Your Ultimate 10-Step Website Migration Checklist for 2025

Migrating a website to a new platform, domain, or server is a high-stakes project. When executed correctly, it can lead to significant improvements in performance, user experience, and operational efficiency. However, a poorly planned migration can cause catastrophic drops in search engine rankings, broken functionality, and a direct loss of revenue. The difference between success and failure often comes down to one thing: a detailed, comprehensive plan.

This is precisely why a robust website migration checklist is not just helpful, it's essential. This guide breaks down the entire complex process into 10 clear, chronological, and actionable steps. We will guide you through every critical phase, from the initial pre-migration audit and content inventory to the final post-launch monitoring and performance analysis. You will find everything you need to manage the transition with confidence.

We’ve designed this checklist to be a practical blueprint, providing specific implementation details and practical examples for each stage. We’ll also include Webflow-specific notes for teams moving to this powerful platform, helping you leverage its unique capabilities while avoiding common pitfalls. Whether you are replatforming to enhance your site's capabilities, consolidating multiple domains, or undertaking a complete redesign, this comprehensive list will ensure you protect your SEO authority, maintain a seamless user journey, and achieve your strategic goals. Let's get started.

1. Conduct a Complete Website Audit: Your Pre-Flight Inventory

Before planning your destination, you need a perfect map of your current location. A thorough audit of your existing website is the foundational first step in any successful website migration checklist. This process involves documenting all pages, content, functionality, and technical specifications to create a complete pre-flight inventory.

This inventory acts as an architectural blueprint, preventing content loss, ensuring no critical features are forgotten, and establishing the baseline for measuring success. For instance, a major e-commerce brand used Screaming Frog to audit 50,000+ pages, discovering thousands of orphan pages that were safely culled, which drastically simplified their migration. Similarly, a SaaS company’s pre-migration audit revealed a critical dependency on an outdated API, allowing them to address it before it could derail the launch.

Actionable Steps for Your Audit

To start, focus on cataloguing everything from URL structures and page hierarchies to custom code, forms, integrations, and critical dependencies. As part of your pre-flight inventory, thoroughly evaluating how to choose a web hosting provider is a foundational step for your new environment.

• Automate URL Crawling: Use tools like Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, or Semrush for a comprehensive URL inventory. This automates the discovery of every indexable page.
• Create a Master Spreadsheet: Document every URL with its corresponding page title, meta description, current traffic, and content type. This becomes your single source of truth. For a more detailed guide, you can explore this complete website audit checklist.
• Document User Journeys: Take screenshots or recordings of critical user flows, such as the checkout process, sign-up forms, or lead generation funnels. This provides a visual and functional reference for QA.
• Test Interactive Elements: Manually test every form, call-to-action, and interactive module to understand its exact functionality and any backend dependencies. This is non-negotiable for ensuring a seamless user experience post-migration.

2. Plan URL Structure and Redirect Strategy: Your Digital Forwarding Address

Failing to plan your URL redirects is like moving house and forgetting to tell the post office; you’ll lose valuable traffic and confuse your visitors. This step involves designing the optimal URL structure for your new site and creating a comprehensive 301 redirect map. This map tells search engines and users exactly where your old content has permanently moved, which is critical for preserving SEO equity, backlinks, and user experience.

This meticulous mapping is non-negotiable in any website migration checklist. When Moz migrated domains, its precise redirect strategy helped it maintain 95% of its search traffic, a testament to the power of a well-executed plan. Similarly, large-scale site consolidations, like those managed by Microsoft, rely on huge redirect matrices to seamlessly guide users and search bots across tens of thousands of pages without a drop in authority.

Actionable Steps for Your Redirect Strategy

Your goal is to create a one-to-one map from every old URL to its new equivalent. This ensures that every drop of link equity is passed on and no user ever hits a "404 Not Found" error. For businesses aiming for a high-performance site, this is a foundational SEO activity.

• Create a Redirect Mapping Spreadsheet: Use the URL inventory from your audit (Step 1) as your starting point. Create two columns: "Old URL" and "New URL". Methodically fill in the new destination for every single old page.
• Prioritise High-Value Pages: Pay special attention to pages with high traffic, backlinks, and keyword rankings. These are your most valuable assets, and their redirects must be flawless.
• Avoid Redirect Chains: Ensure your old URL (A) points directly to the new URL (C), not through an intermediate page (A→B→C). Chains can dilute link equity and slow down page load times.
• Implement and Test Before Launch: Implement your redirects in a staging environment. Use a tool like Screaming Frog to crawl your list of old URLs and verify they all return a 301 status code and resolve to the correct new page. This pre-launch check is crucial.

