When your website grows, and you need to make some changes to accommodate a growing audience, you find your current hosting provider insufficient. That’s where website migration comes into play. This process will transfer your website from one hosting environment to another. Your site performs better, becomes more secure, can be scaled easily, and ranks well on SERPs.

Businesses undergoing a website migration will see a rapid increase in organic traffic in half a year. Also, a survey says a website that replaced Magento with Shopify reported a 126% increase in organic traffic. That’s why you should consider migrating your website with professional developers.

In this blog, we’ll share with you 10 reasons why site switching is perfect for your brand in 2024. Also, we will provide you with relevant statistics and case studies to bring the point home.

Benefits of Site Migration

Let’s start with a case study first: Airthings specializes in smart monitors to check quality. This company decided to merge eCommerce platforms under a single domain. Instead of hosting their subdomains on HubSpot and Adobe Commerce, Airthings wanted to create a unified online store for better SERP rankings and user experience. As a result, the company saw these incredible results:

• A 3x increase in organic traffic a few months after site migration.
• A 56% increase in user engagement and significantly lower bounce rates.
• Better visibility on search engines and improved rankings for major keywords.

You can also enjoy similar benefits by undergoing a site migration in 2024, such as these ones:

1.      Enhanced Performance

Switching to modern hosting service providers improves the site speed, promising you a well-optimized user experience and ultimately boosting the performance of your website. With faster loading times, you can witness a spike in your organic traffic.

After all, statistics indicate that even a single-second delay in page load time will reduce your conversion rate by 7%; if your site takes over 3 seconds to load, 4 in 10 users will abandon their visit. We’re living in the age of “goldfish memory” and reduced attention spans where internet users want fast-loading sites. So, you should choose a host that uses faster servers and CDS.

2.      Improved User Experience

You can retain visitors and lower bounce rates with a better-optimized site that makes navigation easier for site users. We’ve already talked about faster-loading landing pages; your website must load quickly for a desktop user and even quicker (less than 3 seconds) for smartphone users. Switching hosts will not just increase the loading speed of your site but also offer these added benefits:

• Since more than 50% of your online traffic is coming from mobile devices, site migration can be a great excuse to optimize your website for smartphones with responsive designs.
• Businesses can introduce user-centric designs and layouts in their site migration efforts; it makes the web content easily accessible and more readable.
• Improve the navigation structure of your site with simplified menus & logically organized content to make a user’s browsing experience enjoyable.

That’s what Fuhrman Leamy Land Group saw when this company migrated from Drupal to WordPress. A simple site migration allowed them to improve user expertise and increase their organic traffic.

3.      SEO Optimization Opportunities

Website migration comes with ample SEO improvement opportunities as well, such as:

• You can create a well-structured URL that can get indexed quickly with a better crawl ability
• Increase your user base’s trust with an SEO-friendly URL to improve the click-through rate
• Add relevant keywords in your URL to aid in ranking, especially by positioning keywords properly

Don’t forget the critical 301 redirects play in preserving your site’s SEO value. A 301 redirect will instruct search engine bots that a certain page has been migrated to a different location. So, bots will move the link equity of that old URL to the new one.

4.      Addressing Outdated Technology

How about you finally get rid of legacy systems and acquire a better content management system?! Old systems have different drawbacks, such as the following:

• Outdated platforms have limited functionality and may not support advanced features (e.g., data analytics or mobile responsiveness)
• They are highly susceptible to data breaches due to system vulnerabilities, and your customers can lose their data
• Maintaining legacy systems can be costly as well and may take up 80% to 90% of your IT budget

However, modern CMS platforms are designed to meet the speed/efficiency criteria of a modern user. A faster loading page will increase your website’s conversion rate and come with better security features to thwart cyber threats. Here are some added benefits of switching your CMS platform:

• Sites with HTTPS instead of HTTP will rank better on Google and give brands more visibility
• These CMS solutions will grow as your business expands, offering essential features like updates, content management, integration with other tech tools, etc.
• It can enhance your customers’ user experience and, as the study suggests, every single dollar going into UI/UX improvements will give you $100 in return.

5.      Increased Security Measures

Switching servers will enhance site security by protecting user data as you implement newer security protocols. Modern hosting solutions often include built-in security measures such as:

• Firewalls: Protect your website from unauthorized access and prevent potential attacks
• Intrusion detection: Monitor your website for suspicious activity and take immediate action to mitigate threats
• Regular security updates & patches: Ensure that your website is running on the latest software versions with the most recent security fixes

Moreover, website migration often leads to you getting robust encryption methods and access control measures. You can migrate from HTTP to HTTPS (if you haven’t already!). Modern encryption protocols (AES & RSA) provide an extra layer of protection for your website’s data. Limit access to your website’s administrative functions to authorized personnel only; implement multi-factor authentication to verify user identities.

