If your business is running in Magento 1, then start thinking about migration at once.
Magento has stopped its support for Magento commerce 1 by June 2020 and has released a major upgrade – Magento 2.
Migrating to Magento 2 has a lot of benefits that include driving revenue growth, increasing average order value, boosting conversion rates, increasing website traffic, and more which you shall be learning in detail in this blog.
But before that let us slice and dice the bigger question in your mind – “Why should I Migrate to Magento 2?”
If your business is running on Magento Commerce 1 (M1), it’s time to start looking into Magento development services to ensure a successful and timely migration.
Due to its June 2020 end-of-life support, businesses powered by Magento 1 will need to switch to the latest product, Magento 2, to remain competitive. Fortunately, this provides an exciting opportunity for businesses operating with the previous version of Magento.
Migrating to Magento 2 can provide numerous benefits, including driving revenue growth, increasing average order values, and boosting conversion rates and website traffic.
If you’re ready for improved performance, Magento development services are essential to ensure your transition goes smoothly.
Why Migrate from Magento 1 to Magento 2?
We understand that as an eCommerce business owner, you might have been running your eCommerce store in Magento 1 since its development and may be very comfortable with it. Or you may feel migration is a lot of work. But, there are ample reasons why it’s high time for you to migrate.
Yes, the first and foremost reason is Magento doesn’t support Magento 1 anymore. But, if that’s not enough below is the list of reasons why you should take up Magento 2 migration.
Reasons to Migrate from Magento 1 to 2
Enhanced Performance
Intuitive Checkout
Responsive Designs
Improved Mobile Shopping Experience
New Stack of Technologies
Easy-to-use Admin Panel
Integrated Payment Gateway
Upgraded Security Options
Easy Extensions & Customer Support
1. Enhanced Performance
Website performance is the key to user experience.
Magento 2 in comparison with Magento 1 is much faster on average, i.e, It can handle 40% more orders in an hour with 70% faster add-to-cart. This means you can handle more customers than usual at the same time, boosting conversion.
The built-in cache for full-page in Magento 2 accelerates page loading to less than 1-2 sec compared to non-cache pages that take 5-10 sec.
Magento 2 is highly scalable making it apt for larger stores and constantly growing businesses.
As Google considers page speed as a core ranking factor, Magento 2 helps in Search engine optimization as well.
In short Magento 2 is designed to be fast. You can extract even better performance from Magento 2 by taking advantage of the following features.
Php 7 support
Employing varnish caching
Minimizing Javascript
Use built-in tools to compress images
Enhance browser caching for the static content
2. Intuitive Checkout
26% of shoppers quit if they find the checkout process to be too complicated.
Magento 2’s checkout is completely streamlined for simple and easy order placement. Its high customization options minimize the number of steps, reducing abandoned carts to a significant range.
According to dev.to, the checkout process offered by Magento 2 is 38% faster than Magento 1. To complete checkout in Magento 1, it takes 6 steps whereas in Magento 2 it’s just 2.
Magento 2’s integrated instant purchase feature redirects customers to the order placement page without any delay or long registration process.
It also allows guests to create an account with a single click from the “Thank you page” for repeat purchases.
In addition, it has integrated payment gateways such as PayPal that allow customers to save their card details to cut time while order placement.
3. Responsive Designs
Your online store’s design has to deliver a better and more consistent shopping experience across devices.
Magento 2’s tons of eye-catching templates, easy-to-customize checkout, responsive and intriguing designs are sure to positively influence the shopper’s buying decisions.
Responsiveness now being on Google’s priority list when it comes to search engine rankings, a responsive design is no more an option but a mandatory feature for a business to survive online.
Magento 2 is also loaded with features like catalog page snippets, SEO-friendly URLs, canonical tags for products, image optimization, and more to boost SEO and improve SERP results for your eCommerce store.
4. Improved Mobile Shopping Experience
With increasing mobile searches and mCommerce trends, a website that works flawlessly on mobile can boost conversion rates. mCommerce is growing at such a rate that soon it shall become the main channel for online purchase.
Statistics state that Google searches done via mobile devices account for 58% and 40% of orders come from mobile devices. Also, mCommerce is projected to reach $3.56 trillion in 2021 – 2022.
Thus to keep up with the pace of these trends, Magento 2 was released with touch-friendly CMS, optimized for mobile devices. All templates of Magento 2 are responsive by default. With a 50% boosted loading speed, mobile-friendly designs, improved search, and easy checkout Magento 2 nails mobile shopping experience.
In addition, to provide a native mobile app like experience Magento 2 supports Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) for its site.
5. New Technologies
Magento has improved its tech stack in Magento 2 which is not available in Magento 1 and supports Zend Framework 1 & 2. Based on PHP 7 architecture, Magento 2 offers upgraded optimization and customization opportunities and supports HTML 5.
Composer – Composer is a tool that lets you reuse third-party libraries without handling source code, reducing extension conflicts.
NGINX – NGINX is an open-source web server that works as a reverse proxy, load balancer, and HTTP cache.
Redis – Redis is an open-source in-memory data structure that uses broker and database cache for messages.
Symfony – Symfony is a PHP web application framework that improves functionality, makes a website appealing, and content control easier.
Varnish – Varnish is a web acceleration alternative that boosts website speed for Magento 2 websites.
In addition, Ajax technology in Magento 2 prevents the loading of cart pages unlike Magento 1 every time a user adds a product to the cart. This reduces the load time and bounce rate of the website enhancing customer experience.
Magento 2 is vigilant in releasing new versions. Magento 2.3.3 being the latest version, Magento continuously strives to strengthen the platform as well as the community.