3. Backup All Existing Data and Content: Your Digital Safety Net

Before making any changes, you must secure a complete and verified backup of your entire existing website. This step is a non-negotiable insurance policy, creating a digital safety net that protects you from potential data loss, corruption, or catastrophic failures during the migration. It is the one action that guarantees you can restore your original site and revert to a stable state if anything goes wrong.

This process involves more than just copying files; it means creating a comprehensive snapshot of your website’s files, databases, user data, and server configurations. WordPress.com, for instance, automatically backs up over 50 million websites, demonstrating the critical importance of this practice at scale. Similarly, GitHub’s distributed backup strategy ensures that even major system failures don't lead to permanent data loss, a principle every business should adopt for their own website migration checklist. A reliable backup is your ultimate rollback plan.

Actionable Steps for Your Backup

Your backup strategy should be systematic and robust, ensuring data integrity and accessibility. The goal is to create multiple, secure copies that are easy to restore.

• Follow the 3-2-1 Backup Rule: This industry-standard practice provides strong data redundancy. Maintain three copies of your data on at least two different media types (e.g., a local server and cloud storage), with one of those copies stored off-site.
• Automate Your Backups: Use automated backup solutions provided by your hosting provider or third-party services like CodeGuard or DropMySite. Automation ensures consistency and removes the risk of human error.
• Test Your Restoration Procedure: A backup is useless if it cannot be restored. Before starting the migration, perform a test restoration on a staging server to verify the integrity of your backup files and familiarise yourself with the process.
• Secure and Document Everything: Encrypt your backup files to protect sensitive data. Meticulously document where each backup is stored, along with access credentials and restoration procedures, so your team can act quickly in an emergency.

4. Set Up Staging Environment and Test Migration: Your Full-Dress Rehearsal

A staging environment is a non-production, exact replica of your future live website setup. It’s your full-dress rehearsal space where you perform a complete test migration, allowing you to identify, troubleshoot, and resolve issues without impacting your live users or business operations. This step is a non-negotiable part of any professional website migration checklist.

This sandbox approach prevents launch-day disasters by providing a controlled environment for rigorous testing. For instance, major tech companies like Netflix and Amazon rely heavily on staging environments to deploy changes for hundreds of millions of users, ensuring stability and performance. By simulating the migration in a safe space, you can verify that all data, functionalities, and integrations work as expected before the final cutover.

Actionable Steps for Your Test Migration

The goal is to mirror your production environment as closely as possible, from server configurations to third-party integrations. This ensures that any issues discovered in staging are likely to reflect real-world challenges.

• Replicate Production Exactly: Use infrastructure-as-code (IaC) tools like Terraform or clone your hosting environment to create an identical staging setup. For a Webflow migration, this means setting up your new project with the same custom code, integrations, and CMS structure.
• Perform Multiple Migration Cycles: Don’t just test once. Run the migration script or process several times, using the latest code and a recent database backup. This helps refine the process and uncover intermittent issues.
• Anonymise Sensitive Data: For testing, use a sanitised or anonymised version of your production database to comply with data protection regulations like GDPR while still using realistic data volumes.
• Document and Prioritise Issues: Create a centralised log for all bugs found during testing. Categorise each issue by severity (e.g., critical, high, medium, low) to prioritise fixes effectively before the go-live date.

5. Verify SEO Elements and Meta Data: Safeguarding Your Search Rankings

Your website’s SEO metadata is the language it speaks to search engines. Neglecting to transfer these critical elements during a migration is like launching a ship without a rudder; you risk losing all directional control in search results. Verifying every piece of metadata ensures search engines understand your new site structure, preserving the rankings you’ve worked hard to earn.

This verification is a non-negotiable part of any comprehensive website migration checklist. It involves a meticulous check of page titles, meta descriptions, header tags (H1, H2, etc.), structured data, canonical tags, and meta robots directives. When Etsy migrated its platform, it successfully maintained rankings for over 100 million product pages by ensuring every piece of metadata was flawlessly transferred and verified. Similarly, HubSpot’s well-documented migration recovery emphasised the critical role of preserving SEO elements to regain and exceed previous traffic levels.

