Post-migration testing and considerations

Once your Kentico website is migrated to WordPress, it’s crucial to conduct a thorough post-migration assessment. Ensure content is accurate, design is consistent, and SEO is optimized. Test website features, monitor performance, and implement robust security measures. Here’s how you can improve your website’s performance and user experience.

Content validation

Ensure all content (blog posts, pages, custom post types) is fully transferred. Compare against your Kentico backup and content mapping audit to identify missing or incorrectly formatted content. You could break this down in 2 steps: 

Link verification: Check all internal and external links to ensure they work and redirect correctly.

Content consistency: Verify formatting, word count, and page structure are consistent across the migrated site.

Design validation

Ensuring design consistency requires a thorough testing strategy that covers various aspects of usability, accessibility, and compatibility. Here’s a breakdown of the key types of testing to include:

1. Cross-browser testing:
   • Validate your design across all major browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, etc.).
   • Ensure layouts, fonts, and colors render correctly and interact as expected in each environment.
2. Device testing:
   • Test your design on a range of devices, including desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones.
   • Include both iOS and Android platforms to ensure compatibility.
3. Screen resolution testing:
   • Verify that your design adapts seamlessly to various screen sizes and resolutions, from 4K displays to smaller mobile screens.
   • Test with responsive design tools or manually resize browser windows.
4. Accessibility testing:
   • Ensure compliance with accessibility standards (e.g., WCAG 2.1).
   • Use tools like Lighthouse or Axe to identify issues related to screen readers, screen magnifiers, keyboard navigation, color contrast, and more.
5. Automated UI testing (e.g., Playwright, Selenium):
   • Run automated test scripts to verify UI consistency and identify visual or functional anomalies across different environments.
6. User Acceptance Testing (UAT):
   • Involve real users to evaluate the design’s usability and effectiveness in meeting their needs.
7. ​​Regression Testing:
   • Ensure recent updates or fixes haven’t introduced new design issues, maintaining consistency across versions.

Media library validation

Confirm that all media files, including images, videos, and other assets, are present, in the right folders and accessible in the WordPress media library. Check that alt text, titles, and captions are intact, as these can impact your SEO.

Test media files on content pages to ensure they load correctly and are displayed as intended. This will also be covered in your design testing and validation. 

Also ensure that any videos that you use have a low waiting time without loading errors.

Functional testing

Thoroughly test all interactive components and workflows to ensure they function as intended:

Interactive Elements:

• Validate the behavior of forms, buttons, and navigation menus.
• Check each form submission, button click, and navigation link to confirm they perform the expected actions seamlessly.

User Roles and Permissions:

• Verify that WordPress user roles, permissions, and capabilities are correctly configured.
• Ensure users can access the appropriate content and administrative controls based on their roles without any security lapses.

A comprehensive functional testing process helps identify and resolve issues, ensuring a smooth and error-free user experience across the website.

Performance testing

Leverage performance tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix to evaluate and optimize your website’s loading speed. These tools can help identify bottlenecks and offer actionable recommendations to enhance performance.

Key tips for improvement:

• Reduce server requests: Minimize unnecessary requests by optimizing frontend development, including CSS and JavaScript.
• Content Delivery Network (CDN): Implement a CDN (e.g., Cloudflare) to deliver site content faster to users globally.
• Image optimization: Compress images without compromising quality to reduce page load times.
• Leverage lazy loading: Load images and videos only when they come into the user’s viewport.
• Enable caching: Use browser and server-side caching to speed up repeated visits.
• Optimize hosting: Ensure your hosting environment is configured for optimal performance.

🚀 Proven impact: By adopting these optimizations, one of our clients improved their site performance by 48% with their new WordPress stack, resulting in faster load times and a better user experience.

Security testing

When you are switching to a new CMS, security is another key aspect that you should set your guard. Here are a few recommendations you must consider: 

1. Use security plugins:
   • Install plugins like Wordfence, Sucuri, and Akismet to monitor and secure your site from threats like malware, spam, and brute force attacks.
2. Regular audits:
   • Perform vulnerability scans using tools like WPScan and plugintests.com to identify outdated plugins, themes, or misconfigured settings.
3. Update plugins and themes:
   • Keep all plugins, themes, and the WordPress core up-to-date to fix known vulnerabilities.
4. Host with security-first providers:
   • We suggest opting for WordPress VIP, which offers FedRAMP-certified hosting with robust security measures.
5. Login security:
   • Ensure two-factor authentication is enabled.
   • Verify role-based access controls are properly configured and tested for all user roles.
6. Permission checks:
   • Audit file and folder permissions to prevent unauthorized access.
7. Backup strategy:
   • Regularly back up your website and store copies securely to recover quickly in case of breaches.

Comprehensive security testing ensures your site is safeguarded against threats, giving you peace of mind.

Enhancing post-migration user experience

After migration, use behavioral analysis tools like heatmaps and session recordings to refine your site. Comparing these insights with your pre-migration audit ensures a comprehensive understanding of changes and opportunities for improvement:

1. Click maps: Visualize where users interact most to refine navigation and CTAs.
2. Scroll maps: Determine how far users scroll to adjust content placement effectively.
3. Time on page: Analyze time spent on pages to assess engagement levels.
4. Conversion funnels: Track user journeys to identify drop-offs and optimization opportunities.
5. Error tracking: Detect and resolve technical issues affecting user experience.

Regular comparisons with pre-migration data help validate improvements and refine strategies.

Enhance backend and functional considerations

As your migration nears completion, focus on optimizing backend processes to ensure seamless operation:

1. Test core functionalities: Access the WordPress admin dashboard and ensure content editing, plugin management, and media handling work smoothly.
2. Plugin validation: Confirm all plugins function without conflicts, especially those critical to performance, security, and user experience.
3. Goal alignment: Cross-check whether the original migration goals (e.g., speed improvement, easier management) were met. Adjust configurations or explore alternative solutions if necessary.

Assess SEO Impact and Strategy Refinement

Post-migration, it’s crucial to monitor and refine your website’s SEO performance. This involves using various tools to track SEO metrics, fix any technical issues, and adjust your content strategy accordingly.

SEO monitoring:

• Use Google Analytics to track user behavior, engagement, and compare with pre-migration benchmarks.
• In Google Search Console, review traffic patterns, keyword rankings, and page index status, including redirects, noindex tags, canonical tags, and any errors (404, 5xx, etc.). Ensure technical details align for proper SERP indexing.

HTML validation:

• Leverage W3C Validator to fix HTML errors, ensuring your site maintains web accessibility and SEO performance.

Content Strategy Adjustments:

Address any SEO gaps, such as missing metadata or keyword opportunities, to improve search visibility.
Refine underperforming content and optimize high-performing pages to maintain SEO visibility.