Why Magento 2 Migration Would Be The Best Thing For Your eCommerce Business

Magento 2.0 was released in 2015. The Merchant Beta version was released in July and Merchant General Availability came in force in November 2015.

Magento 1.x has been an influential factor in the massive growth of the magento development industry as a whole. In fact, an estimated 200,000 online stores have been launched on Magento till date.

Magento builds upon the existing eCommerce prowess of its earlier versions. From the look and feels to the internal technical advancements, the tech boffins at Magento have really improvised the second version to be a real magento eCommerce growth catalyst.

This blog is a round-up on all that. We are getting under the skin of Magento 2 upgrade to bring out the best features that will help you address 3 critical questions:

• Should you migrate to Magento 2?
• What are the steps involved in the Magento 2 migration process?
• Is Magento 2 Migration worth the effort and time?

Let’s start with the first question in the Magento 2 upgrade.

Should You migrate to Magento 2?

If your store is running on older versions of Magento like the 1.7 Community Edition or its predecessors or the 1.13 or earlier, then an upgrade is recommended.

How about performance issues? If you are running into technical glitches, slow page loading, erratic error messages, and so on, perhaps an upgrade will eliminate all of that in one shot.

Do a Magento site performance audit to know where your Magento website currently is and how it can be improved in terms of performance.

What are the steps involved in the magento 2 upgrade process?

Magento 2 migration goes through four major processes:

• Theme migration
• Extension migration
• Code Migration
• Data migration

Theme Migration

Fact: Magento 1 themes cannot be migrated to Magento 2 directly. What you can do is:

• Work with a Magento frontend developer to replicate the theme for Magento 2
• Check if the Magento 2 compatible theme is available in Magento marketplace. Under the platform section, you can filter out themes applicable for Magento 2
• Tweak the Magento 2 default Luma theme to make it look and feel like your Magento 1 theme

Extension Migration

Magento has not released any tools for moving all Magento 1 extensions to Magento 2. You can check if the extension provider has released a Magento 2 version in Magento marketplace. If not, it would be necessary to create the extension from ground up. Ensure it is in compliance with the Magento 2 coding standard.

Code Migration

Magento 2 follows a modular and better-organized file structure. This requires reworking on your Magento 1 code to make it compatible with Magento 2. Magento has also released a code migration kit to make the process easier.

Data Migration

The longest of all steps is perhaps migrating all Magento 1 data to Magento 2. You will need a Magento Data Migration Kit which can automate some of the code and data migration to your Magento 2 database. The data migration process would also require you to provide network access to both Magento 1 and Magento 2 databases among many other permissions.

Ziffity’s Magento 2 Migration kit

A quick, hassle-free & effortless way to migrate to Magento 2 Learn More

Is Magento 2 Migration worth the effort and time?

By all means, yes! If you are an omni-channel eCommerce business, then Magento 2 will be a perfect choice to springboard conversion rates and improve customer experience.

Of course, you do not have to upgrade today itself. Magento is going to continue providing support for the older versions for the foreseeable future.

But, with competition getting fiercer by the day. Magento 2 has some striking features that will definitely put your business performance on steroids.

Here is a quick list of all major Magento 2 benefits:

Features to look out for in Magento 2.0

Magento 2.0 is literally a strip down of the earlier versions to weed out the deficiencies and to build something even better for eCommerce. The long list of benefits include:

Open & Flexible Modular Structure

Magento 2 is powered by a open and flexible modular file structure that gives much convenience for developers to create custom Magento themes. The base theme is replaced with a modular structure that is flexible yet sturdy in performance.

Magento Cloud Deployment

Magento 2.1 Enterprise Edition comes with cloud hosting. This helps you scale and craft amazing brand experiences without being burdened with infrastructure demands. AWS cloud platform gives you the best possible cloud tech stack that offers the combined benefits of scalability, security & flexibility. You also have the option to deploy your site in other deployment models including on-prem or hosted premises.

Streamlined Checkouts

Braintree, Authorize.net and Paypal payment gateways come as built-in integrations. New hosted fields are set up to allow payment gateways to securely collect customer payment information. This makes it easier to attain PCI compliance too. The payment gateway integrations have also contributed to improving checkout speed by 50%.

Ramped up page loading speed

In the Magento 1.x, too many JS made the site load slower. Magento 2 has weeded out the biggest drawback of Magento 1 by replacing JS with JQuery and Requirejs. JS Bundling has also been enabled in Magento 2 to quicken the page loading speed.

Testing-friendly environment

Magento 2 comes with Functional Testing Framework (FTF) which is designed to run automated testing processes easily. Smoke testing, regression testing, User Acceptance testing, etc. are easier to run with integrated PHPUnit, Web browsers and Selenium Standalone server. There is also the facility to run tests independently, many tests at once or all available tests at once.

Heightened Security

Magento 2 developers can be assured that all their hard work in creating custom codes will remain intact from breaches and unauthorized access. Magento 2 comes with a ‘pub’ directory which developers can use to protect their code from security breaches.

The Way Forward

Magento 2 migration brings to the table a whole suite of benefits that retailers cannot simply ignore. If your store is suffering from performance issues or a need for revamping is felt, Magento 2 upgrade is definitely an ideal choice to go with.

The Magento 2 migration process is definitely worth every single second and dollar invested. The returns would come back in the form of easier administration, better customer experience (which leads to more conversions) and a simplified maintenance environment where everything seems under total control.

So, stop waiting for too long. Don’t be caught off-guard. Be ahead of the curve by migrating to Magento 2.