6.      Scalability for Future Growth

Also, migration can prepare your website for future expansion and increased traffic. Imagine expanding to uncharted territories and struggling with increased organic traffic. You can mitigate this risk by taking your website to a different hosting service provider and observing these benefits:

• Accommodating Increased Traffic: As a business grows, its website is likely to experience a surge in traffic. A site migration allows companies to move to a platform that can easily scale up to handle higher volumes of visitors. Choosing a scalable platform can help your businesses avoid server crashes, downtime, and other performance issues. For example, Reddit experienced this issue when a simple social experiment, “The Button,” went viral; it caused Reddit servers to crash due to the unprecedented traffic.
• Expanding Storage and Processing Capacity: As a website accumulates more content, images, videos, and user data over time, its storage requirements grow. A site migration enables companies to move to a platform with virtually unlimited storage capacity, ensuring that the website can continue to expand without running out of space. This scalability ensures that your site is capable of handling increased data processing demands, such as more complex queries or real-time analytics, without slowing down.

7.      Compliance with New Regulations

Don’t forget about the compliance issues a business faces due to non-compliance. However, migrating a site to a different hosting service can help you out in this regard via:

• Robust Data Security Measures: Site migration lets businesses adopt modern technologies that enhance data security. For instance, using HTTPS ensures that data transmitted between users and the website is encrypted; it’ll reduce the risk of data breaches.
• Streamlined Data Management Practices: Migrating to a new host enables more efficient data management practices. For example, businesses implement automated data retention policies that ensure personal data is only kept as long as necessary. This policy will facilitate compliance with GDPR’s “data minimization” principle.
• Enhanced User Consent Mechanisms: A site migration provides an opportunity to redesign user interfaces to better capture and manage consent. You can get explicit consent from users before collecting their data, thus complying with GDPR and CCPA requirements.

8.      Better Analytics and Tracking

Migration can help you enable better tracking tools and data collection methods. First, let’s look into the idea behind audience segmentation. Businesses can segment their audience based on criteria like race, age, sex, gender, interests, purchase history, etc. It lets marketers create targeted content, personalizing the user experience for this audience.

When you are migrating your site, how about integrating your analytics platforms with the CRM system to create much more detailed user profiles?! It’ll give you a unified view of your customer base for more precise targeting and personalization. Similarly, you must choose a platform that offers robust reporting capabilities to gain faster access to market insights.

For instance, real-time dashboards can display key performance indicators (KPIs) such as traffic, bounce rates, and conversion rates. As a result, your business can monitor website health and identify areas for optimization. These insights can inform A/B testing strategies, content planning, and overall marketing efforts. It’s another way site migration should be your priority in web development.

9.      Competitive Advantage

Staying current with technology and user expectations can provide a competitive edge to your website. Site migration is a great excuse for achieving this goal. You can look into the latest web dev trends to find out how to make your website easier to navigate and user-friendly.

Similarly, a website migration will enhance the operational efficiency of your platform. Reports suggest that companies investing in cloud migration see cost savings of 31% compared to companies that maintain on-premises infrastructure. Moreover, migrating to a cloud-based server will reduce the time needed to launch new products/services. It is a great way to capitalize on new opportunities and stay ahead of the curve. Moving to a faster server, to be honest, is a major upgrade by itself.

10.  Strategic Rebranding Opportunities

In the end, make sure that your website changes align with your overall business strategy and marketing goals. Website migration is a great excuse to consider rebranding; you can refresh the company’s image to make it more appealing to existing customers and the target audience. A strong brand presence will set you apart from the competition, and that’s exactly what site migration expertise hopes to do.

For instance, Guild Education utilizes site migration as a front for rebranding. It’s all about implementing a clear redirect strategy when undergoing site migration. That’s how you can preserve the SEO value of your website. Companies that phase their migrations and maintain a focus on non-branded traffic often mitigate the risks of rebranding. That’s something you, too, can do with site migration!

Conclusion

You should always approach website migration strategically and follow the guidance of experienced professionals. A rushed or poorly planned migration can lead to costly setbacks, including drops in traffic and rankings. Don’t let your website hold you back from reaching your full online potential in 2024.

Explore the benefits of website migration and take the first step towards a faster, more secure, and better-performing online presence with QuickMigrate today. We’re a single phone call away from you!

If you have questions, feel free to get in touch with the pros at QuickMigrate, who have years of experience helping site owners switch hosts smoothly. Contact website migration experts with their web dev skills to boost your site’s visibility and elevate it to new heights in SERP ranking. Migrate to a higher grade!