Actionable Steps for SEO Verification

To avoid a catastrophic drop in organic traffic, your goal is to replicate or improve upon your existing SEO foundation on the new site. This process demands precision and attention to detail before you go live.

• Preserve Existing Metadata: Use the URL inventory from your initial audit as a master reference. Ensure every page on the new site has its corresponding title tag and meta description from the old site.
• Implement and Validate Canonical Tags: Correctly implement rel="canonical" tags on all pages to prevent duplicate content issues, especially if URL parameters or multiple versions of a page exist. They must point to the new, definitive URL.
• Validate Structured Data: Use Google's Rich Results Test to confirm that all schema markup (for products, reviews, articles, etc.) is correctly implemented and error-free on the new site. Broken schema can lead to the loss of rich snippets in search results.
• Check robots.txt and sitemap.xml: Before launch, confirm your new robots.txt file isn't accidentally blocking search engine crawlers from important sections. Also, generate and submit an updated sitemap.xml with the new URL structure immediately after launch. For a deeper understanding of these on-page factors, you can explore this guide on how to optimise a website for SEO.

6. Test All Functionality and Integrations: The Final Systems Check

Your new website might look perfect, but if the engine doesn't run, it's just an empty shell. Comprehensive testing of every feature, form, payment system, and third-party integration is a non-negotiable step in your website migration checklist. This stage ensures that business-critical processes continue to function without interruption and that users have a seamless experience.

This final systems check is where you move from theory to practice, verifying that every interactive element works as expected in the new environment. For example, Shopify’s rigorous migration testing procedures are designed to prevent catastrophic payment gateway failures at launch. Similarly, Slack’s extensive integration testing ensures that thousands of third-party apps remain compatible after platform updates, preventing widespread disruption for its users. Failing to test properly is one of the most common causes of post-launch chaos.

Actionable Steps for Your Testing Phase

Organise a structured testing plan that covers every single interactive element, from the simplest contact form to complex API connections. This isn't just about clicking buttons; it's about validating the entire data flow and user journey.

• Create a Testing Matrix: Build a detailed spreadsheet listing all functionalities (e.g., user login, contact forms, newsletter sign-ups, checkout process). Assign testers and track the status (Pass/Fail) for each item.
• Verify Integrations and APIs: Check that all third-party services like CRM, analytics platforms, and marketing automation tools are correctly connected. Confirm that API keys and credentials have been updated for the new environment.
• Test with Real and Edge-Case Scenarios: Go beyond using "test" data. Use realistic information to test forms and processes. Crucially, test error scenarios: What happens when a user enters an invalid credit card number or an incorrect password?
• Conduct User Acceptance Testing (UAT): Involve key stakeholders or a small group of actual users to perform tasks on the new site. Their feedback is invaluable for catching issues that your internal team might overlook, ensuring the site is truly ready for its audience.

7. Implement Security Updates and SSL Certificates: Fortifying Your New Digital Home

Migrating your website is the perfect opportunity to fortify its defences. Implementing robust security measures, starting with an SSL/TLS certificate, is no longer optional; it's a critical step that protects user data, builds trust, and satisfies modern search engine requirements. This process involves ensuring your new site is served exclusively over HTTPS, protecting data in transit and preventing common cyber threats.

Think of it as changing the locks when you move into a new house. Google's "HTTPS everywhere" initiative has made this the standard, with browsers actively flagging non-secure sites and search engines favouring those that are encrypted. A financial services firm that neglected to renew its SSL certificate post-migration saw a direct 15% drop in conversions within 48 hours due to browser warnings scaring away potential customers. This highlights how security is now a core component of the user experience and a vital part of any website migration checklist.

Actionable Steps for Site Security

Start by procuring and installing an SSL certificate, but don’t stop there. Modern web security involves a multi-layered approach to protect against a range of vulnerabilities. This is particularly crucial if you handle any user data, from simple contact forms to complex e-commerce transactions.

• Install and Configure SSL/TLS: Use a service like Let's Encrypt for free, automated certificates or purchase a premium one for higher assurance. Most modern hosts, including Webflow, handle this automatically. Ensure it is correctly installed and that your site defaults to HTTPS.
• Implement HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS): Add an HSTS header to instruct browsers to only communicate with your server over a secure connection, preventing downgrade attacks.
• Configure Modern Security Headers: Implement headers like X-Frame-Options to prevent clickjacking, X-Content-Type-Options to stop MIME-sniffing attacks, and a Content Security Policy (CSP) to mitigate cross-site scripting (XSS).
• Conduct Vulnerability Scanning: Before and after launch, use tools like Qualys SSL Labs or security scanners to test your server configuration and identify potential weaknesses. Ensure all plugins, themes, and platform software are fully patched and up-to-date.

