24/10/2019
Moving from Magento to Magento 2 – a step that has to be made!
Magento is arguably the most popular eCommerce platform in the world. It serves a huge number of retailers in all lines of digital commerce and serves as a mainstay for the entire industry. Still, it had some rocky periods in its history. Just remember the shutdown of Magento Go a few years ago, and you will get the right idea about the scale of disturbances it causes when a major shift happens.
Last year the company has been acquired by Adobe, and it was a great prelude to what was to come in face of the Magento 2 launch.
As it was expected, the Magento project has been slowly abandoned, and in 2020 the official support for the old platform will cease to exist. Despite the fact that it is an open source platform, insisting on using it long after the support shuts down is not a very wise choice. Most retailers will have to re-platform, wanted it or not.
Why migrating at all?
The reasons are numerous and we will highlight the most important ones in this recap. Basically, there are 4 types of issues that will be hard to solve once the entire Magento project is abandoned:
• Security
• Updates
• Timeline
• Developers
Security
Once the project is abandoned, there will be no new security patches. We all know that the hackers are more than resourceful in trying to get their hands on other people’s data or money, and they will soon find the way to breach the existing security measures.
Since there will be no new security patches, the retailers that are unlucky enough to suffer from those attacks are in serious risk of suffering significant damage and even more significant losses. The value of re-platforming is definitely less than that!
Updates
As we know, the world of eCommerce is evolving constantly and rapidly. New and unique features are launched often and many of those revolutionise the previous approach to digital commerce. Since there will be no new updates, the retailers who decide to stick with the old Magento won’t be able to keep up the pace with those who switched to an up-to-date platform.
Since the competitiveness between the retailers is ever increasing, it won’t take a lot of time until those who refused to evolve are left out in the cold, looking at their service quality lagging and their income dropping through the floor.
The timeline
After the support for the Magento is offline, the troubles will start brewing. Keep in mind that developing a new store under a different platform is a task that takes time. Sometimes, you can’t afford that much! For the more complex stores, the entire operation of re-platforming, including catalogue migration and custom features development might take even up to 7 or 8 months. A good question to ask yourself before deciding on staying on the old Magento is whether you can afford such a delay.
Developers
Unless you are willing to trust your project to a “team” that has no credentials that they can actually do the job, you will need certified developers for both migrating your store to Magento 2 or for maintaining your store on an old Magento.
Given the fact that the most certified developers will follow the market demands and switch onto the Magento 2, you will have slim chances of finding the right people to help you out. The results of such an occurrence can be pretty nasty and rather costly. Simply – it is hard to find people who really know how to do the job if they are not certified. If they knew how to do it, they would already pick up their certificate and go to work under the new platform since the demand is high, thus their rates are usually higher.
Why switching to Magento 2?
All those who were running their stores on the old Magento platform had all the chances to see how powerful and easy to work with it is. They are all accustomed to the basic principles behind it, and moving to something entirely different is a step that could cause not only a lot of frustration, but a lot of damage as well.
Besides, there are several new features that the Magento 2 brings that will be more than handy for any retailer!
Faster loading
It is well known that the page speed is in direct correlation to the page rankings on search engine queries. Magento 2 brings 50% improvement in this field and that has a rather strong positive consequences.
Faster pages are ranked better, thus your website will be reached more times. Also, faster loading pages mean less bounces from the impatient potential customers. At the end, it means a better customer satisfaction which directly influences your sales!
Larger volumes
The new Magento 2 platform is able to handle a larger amount of SKUs and orders on a daily basis. For all those who had the issues with huge catalogues or with the high volume of sales, this feature will be a pure refreshment.
Better mobile design
Mobile has become the most important channel for online sales as people are switching to it more and more with the introduction of the widespread use of smartphones. These customers can be acquired only if your online presence is impeccable and that is exactly what the improvement in this sector will bring. With the new Magento 2 features, your mobile presence will be spotless.
