Site Migration Question

[Khoo]

Hi Guys,

I am preparing for a pretty standard site migration. Small business website moving to a new domain, new branding and new cms.

Pretty much a perfect storm.

Right now the new website is being designed and will need another month, however the client is pretty antsy to get her new brand out over the web. We cannot change the current site, which has the old branding.

She wants to start passing out business cards and hang banners with the new domain and brand. However, I don't want to be messing with any redirects and potentially screw up a clean migration from the old site to the new. To be specific, she wants to redirect the new domain to the current domain and then when the new site, flip the redirect.

However, I'm a little apprehensive with that because a site migration from the current to the new is already so intricate, I don't want to leave any possibility of error.

I'm trying to figure out the best solution, these are 2 options I am thinking of:

1. DO NOT market new domain. Reprint all Marketing material and wait until new domain is up and then start marketing it. (At cost to client)
2. Create a one pager on new domain saying the site is being built & have a No Follow link to the current site. No redirects added. Just the no follow link.

I'd like option 2 so that the client could start passing out material, but my number one concern is messing with any part of the migration.

We are about to submit a sitemap index to Google Search Console for the current site, so we are just starting the site migration.

What do you guys think?

[Khoo]

You helped validate my thoughts. Yeah, the reason I am taking this so seriously is because we are taking so much time to map out the old domain and the pages to their corresponding new pages, that I don't want something like this to ruin it.

The client ended up saying that they don't mind reprinting a handful of business cards to reflect the old domain and then use the new cards when the new site is up. Either way, I think both options are doable.

Thanks mememax! Appreciate it.

[mememax]

I imagine there is no way to show the new design and layout on the old domain.

If that's the case I find option #2 to be the best. You are showing the new website while keeping the areas you're developing closed, and without any redirects. It's critical that you place redirect from old to new website after everything is ready so you can make a page by page or section by sections redirect and not send everything to the homepage.

I understand that clients sometimes wants to move forward but it's better to make things right. You're still providing hiim/her and option to start marketing it, although I still think it's not a good idea as people will see a work in progress website. Ensure to explain all the drawbacks on moving on early as you may be wasting a good marketing opportunity.