SchoolShoes – Website Migration

About the Client

Schoolshoes.co.uk is a UK-based e-commerce website specializing in selling a wide range of school shoes. It offers a convenient online platform for parents and students to browse and purchase school footwear, ensuring they have access to durable and stylish options for the academic year.

Introduction

This case study explores the intricate process of redesigning and migrating SchoolShoes’ e-commerce website to the Shopify platform. Triune Digitals, a digital agency with a knack for overcoming SEO challenges, took over this complex transition. The objective was clear: to seamlessly transition the online presence of SchoolShoes to Shopify without compromising their established web traffic and SEO value.

Background

SchoolShoes had a large product range with each item and collection included across multiple variation URLs, resulting in over 250K URLs. This redundancy not only diluted SEO efforts but also complicated user navigation. The decision to migrate to Shopify was made to capitalize on its streamlined user experience and SEO-friendly features.

Website Migration Challenges

The website migration posed a significant challenge due to Shopify’s 100K URL redirection limit. The risk of incurring SEO issues and loss of traffic due to potential 404 errors was substantial. Balancing the redirection limit with the need to preserve SEO integrity was a daunting task for the team.

Website Redesign & Migration Strategy

To mitigate risks, Triune Digitals adopted a data-driven approach, prioritizing the redirection of top-performing pages. A meticulous compilation of URLs was conducted through various methods, including sitemap exports, Screaming Frog reports, and performance analysis from the Search Console.

Implementation

The transition was executed methodically:

1. URL Mapping: An exhaustive list of URLs was curated to ensure no page was left behind.

2. Pre-Launch Audit: This phase focused on identifying and resolving critical technical issues, including the optimization of schema markup, and rectifying missing or duplicate meta tags.

3. A post-launch audit was conducted to ensure the seamless transition of our website, with a particular focus on preventing the transfer of any bugs from the staging environment.

4. Post-Live Maintenance – within a month after the site went live we constantly performed a maintenance check to verify the success of our transition and to monitor the site’s performance as it recovered. This maintenance aimed to guarantee that our enhancements to the site’s HTML not only enhanced the user experience and search engine visibility but also remained effective over time.

Results

Upon going live, SchoolShoes’ website recovered its SEO standing within a month. The careful planning and strategic redirection resulted in a seamless transition, ensuring the client’s digital footprint remained intact.

Lessons Learned

The project underscored the importance of strategic planning in SEO-centric migrations. Triune Digitals’ foresight in addressing technical SEO priorities averted the risks associated with the migration, setting a benchmark for future projects.

Conclusion

Triune Digitals’ expertise in SEO and web migration was pivotal in the successful transition of SchoolShoes to the Shopify platform. This case study illustrates the efficacy of a well-planned strategy in overcoming platform limitations and preserving SEO value during significant website migrations.