Migration to Magento 2. Are you still thinking?

Magento 2 was released on November 17th, 2015, and migration to Magento 2 or not has been the biggest question of debate among store owners. During this period lots of merchants made a switch to the new platform. But still, there are a big number of merchants using Magento 1 and are not able to decide to move or stay with the platform.

However, Magento is still supporting and maintaining the former Magento 1 and frequently releases patches to ensure the security of the platform. However, this support will end in November this year ( 2018 ) and Magento will not maintain the codebase.

What does this mean to a store owner?

Being an open-source platform Magento codebase is available to everyone and hackers keep on trying to find out their ways to break the system. Such a platform requires continuous monitoring and releasing fixes for potential security problems.

End of support means Magento will no longer check and release security upgrades for their platform. Any merchant still using it will be responsible to look and maintain such issues on their own.

Is this the only reason you should make migration to Magento 2?

Well, this is the big reason but apart from that Magento 2 has a lot more other advantages over the former version. These advantages are in terms of features, performance, user experience, marketing, integrations, and much more.

When making a decision to switch, the best way to decide is by comparing and weighing the features of the platform against each other and deciding accordingly.

In order to make the decision-making process easier, we have compiled the added advantage of Magento 2 for an online store.

Why you should Migration to Magento 2: New Features & Benefits

Faster Page Loading Speeds

Faster loading speed is the key to generating sales online. Loading speed has been the biggest drawback of the Magento 1 website compared to other eCommerce platforms like wooCommerce or Shopify. You would need third-party extensions such as Varnish or Turpentine to implement full-page caching.

These extensions not only require extra effort and investment to set up but we have also experienced lots of malfunctioning happening due to these.

Magento 2 has inbuilt support for all these important features like varnish and full-page caching. Internal caching means faster page load time. That delivers the content of your catalog to customers in a fraction of a second and makes life easier for your back-end processing team.

The latest report by White Paper says, “Magento’s next-generation platform ( Magento 2 ) handles up to 39% more orders per hour and delivers nearly instant server response times for catalog browsing.”

So if website speed has been a concern for you in Magento 1, then you get your biggest concern resolved with Magento 2. Customers will definitely enjoy faster-loading websites and that surely leads to more conversions.

Conversion friendly checkout

Conversion optimization specialists recommend a faster loading checkout with a minimum number of steps and no other distractions on the checkout page.

The checkout process in Magento 1 was too lengthy and slow leading to higher abandonment.

In Magento 2 the checkout process is much more simplified, requires only necessary information from the customer, and offers easier options for guest checkout and customer login. Email addresses are filed right on the top making it easier for customers to fill in and full information from their account.

Allows guest customers to create an account after checkout if they want. An excellent compact summary of the cart on the right makes it one of the best checkout processes for any eCommerce platform.
See below a report from a Magento webinar showing a comparison of checkout speed on M1 and M2

Easy to understand back-end admin

It’s quite obvious for a non-technical user to get overwhelmed with the back end of a Magento 1 website. The user interface, organization of sections, the terminology used in Magento 1 are all good for a technical person but a non-technical merchant finds it quite difficult to understand and manage.

Magento 2 has simplified the bank-end interface making it easier for anyone to understand and navigate to required sections.

Here is a list of important improvements that have been carried out in the Magento backend –

• With a mobile-friendly interface, it’s easier to manage from a wide array of mobile devices, touchscreen devices, and laptops
• It nice flat user interface looking much more modern and simplified at the same time
• The organization of sections is much more meaningful and relevant
• Flexible data grids allow you to organize the columns as per your own ease and choice
• A separate filter option and filter breadcrumb make it easier to search through available data. Breadcrumb shows you all applied filters making it easier to understand available information
• Simplified product creation workflow. Better organization of important product attributes, a simplified process of variant product creation, an instant option to create new attributes right from the product creation screen, and non-technical terminology make it really easier for any newbie to understand and manage.

More mobile-friendly

The Magento team recognized the importance of mobile-friendly stores giving a high priority to mobile-responsive technology in the development of the theme. Faster loading speed is another added advantage for mobile website visitors. The mobile-friendly and faster-loading website gets better visibility in search engines and that’s an added advantage for an online store.

Flexibility

Flexibility has been the biggest advantage of Magento 1 and Magento 2 takes this one to another level making it easier for developers to customize the store as per the merchant’s requirements.

Better Testing Framework

Regression testing is really important when you roll out a new feature or update. As a developer or store owner, you want to make sure that recent updates have not impacted any function of the online store.

With an inbuilt regression testing framework, Magento 2 is a savior here. This new framework makes it easier to perform functional and regression testing. That way rolling out a new feature is much more hassle-free.

How smooth or painful the migration process is?

So migration from Magento 1 to Magento 2 requires two major things to be migrated –

1. Migration of Data
2. Migration of theme and custom extension

There is an official tool to support the migration of data that will help you with the migration of data including products, categories, attributes, customers, sales, settings, promo rules, etc.

However, the actual painful process is the migration of your store theme and any custom or third-party extension that is there. Magento 2 framework is totally different therefore extension & theme can not be migrated directly. All these need to be redone.

Is it worth moving?

Revamping the theme and extension would definitely require investment and time. However, this investment is surely worth it.

• Magento 1 support is ending in November this year ( 2018 ) and you should not leave your store at risk. Rather you should make a decision as soon as possible.
• Magento is the pioneer among eCommerce platforms worldwide and many exciting new features are coming up. So it’s better to stay with Magento to enjoy all these upcoming advancements in the eCommerce industry
• Revamp will also give you a chance to rethink your business as a whole
• Revamp will also give you a chance to get rid of any legacy code
• You will get benefits from all these new exciting features in Magento 2
• Improved speed and checkout process will help you with an improved conversion rate and more sales.

Next Step

If you are keen to improve and want to provide a better shopping experience in terms of user-friendliness, speed, and versatility then Magento 2 is the go-to platform. Your decision to Migration to Magento 2 is definitely worth it and certainly going to help your business in the long run.

November 2018 is not far away now and this is the absolute right time to start your migration process. Start talking to your solution partner today and lay out a migration plan.

We at Axis Web Art has been working with Magento since 2009 and have a good bunch of certified Magento developer and solution specialist. Check out the array of our Magento development services and request a quote to get started with your Magento 2 migration process in a smooth and painless way.