Magento 2 Migration Benefits and Risks for Your Business
Magento has been one of the top e-commerce platforms for a long time but recently they announced that they will end the support for 1.x versions very soon. Thus, many of the businesses which were dependent on Magento 1 have no other way out than switching to a newer version of Magento, Magento 2. But many of them are still confused about this whole process of Magento 1 migration to Magento 2. And so, the companies tend to hire magento developers in order to understand the criticalities and the benefits. They give them ideas about what can be done in this migration and how beneficial it will be to the companies.
The cost to hire full-time developers is way higher than the budget of the companies and so they prefer to hire a consultant or a part-time developer which solves the purpose of getting the work done and that too at a comparatively lower cost.
WHO BE ALL WILL AFFECTED WITH THE END OF MAGENTO 1?
As per the data, approximately 4,20,000 websites all across the world are running on Magento only and just 4% of them or less than 20,000 websites are using Magento 2. Thus, with the new announcement of Magento 2, almost 95-96% of the websites are left with scope of migration. Companies are looking to Hire Dedicated Developers in order to make best use of the 18 months of additional support which company agreed to give, considering the fact that even the transition from the basic e-commerce website will take tentatively six months of time.
BENEFITS OF SWITCHING TO MAGENTO 2:
The business owners who have been using Magento 1 are already facing the issues due to certain limitations of it and due to the same they hire Magento web developers who can help the company to sort out the problems on a regular basis. Below are the points which explains how beneficial it would be to switch to Magento 2 for which the companies specifically hire a developer:
- Mobile friendly
Nowadays, mobile phones have become an accessible gadget for everyone, and the users prefer shopping through mobile only. As per a sturdy, almost 50% of the total traffic on the website is through mobile platforms only. Magento 1 sites do not perform in an optimum way on the mobile devices but the intuitive web design of Magento 2 have made it quite mobile-friendly and makes mobile commerce a priority.
Introduction of Progressive Web Application (PWA) in the latest version of Magento 2 have made it quite mobile friendly and websites respond superb in terms of mobile performance.
- Advanced Interface of Admin
The UI of Magento 1 was quite confusing for the business users while the admin panel offered by the Magento 2 is quite advanced and sorted which helps to access all the important business information about the e-store at a single and unique place. The UI offered by Magento2 is so clean that even non-technical users can find the listing of new products and necessary tools with ease. The dashboard gives summary report of usually below areas:
- Most purchased products
- Most bought products
- New products added
- Average amount of the order
- List of last orders placed
- Ajax cart
Usually, it happens that when on an e-commerce platform, if someone adds an item in the basket then the page gets reloaded, and it takes a few seconds which can make a user lose their interest. So, in Magento 2, Ajax cart is added which uses Javascript to add the products in cart which prevents from reloading of the page again and again. Thus, users can spend more time on the e-commerce website.
4) Overall improvised performance
Magento 1 is quite slower than Magento 2. The new version has increased the speed and overall performance of the e-commerce websites by almost 20%. And more is the speed, better is the ranking in Google which ultimately increases the consumer reach.
5) In-Built Testing
When the website has a lot of customization features where the users can add or remove plugins, modules, and extensions, then there are high chances of having bugs. Magento 1 does not support the regression testing which is required to find out the bugs. But in Magento 2, an in-built testing framework is available which solves the problem. The tester runs the tests on websites by default within a certain time limit and keeps up the performance of the websites.
6) Defined process of check-out
Small and defined process of check out decreases the hassles of customers and they prefer to come back to shop. In Magento 1, the process of check out was a 6-step process while in Magento 2, it is just 2 step processes as it has an Instant Purchase feature which stores the details used during last purchase, so the buyer do not need to fill in the same details again and again and the checkout becomes quite simple. This has also contributed to increasing sales.
RISKS WHILE MOVING TO MAGENTO 2:
Even though Magento 2 has multiple benefits, switching from Magento 1 to 2 is not that easy and quick process. The transformation stage has its own challenges which are mentioned below in details:
- Extra cost -A team of dedicated developers are a must to hire to keep everything in place and make the new things functional. The developers can only make the necessary adjustments and required changes to make the things happen. Thus, hiring a new team involves a good amount of cost.
- The designs and themes to be designed from scratch level as the themes in Magento 1 are not portable to Magento 2.
- Same goes with the extension as the extensions in Magento 1 cannot be integrated with Magento 2 and some of the extensions even disappear while transitioning.
- Time taking process-The transition is not quick and simple, in fact it involves a good amount of time and is quite a complex process.
- The issues related to Indexing and SEO appear which have a severe impact on the overall performance of the website.
- Although the Community edition of the Magento is free, if one wants to go with the Enterprise edition then it requires heavy investment.
- As Magento 2 offers several benefits which means it makes the most use of the new technologies. Thus, this can create an issue of their stability with the existing one and will be prone to the technical issues.
BEST TIME TO MIGRATE:
There is no specific time to switch to Magento 2, it completely depends on how comfortable the user is with Magento 1 and if they are facing any problem like any of the below, then it’s an apt time to switch to Magento 2:
- Once the support ends, the security patches would not appear further
- More the code gets older, more vulnerable it will be to the risks
- No new innovation features will be added to Magento 1, thus will be back in competing in the market
Usually, the time period of migration differs from size to size of different e-commerce platforms, but it usually takes 3 months of time for the overall transition.
CONCLUSION:
The above point clearly defines the positive side of Magento 2 along with the difficulties one can face during the transition. But the business enterprises know it well, particularly the e-commerce industry that if they do not switch to Magento 2 on time then they will be left behind technologically and would not be able to serve their end users or the customers as per the current market trend. Thus, it is the time the developers should make sure a seamless transition to Magento 2.
