Before hiring a website migration agency, ask how they protect URLs and rankings, who will actually do the work, whether you can start with a paid audit, and what they will commit to in writing. Bejamas, a senior web development and CMS migration agency, has compiled the ten questions that separate agencies with a migration method from agencies with a migration slide, along with what a good answer sounds like and what a weak one sounds like.
Use these in the second meeting, once the agency has seen your brief. The first meeting tells you whether they understand your estate. The second tells you whether they can move it safely. If the shortlist itself is still open, start with how to choose a website migration company.
1. Can you show us your migration method in writing before we sign?
Why it matters. Migration is a repeatable discipline. An agency that does it regularly has a runbook: content inventory templates, a redirect mapping process, a staging test plan, a launch checklist, a monitoring schedule. If they cannot show it, they will be improvising on your estate.
A good answer is a redacted runbook from a recent migration, plus an offer to walk you through it.
A weak answer is “every project is different, so we build the plan once we’re engaged.” Every project is different. The method is not.
Bejamas publishes its own method as three phases and six steps, so you can see what a documented migration looks like before you ask to see theirs.
2. How exactly will you protect our rankings, traffic and URLs?
Why it matters. This is the question the whole project hinges on. You want to hear about a 1:1 redirect map, not “we’ll set up redirects.” You want to hear about metadata, canonicals, structured data and hreflang being preserved, internal links updated rather than left to redirect, analytics parity checked before launch, and monitoring against a pre-migration benchmark afterwards.
A good answer describes the redirect mapping process, who owns it, when it starts (during discovery, not before launch) and how it is tested in staging.
A weak answer mentions redirects once and moves on to design.
For the full picture of what should be in that answer, read How to Preserve SEO During a Website Migration.
3. Who will work on our migration, and will they still be here in a year?
Why it matters. The team that pitches is often not the team that delivers, and migrations punish handoffs. The people who built the redirect map are the people who can fix it in an hour when a market team spots a broken URL.
A good answer names the designers and engineers, gives their tenure, and confirms they stay on the account through launch and beyond. Bejamas works this way as standard: the seniors you meet in discovery are the seniors who run the estate afterwards.
A weak answer is “we’ll assemble the right team once the SOW is signed.”
4. Have you shipped on the platform you are recommending, and why that platform for us?
Why it matters. Two failure modes hide behind this question. The first is an agency recommending a CMS it has never delivered on. The second is an agency recommending the only CMS it ever delivers on.
A good answer points to shipped work on the recommended platform, ideally visible in the vendor’s partner directory, and explains the recommendation in terms of your editorial workflows, markets, integrations and budget. It should also tell you which alternatives were considered and why they lost. Sometimes the right answer is to stay on your current platform, and a neutral agency will say so.
A weak answer is a platform name with a feature list attached.
5. Can we start with a paid discovery or audit before committing to the full programme?
Why it matters. A small first step protects both sides. You get a written inventory, an SEO benchmark and a phased plan with budget options before you commit six figures. The agency scopes what it can see rather than what it guesses.
A good answer is a fixed-price discovery, two to six weeks, with a defined set of deliverables you can use whether or not you continue.
A weak answer is a full proposal on the spot. Treat “we don’t need discovery, we’ve done this before” as a risk flag, not as confidence.
6. How do you handle multiple markets, brands and integrations?
Why it matters. If your estate spans markets, brands or heavy integrations, this is where migrations get expensive and slow. You want an agency that thinks in web estates, not websites: one content model that serves many brands, localisation architecture that market teams can actually operate, and integration mapping done in discovery rather than discovered in sprint eight.
A good answer describes a consolidation they have delivered, how they handled market-level content ownership, and how a new brand or market is onboarded after launch.
A weak answer treats markets as copies of the main site.
7. What performance and accessibility targets will you commit to in the contract?
Why it matters. Core Web Vitals affect rankings and conversion. Accessibility is a legal requirement in the EU under the European Accessibility Act and a compliance expectation almost everywhere else. An agency that will not commit to numbers is telling you how confident it is in its own engineering.
