Magento Go is shutting its doors come February 1st, 2015 and, like others, you’re struggling to figure out what to do. To help ease this transition, this blog post will be about the steps you need to take to successfully transition from Magento Go.
While everyone’s transition is going to be different based on your eCommerce platform, the size of your business, and the extent of the remodeling you want to do, this can serve as an over-arching view of the process.
Transitioning from Magento Go
This blog post will go over the basic steps in transitioning from Magento Go.
- Choosing your new eCommerce Platform
- Setting up your eCommerce Store
- Redesigning your Magento Go Website
- Migrating your Magento Go data
- What to do once you’ve transitioned from Magento Go
Choosing your new eCommerce Platform
The first decision you’ll have to make is determining where you want to go next. There are many good eCommerce platforms out there and it can be difficult to determine the best fit for your company. This is why nChannel dedicated an entire blog post to the best Magento Go eCommerce platform alternatives.
However, if you don’t feel the need to read an entire blog post, or already have an eCommerce provider in mind, just make sure you’ve done your research before choosing; you won’t want to change eCommerce platforms twice.
Setting up your eCommerce store
When setting up your eCommerce store, the process will vary from store to store depending on what eCommerce platform you choose. However, one main issue you want to address is whether your platform is a hosted eCommerce platform or on premise.
Hosted Web Stores
You’ll be most comfortable with a hosted eCommerce platform as this is how Magento Go operates. The majority of the big-name eCommerce platforms operate this way as well.
These companies will upload and host your store on one of their own servers; the amount of storage space you get, however, is determined by what pricing level you choose. The less space you have on a server, the slower your web store will run. While this may not be a factor for some smaller organizations, larger operations with a high number of products should be careful.
On Premise Web Stores
An on premise platform is a platform in which you need to host your own web store or, more likely, enlist the hosting help of another company. Magento is the main company who uses this model. nChannel has already written a blog post about the top five Magento hosting providers which discusses the pros and cons of all the major providers. Otherwise, all you need to know is that you get what you pay for. Many companies offer cheap hosting prices, however, the cheaper your hosting is – the slower your store is going to run.
Redesigning your Magento Go website
Many people will decide to redesign their website when transitioning from Magento Go. Your website is crucial in acquiring sales and increasing your conversion rate, so if your site looks old, you should make the decision to change now.
While you may not be an expert at web design, each eCommerce platform has partners who they consider are. There may be cheaper options out there, but if you want a designer you can trust, these are the names to follow.
- Bigcommerce Designers
- Shopify Web Design Experts
- Amazon Webstore Implementation Solution Providers
- Magento Solution Partners
Migrating your Magento Go data
One of the biggest issues you’ll run into when transitioning eCommerce platforms is migrating your data. As a retailer, you know the importance of your product information, and getting it all carefully moved to your new eCommerce platform is pivotal for a successful transition.
Some platforms will offer migration for an additional fee. However there are two fundamental issues with these migrations.
- They’re not all encompassing data migrations.
- They’re one time solutions.
In regards to the first issue, while the reliability of the migration will depend on the platform you choose, no platform you choose can offer as reliable data migration as a multichannel integration solution can.
The reason for the second problem is a little more obvious, what happens if you decide to change eCommerce platforms again? While you’re undoubtedly researching every aspect of your Magento Go transition, you can’t be certain you won’t choose one platform and then decide to switch to another. This is why multichannel integration is crucial.
With multichannel integration you only need to integrate once. Once you’ve connected your eCommerce system to the cloud, adding connections to your ERP/accounting, marketplaces, or POS systems, is as simple as adding a new connector.
You never have to be attached to one system in the future. You’re free to evolve from one software to another without fear of the data migration hassle.
What to do once you’ve transitioned from Magento Go
So you have your eCommerce site set up, redesigned, hosted, and even have all the data merged over. Now what? Well it’s simple, start selling! You’ve already taken your first steps to selling more by changing your platform, but that alone won’t increase your sales by much. Even if you decided to redesign your website, that’s only going to increase conversions if people are visiting your website in the first place. This is why you need to increase your exposure.
You can do this by working with a multichannel integration company to integrate with eBay and Amazon, or also by using Product Information Management (PIM) to increase your SEO rankings. You can even look at Business Intelligence (BI) to determine where most of your traffic is coming from and target those areas with aggressive ad campaigns. How ever you choose to increase your sales, don’t take Magento Go shutting down as an end to your online store, but take it as your opportunity to become a more serious online retailer.
- For more information on your Magento Go transition, this blog post goes over the best Magento Go eCommerce platform alternatives.
- For more information on eCommerce platforms in general, check out this blog post describing 10 key considerations when evaluating eCommerce platforms.
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