Reasons to Migrate

When our clients approach us with the desire for a "new website", their mind is set on a self-prescribed full replacement of their existing system. And to our inevitable question of "why?", the answer is more often than not "it doesn’t look modern anymore". Ironically, that is probably the worst reason for embarking on such a resource-intensive and risky endeavour. In this two-part Migration blog series, we’ll break down some of the key "why"s of modernising websites, and in Part Two we’ll look at the “how”s, different ways to successfully approach a migration.

A corporate website entails a lot of moving parts, and only the tip of the iceberg is visible from the outside. Before casually calling for a "full website relaunch", we should look beyond the homepage slider that doesn’t work properly on mobile and consider the less obvious implications of such a decision.

• There might be a lot of content that is still relevant and valuable, but has to fit a new design.
• Editorial staff that are used to the administrative interface.
• Business KPIs that are tied to analytics integrations in the current website.
• A content strategy that somebody has put a lot of thought into.
• External services, like DAMs, CRMs, or ERPs that have been integrated.

The list of good reasons to not start from scratch is probably a lot longer than this, and I consciously left out the one thing my AI assistant persistently tries to convince me to add: "Dropping SEO rankings". That is a rookie mistake and simply does not apply to a well-executed migration. Do your homework, machine overlord!

Reasons to Migrate

Nonetheless, there are reasons to migrate and modernise your website, or at least parts of it. And most of them have different goals and implications, which already suggests that there is no silver bullet solution.

Mobile / Responsive design

It's been more than 17 years since the first release of the iPhone, and the percentage of users accessing websites primarily from mobile devices is still growing. It's hard to imagine that there are still websites out there that are not optimised for handheld consumption, but the internet is a vast and chaotic place. A good reason to improve your website, but not a good reason to throw it away.

New corporate design

That's probably the #1 reason for a website relaunch. The corporate identity and design have been refreshed, often along with the personnel managing it. There is an urge to "cut ties" and "start fresh", but without a full grasp of the implications. Don't pull loose strings too eagerly, you might end up without a shirt.

Underperforming

There is no doubt that a slow website is a bad website. Conversions as well as SEO rankings are directly tied to how quickly a website responds to user interactions, but web performance is a complex field. Your old and trusty content management system might be slow, but that doesn’t mean it has to be a bottleneck.

Insufficient editorial experience

Your business is always changing, and so is your content strategy. What was a digital business card fifteen years ago, has somehow become a blog, a shop and a support platform as well. The editorial staff has probably grown and so have their requirements to work and collaborate. If you want to remain digitally competitive, you have to cater to that, but overhauling the whole design and content at the same time is a risky move.

Unsupported technology and security

We have seen our fair share of this. There is the Drupal 7 end of life, that has been looming for years now, which is unfortunate, but necessary and at least plannable (Drupal 7's end of life has been postponed so often, it can safely be considered a zombie by now). But there are also open-source projects that get acquired and then are left unmaintained and SaaS CMS providers that realise money is not growing on trees and suddenly double their prices. And last but not least, at the time of writing, the creator of WordPress has initiated a dispute that raises concerns about the future of open-source software. Yes, you might have to adapt to circumstances beyond your control, but you can still control how you adapt. And especially in such situations, the risk should be kept low.

"Changes are expensive"

As an engineer, this one hurts the most. It is called "software" because it is easy to form and adapt (in contrast to hardwired semiconductors). Yet a lot of prospects approach us with the premise that every request to their current supplier is "expensive and takes forever". This is due to a phenomenon called "technical debt" or "saving money in the wrong place". With every update that is skipped and every shortcut that is taken, the cost of change increases because the system becomes less and less maintainable. This can leave you in a situation where you eventually have to overhaul the whole system.

To counter this, Amazee Labs offers the Maintenance Flat Fee. With one fixed monthly fee, we care about every update and regression to keep your project in shape.

The Importance of Decoupling

Most of the reasons above have one thing in common: they do not affect the whole system at once. And even if they do, they can be tackled in a way that does not require a full relaunch. The key to this is a cleanly decoupled architecture. If you have been reading our articles anytime in the last ten years or so, you know that Amazee Labs is a big proponent of decoupling. We primarily use Drupal as a headless content management system and React frontend applications that consume the data over GraphQL APIs.

This means, our projects don't have to be completely overhauled and migrated when the design changes or the content source has to be replaced. We acknowledge that the administrative backend and the visual representation to visitors are two different things, with different requirements and a vastly different pace of changes. This allows us to cautiously modernise and evolve your website over time, without ending up with a chain of interdependent problems that make adaptions harder than they need to be.

Deciding whether to migrate or modernise your website is never a one-size-fits-all solution. At Amazee Labs, we help guide you through the process, identifying the best path for your specific needs. Sometimes a full relaunch isn’t necessary, and incremental improvements can achieve your goals.

As you consider the reasons behind a potential migration, stay tuned for Part Two, where we’ll discuss how to approach it strategically, ensuring a smooth transition if it’s the right choice for your business.