If you're putting together a website migration plan, the pages and the settings are the half you can see. The other half is your people: who decides what the new site has to do, and who writes and approves the content. It's who checks it, and who tells everyone what changed and retrains whoever uses it. It's also whether your team can carry all of that without overloading them.
The plans you'll find often list those jobs by title, next to the technical steps, and assume someone is free to take each one.
You'll see what the move asks of your team, and how to tell whether to keep it in-house or hand it off. The technical steps are their own job, so they aren't here.
Came here to find out what a migration costs? A quote prices the build. It doesn't price what the move costs your people in time and attention, and that's what this article is about.
Every website migration has a people side, and it fits on one page
Here's the people side of a website migration plan, in four groups. Each group needs a person with time to do it.
Deciding. Why you're moving, and what the new site has to do once it's live. Which pages you keep, update, merge, or drop.
Making and approving the content. What each page says now, and who writes it. You and your team supply the words, the images, and the details, whoever builds the site. One named person gives the final yes.
Checking. A person goes through the new site before launch, alongside any testing tools you use. They go through it again after it goes live, and they try the forms.
Telling and training. You tell your staff and your customers what changed. Whoever updates the site, or uses its forms and back end, learns the new setup. While the move is underway, you keep other changes to the website to a minimum.
Four things decide how long your side takes: the number of pages and decisions, how fast the approvals come back, how much of the content changes, and how full your team's weeks already are.
Someone else can take on a lot of this. Even if they move the whole site, you review what they built. You're the one who decides whether each page says the right thing about your business.
The training part is a job of its own. How to introduce a new system to your team so they use it walks through it.
Whoever builds it, someone on your side still drives
There are three main ways to get a new site built, and none of them takes your people out of the website migration plan.
Building it yourself. The technical side is far easier than it used to be. The hard part is the strategy: which pages you need, what they say, and how they're organized. Doing it yourself works when you know what you're doing and you have the time.
Hiring a freelancer. A good freelancer builds the project you describe, so the result is only as clear as your brief. Most freelancers will expect you to write the content and supply the images. A site that needs design, words, and more can mean several freelancers, and then you're the one coordinating them. Talk with anyone you're considering before you hire them, so you know you communicate well.
Bringing in a team. An agency or a team drives more of the process with you, so you aren't steering it alone. You still put in the time and give them what they need. Nobody can take a site off your hands and leave you out of it.
In 2018 I wrote on this site that, from a technical standpoint, building a website doesn't have to be complicated, and that the real complexity lies in the strategy. The tools have changed a great deal since then, and that part hasn't.
The build goes fast with AI and vibe-coding tools. The decisions still take your team's time.
Vibe coding means describing what you want in everyday words and letting an AI tool write the code. For the build, it's a real shortcut. With a tool that fast, it's natural to wonder why your own team can't do the whole migration.
The tool does the building. Your team still does everything in the four groups above, in the same week as their regular work.
The tools raise one more people question. When something on the new site needs changing, who on your side understands what was built well enough to change it? Pick that person before the build starts, and make sure they're the one who learns the new setup.
Easy to build and easy to do in-house are two different claims. The tools have gone a long way toward the first. The second depends on whether your team has room for everything the tool can't do.
Keep it in-house when your team can carry the people side
In-house is often the right call. It fits when:
- One person on your team owns the migration, with room cleared for it, not squeezed into a full week
- The people who know your business can make the decisions and give the approvals
- The regular work keeps moving while the move happens
- Someone can do the checking and show everyone the new setup
You can also split it. Your team can build it or make the decisions, and you bring in help for the strategy or the coordination.
Thinking about your business design as well? BP Biz Lab is a DIY course, and you set the pace. Its community and live sessions are there for your questions.
It's time to hand it off when:
- The regular work starts slipping
- No one on your team has moved a site before, and nobody has room to learn on the job
- You've become the go-between for several freelancers
- The website is one piece of a bigger set of changes, like a rebrand or new systems behind the site
If your migration is part of a rebrand, the rebrand rollout plan lists everything else that changes, and who changes it.
If your team can't fit a migration around its normal work, that tells you how full their weeks are. It says nothing about how good they are. The Launches, Rebrands, and Migrations guide covers why a one-off project weighs so much on a team that's already busy.
A move that starts in-house and stalls halfway is a half-built bridge. You can't retire the old site, and you can't launch the new one. When someone owns the move, they finish it, and your team stays on its own work.
Hand off the people side along with the build
If you hand it off, hand off the coordination too. Someone needs to own the plan, chase the decisions, and run the checking and the telling. If nobody does, they build the site and you end up running the people side yourself.
Before work starts, agree who on your side makes which decisions and gives the final yes. Agree when they'll check in with you, too, and what each check-in covers.
Know what you should have in your hands when it's done. The project handover checklist lists what to collect before the people you hired move on. Rather plan the whole thing yourself first? Start with how to plan a big project when you don't have a project team.
Get your site moved, and keep your team on its own work
The build is what everyone sees on launch day. Your people are the ones who get you to it.
Just need a website or blog content, and nothing else? FableForge and its Tech Team handle that.
Sometimes the website is one piece of something bigger: a rebrand, new systems, or the processes behind the site. When it is, Sparkitive can carry the whole move. We run the coordination and the build, and we work alongside your team on the decisions and any parts they'd rather keep.
We'll start looking at what's changing with your site, and what it would ask of your team, on a free 30-minute discovery call with me.