Easier content creation and manipulation
Written content is of a paramount importance for your SEO. As such it directly influences the volume of the traffic received and your overall visibility online. The new features introduced in this segment of the platform will ensure far superior manipulation with written data than it was the case with the old Magento platform.
Improved Search and SEO module
As we already mentioned, SEO is the cornerstone of your online visibility. With the new and improved features, Magento 2 will allow you easier search engine optimisation and will help you make your organic traffic stronger than ever before.
Checkout steps reduction
A checkout with too many steps means only one thing – high cart abandonment rate. In order to provide your customers with a better customer experience, Magento 2 introduces a new and simplified checkout process that requires fewer steps and increases your conversion rates. After all, it is all about the sales!
There are also numerous back end improvements they have introduced in Magento 2:
Better Admin
The new Admin area is much more comprehensive than the previous version. It is far more intuitive and easier to find your way around. While the Magento required a certain level of skill to cope with in the back end, the neve product is much better adapted to people without special skills.
Improved marketplace
While the Magento marketplace was teeming with 3rd party service providers, it was often lacking in quality when it comes to extensions and add-ons. This time this is not a free for all process, but instead the marketplace has been vetted and curated by their team to ensure that only quality extensions are present there.
Separate space for each customer
Now, each and every customer is alone, isolated in their own server environment. This prevents the issues caused by other users to spread across the platform, thus the security has been brought to an entirely new level.
PCI certification
The new Magento 2 has been PCI certified as a Level 1 provider which says enough about the ability of the new platform to secure data. Obtaining these certificates is extremely hard and involves a rigorous audits which the new platform has obviously passed with excellent grades.
Out of the box deployment
This version of Magento brings out of the box tools that are ideal for deploying your online store into the cloud. It means you will not have to rely on untested and unproven solutions as there are premade solutions to it.
Finally, the new Magento 2 is an extremely potent tool when it comes to B2B segment of the market. In this sector, the trend is extremely in favour of online purchases as some 93% of businesses prefer it to any other option. This is why Magento 2 comes with everything you might need in order to run successful B2B operations.
Custom price lists and catalogues
On the B2B side of eCommerce it is quite a common practice that different customers are offered different products and different prices. Custom price lists and custom catalogues are therefore a must in these operations, and the new features within Magento 2 allow this in every possible way.
Target content and promotions
Targeting different customers with different promotions and different content is not an easy operation, but it is required if you wish to address each of those customers in the right way. Since it is a B2B segment, the volumes of sold goods are much higher by customer than it is the case in B2C segment. Therefore, these promotions are essential. Magento 2 brings a full set of features to deal with this issue.
Automated business rules
Having automated business rules to help you determine delivery and shipping means and costs is also essential for successful B2B business, as the customers are often scattered across the globe and each geography needs to be covered by different transportation means and under different pricing and rules. This is a very complicated process, but Magento 2 is more than capable of providing everything you might possibly need.
Mobile optimised
Mobile becomes more and more important even in the B2B sector, and it has been neglected for a very long time, as the presumption was that most businesses will make orders from their offices, thus using PC as a main option. Magento 2 follows the shift to mobile with ease by providing an improved and perfected mobile experience.
Purchasing options
In order to easily find what they are looking for the businesses need multiple options for searching the catalogues. Magento 2 allows searches by SKUs, using pre-set requisition lists, or even CSV files as the sources of the info regarding the purchases.
With all of this in mind, it becomes clear that Magento 2 is a next step in evolution of digital commerce and that there IS a real need to move to it from the old version as soon as possible.
How do you migrate?
The best way to cover this migration is to trust the experts in the field to do this for you. Each and every mistake can cause a lot of problems, so it is not advised that you leave it to people who don’t know what they are actually doing.
Studioworx is Magento 2 certified agency and we have the knowledge and resources to help you every step of the way. Give us a call and we will be more than happy to help you with this transition, improving your online presence along the way!