8. Monitor Performance and Analytics Setup

Without accurate data, you’re flying blind. Properly configuring analytics and performance monitoring on the new site is a non-negotiable step in your website migration checklist. This ensures you can accurately measure the migration's success, quickly identify performance bottlenecks, and maintain the continuity of your historical business data.

This process acts as your mission control, providing an early warning system for any issues that arise post-launch. For example, a B2B tech firm migrating to a new platform noticed a 40% drop in form submissions within hours of launch. Their pre-configured conversion tracking and error monitoring immediately pinpointed a broken JavaScript file, allowing for a rapid fix that saved thousands in potential lost leads. Similarly, setting up new Google Analytics properties is a standard practice that ensures a clean slate for measuring performance against new benchmarks.

Actionable Steps for Your Monitoring Setup

The goal is to have a complete, verified monitoring framework in place before you flip the switch. This involves migrating existing tools and setting up new ones to cover all angles, from user behaviour to server health. It's crucial that this part of the website migration checklist is handled meticulously to avoid data gaps.

• Configure Analytics Platforms: Install and verify tracking codes for tools like Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, or Plausible. Double-check that all IDs and configurations are correct in the new environment. For a deeper dive, review this guide on Google Analytics setup.
• Test Conversion Tracking: Manually run test transactions, fill out forms, and click key CTAs on the staging site to ensure all conversion events and goals are firing correctly. This validates the entire user funnel.
• Set Up Performance Monitoring: Implement tools like Google Search Console, Datadog, or New Relic to monitor server response times, uptime, and Core Web Vitals. Set up automated alerts for critical errors or performance degradation.
• Create Post-Launch Dashboards: Build a dedicated dashboard displaying key pre- and post-migration metrics side-by-side. This should include traffic, conversion rates, bounce rates, and keyword rankings for easy comparison. Plan for at least one to two weeks of heightened monitoring after launch.

9. Execute Cutover and Launch Plan: The Final Push

This is the moment of truth. The cutover is the meticulously planned, time-sensitive process of switching from your old website to the new one. It involves a coordinated sequence of technical actions: updating DNS records, deploying the new site files, and officially taking the old site offline. This phase is the culmination of your entire website migration checklist and demands precision to minimise downtime and ensure a smooth transition.

A well-executed cutover prevents user disruption and protects revenue. For example, Spotify orchestrated its major architecture migration with zero downtime by using a blue-green deployment strategy, routing traffic to the new environment incrementally. In contrast, Twitter's 2010 search migration required over 15 minutes of planned downtime, a scenario most modern businesses aim to avoid. The key is a detailed runbook that leaves nothing to chance.

Actionable Steps for a Flawless Launch

Your launch plan should be a step-by-step script that the entire team follows. The goal is to make the process predictable, repeatable, and reversible if necessary. This script should be finalised and rehearsed well before the go-live date.

• Schedule During Off-Peak Hours: Plan the cutover for a low-traffic window, such as very early in the morning or over a weekend, to minimise the impact on users.
• Prepare a Detailed Runbook: Document every single step of the launch process, from DNS changes to final verification checks. Assign specific roles and responsibilities to each team member.
• Assemble an Incident Response Team: Have your core technical team on standby during the cutover window. This should include developers, system administrators, and SEO specialists, ready to troubleshoot immediately.
• Lower DNS TTL in Advance: 24-48 hours before the migration, lower the Time-To-Live (TTL) on your DNS records to five minutes. This ensures the new IP address propagates quickly across the internet once you make the switch. Remember to increase it back to a standard value post-launch.

10. Post-Migration Testing and Monitoring: The Critical First 72 Hours

The moment your new site goes live isn't the finish line; it’s the start of the most critical observation period. Post-migration testing and monitoring involves an intensive, real-time watch over your website for the first 24-72 hours to catch and resolve any issues that only appear under the stress of live traffic. This phase is your final validation that the migration was successful and is essential for ensuring business continuity.

