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With the current declaration that Adobe going to close their Business Catalyst network on 26th, March 2021, for the business owners who are looking to make the smooth transition to the third-party service – it is the right time to act. Even though Adobe was very much excited to acquire their system back earlier in 2009, but it appears the SaaS platform has run the course, and migration is right there with 26th, March 2021 being its official end date of this software. (Offical post can be found here.)

The Business Catalyst system offers a series of different functions for the websites that includes content management, email marketing, eCommerce, reporting and analytics, Integrated CRM database, and social media integration.

For some, one easy solution is migrating from Business Catalyst to WordPress as it is the primary CMS solutions for the professionals and businesses. This system is simple to use, provides many design possibilities, powerful statistics as well as is mobile optimized. Suppose you are considering to convert your business Catalyst to WordPress, then why not look under the hood & knows how WordPress will help your business to fire on all the cylinders & drive more traffic in your business.

Business Catalyst is now dead. What next?

Business Catalyst has been the most popular choice for the businesses and web agencies as it offered the good solution for ECommerce, Content Management, Email Marketing, Customer Relationship Management, and Reporting. This was highly convenient solution and now business catalyst has announced its end, the existing business catalyst customers have to migrate their websites to the new platform. They are seeing value in changing it to WordPress CMS & alternative systems in organizing their website. It will be the daunting and overwhelming task to change their website CMS from Adobe platform however by switching it to WordPress we have found that it has improved SEO rankings. Also, there is no point to continue to develop on the platform that does not have long future.

Why to Choose WordPress?

WordPress is really simple and good to use and extendable if you want to build in additional functions, with use of plugins.

WordPress also brings plenty of opportunities for the websites. It is a CMS platform and world’s highly popular platform ever! This brings the cheaper development, simple to use as well as updates regularly. There is Search Engine ranking benefits and many more advantages.

Without any doubt, WordPress is one most popular CMS out there. We’ve compiled the list of most amazing WordPress stats to back this claim.

  • WordPress is also becoming the highly preferred choice for web creation with plenty of WordPress websites build daily being over 800.
  • WordPress has a whopping 60% of share in the global CMS market. Right now, it’s powering to 31% of the web.
  • Users produce around 87.2 million of new posts & 51.3 million of new comments every month. 179.
  • WordPress is available in over 120 languages. Total number of the available locales is around
  • WordPress had unbelievable 13% of keyword density; it means each tenth word that is typed in the Google Keyword Planner was ‘WordPress’.

Despite WordPress enjoying huge popularity, most of the users are highly concerned about security of this platform. However, a report states that security breaches had got nothing with CMS application. The improper deployment, lack of maintenance and configuration by webmasters were, actually, the normal culprits. With the managed WP hosts & streamlined technology, the users can address their security issues without breaking their bank.

CRM Functionality

Whereas there are the complex CRM plugins, suppose you want something complex, you can use the purposeful CRM service & integrate this with WordPress. For the contact forms with the logged submissions, there are plenty of Plugins, Contact form 7 being the most popular.

Email Campaigns

There are many popular plugins for making marketing campaigns from the WordPress dashboard, Mailpoet is being one of them. Whereas it works, it is not very flexible as Campaign Monitor or MailChimp. However, if you wish to use Third Party services such as MailChimp or Campaign Monitor there always integration available for WordPress so quite easy job.

Your Website Design

In the WordPress layout of the website’s presentation is known as Theme. Themes can easily be swapped, but suppose you are developing the website that is specific to your business, you are unlikely to change it then You can always opt for WordPress Theme Development Service.

Ecommerce and Online Shops

Woocommerce is an ecommerce shop for all WordPress users. The payment gateways are well supported and there are subscription payments & event bookings add-on available too. Business Catalyst makes this simple to export any of your current products from the shop. When you have CSV spreadsheets having your product data you may import this data in woo commerce which is pretty straightforward or you can take help of any Custom WooCommerce development company.

Custom Web App Functionality

Unluckily there is no any easy way for the custom Business Catalyst Webapps to get transition in WordPress system apps and have to rebuild in WordPress way. However, There are plenty of WordPress Plugins you can take use to rebuild it or you can always hire any WordPress Plugin Development agency to help you with that.

Multiple Users

WP makes it simple to manage various users and roles for your website. It is easy to add the user and modify permissions like editor, administrator, contributor, author, and subscriber. WordPress provides flexibility with backend users so that you will have one or more administrator, in case you need there are multiple people who are managing the website at a time so the multiple users will contribute to your website without going through administrator every time. This will help you streamline the website updates as well as keeping the website updated consistently.

Steps to Your Business Catalyst to WordPress Migration

  1. Once you decide to migrate the site to WordPress, Make yourself prepared for it.
  2. Crawl and map the old existing website by using Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. Extract page titles & existing page URLs. Here you have to ensure you have the complete list of URLs on to your old website so nothing ends up being lost due to transition. This you can do manually or using any tool
  3. Benchmark your analytics by using Google Analytics and you can identify if any of your traffic gets lost after migration.
  4. Conduct the content audit. Determine what content or pages to keep, or update and make notes on the sheet from step #2.
  5. Design the new website plan & structure.
  6. Build the new website on staging server and migrate the existing content and make use of existing URLs wherever possible.
  7. Update existing website map made in Step #2, by noting URL changes from your old website to new one. Note any of the removed pages for the redirection.
  8. Generate the new sitemap & submit your current Google Console account
  9. Ensure all the tracking codes & Google Analytics is installed correctly on the new website.
  10. Update the domain DNS pointing within the domain registrar to webhosting account & turn 301 redirects on for any URLS change. Take a note of HTTPs & www or non-www considerations.
  11. Monitor Google Analytics & Google Search Console and keeping close attention on: dips in the traffic, indexed page count and increasing 404s.
  12. Time to get happy as you have made this move successfully.

Is WordPress secure enough?

Definitely, WordPress is one huge target because of its amazing popularity. It does not take much work for securing it. Install the reputable security plugin and keep things updated and automate the regular backups. WordPress websites get hacked while they run outdated themes and plugins or use insecure passwords.

WordPress is heavy on maintenance

Not true. You will have to monitor the website for any updates but if you keep number of your installed plugins minimum, you will cut down on the notification nagging as well. You may easily keep things updated with one single click. Or you can always hire any WordPress Maintenace Servicefor few bucks.

Final Words

Although “End of Life” announcement of Adobe BC comes as a big surprise, truth is that old technologies may continue to get replaced by the new ones. Suppose you are looking to stay ahead from your competitors, you have to keep your business and website updated. Hopefully, these pointers can help you to make this transition from Business Catalyst to WordPress very less stressful & more productive. With the fresh look, you will have to get ready and improve your website ranking & outreach with WordPress.