"Out with the old..."

SDL Tridion's Erik Aeyelts Averink explains why demand for Web content migration is at an all time high and provides some tips on how to smoothly transition from the old to the new.

With the Internet becoming an ever more dominant medium of communication, companies are increasingly turning their attention to their Web presence. Today, there is general consent that company Web sites are the main or only point of contact with customers and are essential in driving business and promoting customer satisfaction and retention.  Persuasive statistics are hitting the headlines on a regular basis, with Forrester recently reporting that 96% of companies expect to see an even greater increase in Web interaction with their customers over the next two years[1].

In many cases, company Web sites have barely been touched since the Internet boom of the late nineties and early noughties.  With consumers driving the demand for more effective Web communication, and many going elsewhere if websites are not up to scratch, companies can no longer afford to be satisfied with ‘just good enough’ Web sites. Instead, many companies are investing in second generation sites that make the most of what the new Web has to offer, resulting in customer retention and, of course, increased profitability.

A recent Gartner report[2] outlined the rise in the importance of company Web sites, underlining that the Internet is no longer simply a corporate brochure, but should be used by companies to take full advantage of the potential support on offer from the Web.  In other words, businesses should see their Web sites as ‘multi-channel’ communications vehicles, capable of reaching customers through a range of channels such as e-newsletters, blogs, transactions, podcasts and other interactive devices.

But, having invested in developing content for their current sites over several years, upgrading to a new Web site can seem like an ominous task.  How will they ensure that all the old content is not wasted? How will they manage the migration of what they have without setting aside several staff for several months?  “Content migration” can seem like a lengthy process that either puts people off or is only lightly considered when entering into the upgrade process, but moving legacy content requires serious consideration and planning.

Some Content Management vendors provide software to aid and ease the task, but, however you go about your Web site upgrade there are a number of areas that should be taken into consideration when entering into the content migration process:

Ensure your focus goes beyond migrating just the content

The value of migrating content is ultimately in what you do with the content once you have moved it.  Content migration is not simply about software but relies heavily on people and processes. Successful content migration projects involve a precise plan and a sound understanding of business needs which results in the production of clear, accurate and relevant content.  It is vital to ensure your focus goes beyond migrating just the content.

Steer clear of manual conversion 

Employing manual conversion is not only time consuming and expensive but is inclined to human error which leads to delays and cascading inaccuracies.  Statistics show that a regular page of content will take between 15 to 25 minutes to convert. This means that a conversion project of just 2,000 pages will require around 22 weeks of man hours to complete.

Take content volume increase into account

One element many content migration projects fail to anticipate is that an organisation’s content is not as orderly, up-to-date or usable as expected.  During the upgrading process, new sources of content are often revealed and the original estimate of the volume of content is likely to increase.  In addition, content is regularly found to be superfluous or inaccurate. It is important that your content migration plans are flexible enough to take different data source formats into account.

Continuous content migration

Ensure you anticipate scenarios where multiple systems run in parallel.  Situations can arise whereby companies need to keep two or more systems running live during the migration process. In such situations the toolset needs to be capable of continuously synchronising the two datasets without having to do a complete re-migration.

Ultimately, a successful content migration project is all about making sure that the relevant content is extracted, transformed, cleaned up, enriched and implemented into a new content management system, resulting in an efficient, accurate and user friendly upgraded Web site that meets your customers every need.

Whatever happens, with customers pushing for ever greater Web functionality, firms must embrace the next generation of the Internet and it’s clear that you will get left behind if you don't start planning now.

SDL Tridion’s Top Three Tips

1. People and tools – a good plan and understanding of the content migration process is important but it is also essential to have good people and good tools to secure a smooth content migration process.

2. Evolution, not revolution – allow the project the time it needs.  Security and runtime mean a phased approach is required which will ensure a first class final product.

3. Minimise risk - update migrated content outside the database environment.  Complying with existing security policies and standardising content structures means that during content migration, you will avoid downtime of the existing site.

[1] Forrester Research, “Trends 2006: Web Content Management”

[2] Gartner Research, “New Demands Have Revived Web Content Management” January 2006 www.gartner.com