This immediate vigilance is non-negotiable for protecting revenue and user experience. For example, after a major migration, Target's real-time monitoring team identified a checkout process failure affecting a small segment of users, allowing them to deploy a hotfix within an hour and prevent significant revenue loss. Similarly, after its redesign, TechCrunch published its own traffic monitoring data, showing the initial fluctuations and how its team used that data to stabilise performance, providing a transparent look at the importance of this step in any website migration checklist.

Actionable Steps for Monitoring

Your goal is to move from a pre-launch testing mindset to a live production monitoring one. This requires a dedicated team, clear communication channels, and pre-configured tools ready to track performance and flag anomalies the second they occur. Having a rapid response plan is just as important as the monitoring itself.

• Establish Real-Time Dashboards: Set up monitoring dashboards using tools like Google Analytics 4 (Realtime report), Datadog, or New Relic with alerts configured for critical metrics like server errors (5xx), page load times, and conversion rates.
• Check Google Search Console Daily: For the first week, check Google Search Console for new crawl errors, indexation issues, or manual actions every single day. Pay close attention to the "Pages" report for any unexpected drops in indexed URLs.
• Monitor Critical User Journeys: Use synthetic monitoring tools like Pingdom or UptimeRobot to continuously test key user flows, such as adding an item to the cart, completing a purchase, or submitting a contact form.
• Organise Daily Stand-ups: For the first week, hold a daily stand-up meeting with the migration team to review monitoring data, discuss any reported bugs, and prioritise fixes. This ensures swift, organised responses to post-launch issues.

10-Point Website Migration Comparison

Your Migration Is Complete - Now Focus on Growth

Executing a website migration is no small feat. It is a meticulous, multi-stage process that combines technical precision with strategic foresight. By diligently working through this comprehensive website migration checklist, you have laid a robust foundation for your digital future. You’ve moved beyond mere planning and into successful execution, a significant milestone that protects your hard-earned SEO authority, preserves user trust, and unlocks new potential.

The journey from initial audit to post-launch monitoring is demanding, but the rewards are substantial. Your new website, whether it’s a fresh Webflow build or a platform shift, is now faster, more secure, and better positioned to meet the evolving demands of your audience and the market. The complex tasks of mapping thousands of URLs, verifying every piece of metadata, and stress-testing functionality are now behind you. This is the moment to transition your mindset from preservation to progression.

From Technical Execution to Strategic Optimisation

With the technical heavy lifting complete, your focus can now pivot from the granular details of migration to the broader landscape of digital growth. The successful launch isn't the finish line; it's the starting line for a new phase of optimisation and expansion. You have a powerful new platform, and now is the time to leverage it to its full potential.

Think of your new site as a high-performance engine. The migration was the expert installation; now you get to fine-tune it and see how fast it can really go. This involves several key areas:

• Content Strategy Refinement: Your new site structure may present fresh opportunities for content clusters, pillar pages, and new keyword targeting. Analyse post-launch performance data to identify which content resonated during the transition and double down on those themes.
• Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO): With a stable platform, you can begin systematic A/B testing on calls-to-action, landing page layouts, and user journeys. Small, incremental improvements can lead to significant gains in lead generation and sales over time.
• Performance Monitoring: Continue to use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix. The goal is not just to maintain your launch-day performance but to continuously seek improvements as you add new content and features.
• User Feedback Integration: Actively solicit feedback from your users about their experience on the new site. Use tools like heatmaps, session recordings, and simple surveys to understand how they interact with the new design and identify any points of friction you may have missed.

Building Momentum for Long-Term Success

A successful migration prevents you from taking a step backward, but a proactive post-migration strategy is what propels you forward. It’s crucial to amplify your new site’s launch and ensure your target audience knows about the improvements you’ve made. To ensure sustained success after the migration, it's vital to implement a comprehensive marketing and outreach strategy that re-engages your existing audience and attracts new visitors. This is how you transform the technical achievement of a migration into tangible business results.

Ultimately, mastering the website migration checklist is about more than just avoiding disaster. It is about seizing an opportunity to rebuild, reorganise, and revitalise your most important digital asset. You’ve successfully navigated the complexities and set the stage for what comes next. Embrace this new beginning, build on your solid foundation, and turn your new website into a powerful engine for growth.

Ready to transform your successful migration into accelerated growth? At Derrick.dk, we specialise in optimising Webflow sites for conversion and performance, helping you leverage your new platform to its absolute fullest. Let us partner with you to build on your momentum and turn your website into your most effective marketing tool.