Ebay shuts down Magento Go and ProStores: shopping cart migration tips

Last week Ebay confirmed big movement which concerns a large number of small business owners. ProStores and Magento Go — products which served small and medium-sized ecommerce stores — will be closed.

In the effort to make migration process less painful and avoid traffic losses, we did a post listing top recommendations for platform migration. We are also ready to consult for free businesses that will be affected by Ebay’s decision, while Cart2Cart offer 20% discount on its migrations services from MagentoGo if you use promo code PromodoMGo20 .     

Ebay says that ProStores and Magento Go will be still available till February 1, 2015. However, it is of course better to get ready in advance, and online retailers using ProStores and Magento Go may already start preparing for migration.

Magento named BigCommerce an official migration partner, as the platform already has stores migrated from Magento.

Magento selects Bigcommerce as the migration provider for #MagentoGo and #ProStores. Welcome to the family! http://t.co/1NEF9bzmCq

— Bigcommerce (@Bigcommerce) July 1, 2014

BigCommerce is an actively growing CMS with 50 thousand stores worldwide and market share of 7% which now we may expect to grow.

Websites using Bigcommerce in Alexa Top Million Sites. Source: http://promo.do/WWXL

Since the shopping cart migration issue gets relevant for many ecommerce owners, let us remind you about several migration issues you should be aware about and know how to handle them.

The full information about platform migration and pros and cons of different shopping cart you can check in this video and slides from the our latest webinar we had in cooperation with Cart2Cart.  Our partner provides automated solutions for shopping cart migration, and  right now drops 20% off  for migration from MagentoGo if you use the coupon code  PromodoMGo20.

General migration recommendations

Pre-migration tips:

• Before the migration make sure to avoid: third-party modules, non-default templates,  manual database customization.
• Ensure also that your target store is hidden from Google or other search engines as you don’t want unnecessary pages get into its index.
• Whitelist IPs that you will run your migration from, here is a short guide – make sure to check it.

Migration process recommendations:

• Back up everything
• Set up proper folder permissions
• Store all the images in the default folder

If you are migrating from Magento and you target platform another than BigCommerce, make such CMS is compatible with Magento.  In case it is a multi-store migration, map your shop correctly, and when the migration is finished make re-index and clear cache.

SEO recommendations for shopping cart migration

Pre-migration tips:

The first and the most important thing to do during your shop migration in terms of SEO is 301 redirects. Since there is no workaround to make this process automated, it becomes even more essential. Make sure to use exactly 301 type of redirect because it will help you preserve the link juice, at least partly.

• Create a map of all page URLs
• Server redirects in admin and use regular expressions when setting the redirects in order to minimize the server load.
• After you are done with redirects set up and mapping, test them (tools: Xenu, Screaming Frog)
• Customize 404 pages, they should preserve the site navigation, just like on the main page

After-migration SEO recommendations:

• During the first couple of months do not change anything in titles, H1 H2 headings, page texts.
• Warn customers about possible problems in store functioning (slow load speed, different structure of the site, etc.)
• Use new URLs when interlink pages on the site
• If it is within your power, make backlinks leading to your new URLs
• Update HTML and XML sitemaps — include new URLs, submit the new map to Google Webmaster Tools
• Consistently monitor traffic to the site — evaluate it before and after migration
• Use the same Google Analytics code or create a new Google Analytics property ( which is less beneficial variant)

Finally, if you are still unsure what platform to choose here is a checklist  — ecommerce platforms review from SEO side.

Ecommerce platforms SEO checklist

Hope this information was helpful for you, if you have any other questions as to the shopping cart migration, please get in  touch with us via [email protected] or leave the comment below. Also, feel free to order free site audit  – online session during which we will discuss your migration pain points and give recommendations how to handle them.