A good answer names targets and offers them as acceptance criteria: for example, Lighthouse 90 or above, TTFB under 200 ms and WCAG 2.1 AA. Bejamas offers targets of this kind as acceptance criteria as standard.
A weak answer is “we always build performant sites.”
8. How will you report progress, hours and budget, and how often?
Why it matters. You should be able to answer “what is happening, what does it cost and why” to your own management without scheduling a call. That only works if the agency narrates the work in writing, proactively.
A good answer describes a reporting cadence (weekly or twice-weekly hours and progress, written budget options when something changes, decisions documented with trade-offs) and offers to show you an example report.
A weak answer is “you’ll have a dedicated account manager.”
9. How do you work with UAT, security testing and procurement?
Why it matters. Complex organisations have governance. User acceptance testing, security questionnaires, procurement matrices, steering committees, brand teams in markets. An agency that has never worked inside these will treat them as delays. One that has will plan for them.
A good answer describes how UAT was run on their last migration, how they handled a security review, and how long procurement typically took.
A weak answer sounds surprised by the question.
10. What happens after launch?
Why it matters. Migration does not end at go-live. Search engines take weeks to process redirects; Google Search Central notes that larger sites take longer to settle and recommends keeping redirects in place for at least a year. Your editors need training and documentation. Something will break in week two.
A good answer covers hypercare, monitoring against the pre-migration benchmark, redirect retention, documentation and editor training, and a model for running the estate afterwards. At Bejamas this is the Run phase: the same team stays on a quarterly retainer and reports business impact, not just activity.
A weak answer is a support email address.
Three questions for their references
Ask to speak to a client whose migration resembled yours in shape (multi-market, multi-brand, SEO-critical), not in industry. Then ask:
- What went wrong, and how did the agency handle it?
- Are the same people still on your account?
- If you had to migrate again tomorrow, what would you ask them to do differently?
Scorecard
Score each answer from 0 (no real answer) to 3 (specific, evidenced, in writing). Weight the questions that matter most to your estate. The eight standards of a great website migration agency describe what a full-mark answer looks like.
| # | Question | Weight | Agency A | Agency B | Agency C |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Migration method in writing | 3 | |||
| 2 | SEO, URL and ranking protection | 3 | |||
| 3 | Named team and continuity | 3 | |||
| 4 | Platform experience and neutrality | 2 | |||
| 5 | Paid discovery first | 2 | |||
| 6 | Markets, brands, integrations | 2 to 3 | |||
| 7 | Performance and accessibility in the contract | 2 | |||
| 8 | Reporting cadence | 2 | |||
| 9 | Governance fluency | 1 to 3 | |||
| 10 | After launch | 3 |
Partner with Bejamas
Bejamas is the senior web team behind complex websites. Ask us any of these ten questions and you will get a runbook, a named team, a fixed-price discovery, targets we sign, and a reporting cadence you can forward to your management. That is how we work on every migration, from a single-site replatform to a multi-market consolidation.
Interviewing migration agencies? Put Bejamas on the shortlist and ask us the hard ones.
Read more about Bejamas website migration services.
Frequently asked questions
What should I ask a website migration agency before hiring them?
Ask to see their migration method in writing, how they protect URLs and rankings, who will do the work and for how long, whether you can start with a paid discovery, what performance targets they will sign, how they report, how they work with your governance, and what happens after launch.
What is the most important question to ask a migration agency?
How exactly they will protect rankings, traffic and URLs. The answer should describe a 1:1 redirect map, metadata and structured data preservation, staging tests and post-launch monitoring against a benchmark. Everything else depends on this.
Should a migration agency offer a paid audit before the full project?
Yes. A fixed-price discovery gives you a written inventory, an SEO benchmark and a phased plan before you commit, and it shows you how the agency works under real conditions.
Should performance targets be in a website migration contract?
They can be, and the best agencies offer them. Lighthouse scores, TTFB and WCAG 2.1 AA compliance are all measurable and can be written into acceptance criteria.
How long should an agency keep redirects after a migration?
At least one year. Google Search Central recommends keeping redirects in place for as long as possible, and removing them early can break external links and lose authority that took years to build.
