9 Benefits of Optimizely CMS migration

Currently, businesses are looking for a robust Digital Experience Platform (DXP) solution to mitigate the challenges involved with conversion rates, user experience, website performance and security, ease of customization and implementation, customer support, time to market, and one-stop deployment.

Optimizely DXP offers advanced content, digital commerce, and personalization capabilities to help businesses improve user experience and increase conversions by optimizing their websites and mobile applications. It also provides analytics and insights to enable businesses to analyze their data and make data-driven decisions to improve website performance, optimize digital experiences, and increase customer engagement and revenue.

Migrating to a new Content Management System (CMS) can ensure several benefits. Businesses experiencing a lack of flexibility, transparency, and tactics around upgrades with existing CMS should go for Optimizely DXP to drive revenue by leveraging a customer-centric digital experience platform.

Benefits of migrating to Optimizely CMS

1. Increased Conversion Rates: Optimizely provides testing, personalization, and targeting tools that help identify and act on the changes, improving conversion rates.
2. Improved User Experience: With Optimizely, different variations of the website can be tested to improve user experience and user engagement.
3. Faster Testing Cycles and Deployments: Optimizely enables quick and easy test changes to the website, allowing faster feedback. Also it enables faster deployments and operations.
4. Increased Visibility: The detailed analytics and reporting feature offered by Optimizely tracks website performance and verifies which changes have the most significant impact.
5. Automated A/B Testing: With Optimizely, automated A/B tests can be set to continuously test different variations of the website and identify the best-performing options.
6. Updates: Continuous upgrades in Optimizely keeps the application up to date, saving money and time. Optimizely runs on a continuous deployment model with a cumulative, backward-compatible release every week.
7. Cloud solution: Optimizely provides a simple, secure, and complete one-stop cloud solution for deployment, database restoration, and application logs.
8. Support: The platform provides 24/7/365 support, including capacity planning, incident management, and problem management.
9. Better ROI: Forrester’s Total Economic Impact^TM study showed that Optimizely customers enjoy a 299% ROI over 3 years and a break-even of less than 6 months.

Businesses should consider analyzing their existing application, budget, and other factors before migrating from legacy technologies or applications to modern and up-to-date technologies. A typical migration depends upon three factors:

1. Platform: There are many CMS platforms, and there are chances that custom tools are already created for migration (always check for existing tools if they are readily available).
2. Site Complexity: Since Optimizely is a component-based system, it comes down to mapping the templates and block structure.
3. Data: It is important to check what all data sources need to be migrated, i.e., site content, commerce, or user migration. For example, the DXP user migration has complications.

Once the above factors are analyzed, businesses need to focus on the steps of the migration process and decide upon pre and post-migration activities.

Steps for Content Management System Migration

1. Create a plan: A comprehensive plan should clearly depict the steps to migrate to Optimizely DXP. This plan should include an assessment of the current system, as well as a timeline for the migration.
2. Assess existing system: Allocate time to analyze the existing system and study which elements can be migrated to the Optimizely digital experience platform. This could include data, code, and other elements.
3. Integrate Optimizely DXP: Once the elements that need to be migrated are identified, start integrating Optimizely into the existing system. Consider the impact of this integration, and test the system before making it live.
4. Test the system: After testing the new system, ensure it functions as expected. This includes running tests on all system elements and verifying everything works properly.
5. Train users: Ensure all users are trained well on the new system.
6. Go live: After the system is tested and its performance is good, switch to Optimizely DXP. This could involve making the switch all at once or in stages.
7. Monitor performance: After the switch, monitor the system’s performance. This helps identify potential issues and ensure that Optimizely is performing optimally.

The migration process can be tedious and time-consuming. Despite following the steps mentioned above, there are a few challenges that the team may face. Below are some of these challenges and solutions to overcome those.

Challenges during the CMS migration process

Planning for pre and post-migration activities, monitoring the progress of data migration, code customization, testing, and budget, and tracking the application performance, issues, and other aspects after release are essential in ensuring a smooth and successful CMS migration.

1. Data Loss: Data loss due to human or system errors can be a significant risk during migration. The impact of data loss can be reduced by establishing a reliable backup strategy, performing pre-migration testing, and automating the CMS migration.
2. System Compatibility Issues: The CMS migration processes can be complicated if new systems do not integrate easily with existing systems. This issue can be overcome by testing the system and applications on the target platform before the actual migration, using virtual environments, and updating the software and drivers to the latest versions.
3. Cost: CMS Migration can be costly due to the need for additional hardware, software, and personnel resources. To reduce the cost, always have a check on migrating only necessary stuff, use automation and cloud-based tools, focus on utilizing existing infrastructure, look for free tools and services

Conclusion

Businesses looking to improve their website performance and user experience should consider migrating to Optimizely, a leading Digital Experience Platform (DXP) solution. Optimizely migration will bring speed, user experience, decoupled architecture, and a one-stop cloud solution for existing applications. Optimizely provides support throughout the migration phase and also helps with accelerators for easy migrations. With extensive knowledge of different customer-centric digital experience platforms and experience in Optimizely CMS migrations, Nous can help businesses carefully analyze their existing platform, site complexity, and data sources before migrating and ensure a successful migration process.