Website migration
Moving away from your old agency
When clients find themselves in a situation where they don’t want to carry on with their existing digital agency they often think that they will need to have their website/s rebuilt. While this can sometimes makes sense, particularly if the website is fairly old, often it is more efficient and less costly to migrate the support and hosting of the website to a new agency.
This is a scenario that we come across fairly regularly and we have a clear process in place to ensure that it is handled smoothly. Often clients have contacted us because they are just not getting the service level that they expect or the agency is just not capable of meeting all their requirements. We offer a 'single stop shop' for all your digital requirements: support, hosting, advanced development, apps, design & branding, SEO, PPC and social media marketing etc.
The migration process
At Moore-Wilson, we have taken over lots of sites from other web agencies and have a clear and easy process to follow. We do everything we can to make the migration as smooth as possible, often with no downtime at all - you'll be surprised how little you actually have to do. Below is an outline of our site migration process:
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Step 1:
- We obtain a copy of the site (code and database). This can be sent to us, or if given access, we can download this directly.
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Step 2:
- We set up our copy of the site onto one of our test servers. We run our own initial tests and we then make it available for the client to check it.
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Step 3:
- We carry out a code audit of the migrated site. You will get a written report with clear recommendations, from quick fixes through to ideas for strategic improvements.
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Step 4:
- When the test site is approved we copy it to our live ('production') environment, this includes ensuring that the content is in synch with the current live site.
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Step 5:
- The client makes a DNS update, so that the domain name (URL) points to our server. If granted access, we can do this for the client if required.
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Step 6:
- The site is now live on our servers and we can start supporting it.
The MW Support team has been amazing helping to get our website moving and sorting out all the bits and pieces, really impressed.
"Hosting with Moore-Wilson
Our dedicated hosting team are available 24/7 and our ‘always included’ services include daily backups, 24 x 7 website/service monitoring, disaster recovery as well as our full management service. We can also offer extra services such as geographic/service redundant replicas, domain names, DNS services & SSL Certificates.
We pride ourselves on our uptime & availability. With full N+1 redundancy and uptime of 100% being the norm (and SLA guarantees), we exceed most of our competitors.
Read more about our hosting services here.
Supporting your website
You can always contact our dedicated support team directly (no ticketing system) via email, Basecamp or telephone.
Our website support retainers range in size from a few hours per month to a lot more, depending on the needs of our clients, how many sites they have etc.
As well as carrying out client requests and changes to the website, the support retainer also covers:
- Proactively monitoring and applying security updates
- Bespoke training and consultation as needed
- A monthly report, detailing time logged
- Regular review meetings
- Any unused hours simply roll forward to the next month (so you don’t lose them)
Support clients can also make use of our other services, such as design and branding and SEO and digital marketing.
Read more about our Support services here.
Case studies
SMB
SMB (Simons Muirhead Burton London) approached us on recommendation from one of their employees who we had previously worked with at a different firm.
SMB were in a position where the agency who had built the website could not really offer ongoing support to meet SMB’s needs, and so had decided to find a new agency.
After initial conversations around the support they needed, they made the decision to move both hosting and support to Moore-Wilson, as this would provide the most robust and streamlined service. Costs and packages were agreed, and we sent over a list of clear steps and agreed on timescales for the full migration.
Without any downtime, the migration was completed on agreed dates. There were a few issues and bugs that were carried over on the website that were quickly resolved by the M-W development team before launch and the SMB website is now fully supported and maintained by Moore-Wilson. This includes 24/7 managed hosting, a UAT staging site, proactive monitoring for security updates and client support requests.
UK Finance
After winning a tender process to rebuild UK Finance’s main website in 2021, they also asked us to take over hosting and support of their existing Drupal 7 website and a number of microsites.
Moore-Wilson are experts in Drupal development so this was completed without any issues.
Internally, UK finance had also made a decision to streamline all their digital suppliers and wanted to have just one digital agency to look after all their sites. We were delighted to be chosen as their digital partner.
As they had a lot of websites (built by different agencies and in different CMS) we carefully planned a full migration project that would see us migrating over 10 sites. Each site was audited and tested extensively before going live on our servers and we worked closely with the UK Finance project manager and the incumbent agencies, resulting in a smooth process.
In the meantime the new UK Finance new website has been launched and we continue to work with UK Finance as a valued client.
How can we help?
