A well informed decision will end up making this process so much easier. And remember, you need to prioritize your business and your customers' ease of use. Good luck! And feel free to message me if you have questions.