AEM Migration: How Retail Chains Can Centralize Content and Scale Faster

Omnipresence is becoming non-negotiable in 2025. Retailers today have to maintain fragmented content across multiple platforms, like websites, social media, apps, and third-party e-commerce platforms, for consistent customer engagement and brand experience.

When content is fragmented, it means:

• Inconsistent branding: Different product descriptions, images, or promotions across channels.

• Time-consuming updates: Marketing teams must manually update multiple platforms.

• Difficult personalization: Hard to deliver a smooth customer experience because the content is scattered.

• Distributed data: Analytics and performance tracking are fragmented, making it hard to measure ROI.

• Higher errors: Copy mistakes, outdated content, and broken links occur more often.

In this blog, we will discuss the best recommended solution to unify content for retailers, i.e.,  AEM migration. Learn the types of AEM migration, the benefits for businesses, the steps to follow, and how to avoid losing your SERP rankings.

What is AEM Migration?

AEM migration refers to transferring your website’s content, digital assets, and applications from an existing CMS (including AEM On-Prem) into Adobe Experience Manager. The goal is to modernize your digital experience, improve performance, and make your digital platform versatile for smooth upgrades and scalability.

AEM migration typically involves:

• Content Migration: Transferring web pages, media, and structured data into AEM.

• Code & Component Migration: Rebuilding or adapting templates, components, and custom features to align with AEM’s architecture.

• Integration Migration: Shifting third-party integrations (e.g., CRM, analytics, commerce platforms) to work with AEM.

• Infrastructure Migration: Moving hosting from on-premise or another cloud provider to AEM as a Cloud Service or Adobe Managed Services.

Types of AEM Migrations

Three types of AEM migration are done depending on whether you want to migrate on-premise or to the cloud. Consider this:

1. CMS to AEM

CMS-to-AEM migration (such as WordPress to AEM migration) focuses on transferring existing pages, assets, and workflows from a legacy CMS into AEM’s centralized environment (on-premise). This ensures content consistency and SEO preservation.

2. AEM On-Prem to AEM Cloud

This is an upgrade migration for organizations already using AEM on their own servers. It moves content, templates, and workflows into AEM as a Cloud Service, which brings cloud-native benefits like auto-scaling, continuous deployment, and reduced infrastructure management.

3. CMS to AEM Cloud

CMS to AEM Cloud migration is when content is moved from a legacy CMS directly into AEM as a Cloud Service. It requires both content migration and cloud enablement, allowing the business to immediately leverage AEM Cloud’s scalability, integrations, and performance improvements.

Want to elevate digital experiences with Adobe? See how our Adobe Experience Cloud Services help brands migrate, personalize, and grow.

Benefits of AEM Migration for Businesses

AEM content migration brings numerous benefits for businesses and offers expandability in an easy and secure manner. Here is a clear breakdown of the benefits AEM migration brings.

Business Benefits of Migrating to AEM

• Consistent branding across all touchpoints

• Faster time-to-market for campaigns and product launches

• Better personalization and engagement via AI

• Reduced infrastructure and operational costs

• Future-proof platform with continuous upgrades and AI innovation

Technical Benefits of Migrating to AEM

• Centralized content repository for all channels

• Strong integrations (Adobe Experience Cloud, CRM, ERP, e-commerce)

• AI-powered tools (auto-tagging, smart cropping, generative AI assistants)

• High performance with global scalability (auto-scaling in the cloud)

• Faster deployments with CI/CD and reusable components

• Enterprise-grade security with automatic patches in the cloud

• Multi-language and multi-channel publishing

Step-by-Step Content Migration in AEM

Retail website migration to AEM takes strategic planning and careful consideration of website architecture, speed, user experience, and SEO. These 8 steps summarize the AEM migration journey, ensuring content is transferred smoothly, systems stay reliable, and the platform is fully optimized for long-term business growth.

• Content Audit and Planning: Identify existing content, assets, and templates. Map what needs to migrate, archive, or redesign.

• Information Architecture Alignment: Define content structures, metadata, and tagging to ensure consistency and searchability.

• Content Extraction and Transformation: Export content from the source CMS, clean it, and adapt formats for AEM compatibility.

• Asset Migration and Enrichment: Move digital assets into AEM DAM with AI-powered tagging, smart cropping, and metadata automation.

• Template and Component Mapping: Rebuild or adapt existing templates into AEM components for reusability and responsiveness.

• Testing and Validation: Run functional, performance, and QA testing to ensure accuracy, broken link checks, and content fidelity.

• Deployment & Going Live: Publish migrated content, train users, and monitor system performance during rollout.

• Optimization and Continuous Improvement: Leverage analytics, personalization, and AEM integrations to refine content and improve engagement.

SEO and AEO Considerations During Migration

Website migration in any form can significantly impact SERPs. Follow these steps to minimize the effect on your website’s SEO or AEO rankings:

Preserving URLs and Redirects

Maintain existing URL structures wherever possible to avoid traffic loss. Set up 301 redirects for changed URLs. This will preserve rankings and ensure a smooth user journey despite the backend transition.

Optimizing Headings, Metadata, and Schema in AEM

Use AEM’s built-in SEO tools to standardize H1–H6 structures, implement clean metadata, and apply structured data/schema for enhanced search and AI-driven results.

Ensuring Content Discoverability Across Channels

Configure AEM’s omnichannel publishing and semantic tagging so content is discoverable not only on search engines but also across voice assistants, AI chatbots, and answer engines.

Wondering about your sales? Read our step-by-step guide to migrate your retail site without losing revenue.

Real-World Examples of AEM Migration Success

Let’s walk through the success stories of some leading retail brands that have implemented content migration in AEM and their impact:

Under Armour

Under Armour migrated roughly 5 TB of creative assets into Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Assets, unifying content storage under its security framework. This migration automated metadata tagging and cut asset upload times by 50%. It also saved 4 hours per user (across 1,000+ users) through fast license management and doubled both daily active users and asset downloads on its content portal. (Source: Adobe for Business)

Fountain Tire

Fountain Tire, a leading Canadian tire retailer, migrated from Adobe Experience Manager on-premise to Adobe Experience Manager Cloud. Their legacy system made updates slow and dependent on external agencies, limiting agility. With the new cloud platform, the marketing team can publish content directly through familiar tools like SharePoint. The shift delivered sub-second site performance and perfect 100 Lighthouse scores, and reduced microsite launch times from months to just weeks. (Source: Adobe for Business)

Conclusion

In 2025, omnipresence is inviolable, vast data management is a challenge, and an effortless user experience is the only way to win customers. Having an outdated retail website’s backend with inconsistent branding across platforms makes it difficult to optimize the website and negatively affects the customers' purchase decisions. 

Migrating to AEM fixes these gaps and offers effortless scalability, advanced integrations, and seamless content management options for businesses. It helps in managing different platforms through one centralized content management system, leading to consistent branding and lower operational costs.