6. Easy-to-use Admin
Magento 1’s admin panel is cluttered and hard to navigate. It also lacks some of the exceptional features that Magento 2’s advanced dashboard offers.
The admin interface of Magento 2 is designed to significantly reduce time spent on setting up and management of the store. It is simple, user-friendly, and easy to learn unlike Magento 1 which has a steep learning curve.
The drag & drop feature of Magento 2 in layout editing allows you to modify the store’s appearance with ease with no coding knowledge.
The dashboard can be personalized for instant access to information based on your requirements to improve productivity. Managing orders, customer data, and products are far easier than before.
Magento 2 allows 4 times faster product import while adding new products to the panel.
The new dashboard of Magento 2 lists all details such as average orders, new orders, recent orders, and other information like top search keywords, bestsellers, lifetime retail sales, income tax, and more.
7. Integrated Payment Gateway
Secure online payments are the foundation of building trust for any online business.
Usually, Magento site owners needed to integrate with popular payment gateways through additional third-party integrations or custom development work.
To make this simple unlike Magento 1, Magento 2 has inbuilt payment gateways in it – PayPal, Authorize.net, and Braintree.
Moreover, the release of Magento 2.4.3 now offers more enhanced core payment methods.
8. Upgraded Security
As Magento 1 is no more supported, there shall be any more release of security patches or updates. This puts sites running on Magento 1 into serious security threats. – Your store is more vulnerable to cyber-attacks and bots.
You also pose the risk of losing your store’s data as well as customer-sensitive information like their card details and personal info.
Data security and privacy being the decisive factors that influence shoppers to buy from your store, you can’t risk the loss of trust and reputation of not being PCI compliant.
But, with Magento 2, you don’t have to worry about all these, as all security concerns are taken care of with some incredible features.
Magento 2 has an overall improved architecture and releases security patches and updates to software from time to time. It is highly secure and much safer compared to the older version. It is also strongly data encrypted and technically PCI compliant when not modified. However, none uses the Magento version without being modified creating the need to manage PCI compliance on their own.
The password of Magento 2 has also been upgraded with hashing algorithms (SHA-256), to minimize the possibility of brute force attacks and other security threats.
9. Easy Extensions & Customer Support
Magento 1 has always had challenges with third-party extensions. Upgrading the Magento extension even with an expert has been difficult. Making the multiple extensions work together has never been easy.
As a solution to all these problems, Magento 2 allows the overlap of extensions. New technologies like CSS3, LESS, HTML5, and REquire.js in Magento 2 serve all the business needs of your eCommerce store where extensions come into play.
Magento 2 envelops everything – Magento Open Source, Enterprise Cloud Edition & Magento Enterprise Edition. Other than Magento Open Source, Magento Enterprise Edition & Enterprise Cloud Edition come with customer support.
Php 7 provides better performance in comparison with all its earlier versions. Being built up with Php 7, Magento 2 also offers support for Php.
You can enjoy these benefits by simply upgrading to Magento 2.
When is the right time to migrate to Magento 2?
Actually, the best time to upgrade was several months ago. But, you can even do it now. It’s better late than never!
Running on Magento 1 your eCommerce store is unstable and vulnerable to cyber attacks by hackers and spam. This security insufficiency can also lead to data compromise.
On the other hand, soon Magento 1 developers will become rare to find and your extensions may go out of control.
So it’s high time to upgrade your eCommerce store to Magento 2 for superior performance and unmatched flexibility.
With 2000+ Magento extensions, around 8000 new Magento 2 sites being launched every quarter, and 30000 existing websites, Magento 2 displays better capabilities than Magento 1 in all aspects.
Therefore, it’s a big-time and wise decision for you to migrate from Magento 1 to Magento 2 immediately.
Highlights of Magento 2
Flexible architecture for both front end & backend
Superior performance & scalability
Friendly interface focused on conversion
Improved user experience and customization options
Secure & safer than older versions
Consistent security patches and updates
Easy extensions & Ajax add to cart
Caching
Better data segmentation
In-built payment gateways
Efficient testing
Mobile-friendly website designs & layout themes
Streamlined & simple checkout
Easy-to-use admin panel to create or upload products
Highly responsive & SEO friendly to accelerate SERPs & search engine visibility
Modern tech stack
Customer support
What is the cost/pricing to do Magento 1 to Magento 2 migration?
Magento 2 migration cost completely depends on the migration hours. Based on the number of transfer hours it can cost you from $5000 – $50000 completely depending on various functionalities and customizations.
While dissecting the migration cost the major points to be considered are
Magento license fees: The community edition – Magento Open Source – is free of cost while the Enterprise Edition license fee can start from $22,000 per annum.
Theme cost: Building your own theme or purchasing Magento’s theme can add a considerable amount to your budget.
Third-party extensions: If you have third-party modules from the Magento store, the upgraded version of those with advanced features can add to the cost of migration.
Service charges: When you pick a service provider to migrate to Magento 2 it is important to choose the right one with transparent pricing to avoid burning a hole in your pocket.
How to migrate from Magento 1 to 2?
Magento 2 data migration is a complicated process that requires sincere planning and preparations. Creating a detailed migration plan on how or when certain actions are to be performed can help you with hassle-free and smooth migration.
NOTE: It is highly recommended to work with experts to complete the migration process and avoid data loss.
#1: Review your current store
Find out what you need in your new eCommerce store. Check whether the existing extensions are available in the Magento 2 version. It is also the right time to remove unnecessary elements in the website..
#2: Do capacity planning
Plan what advanced functionalities and features your upgraded Magento store might need now and in the future. Get prepared!
#3: Build & test your Magento 2 store
Installing Magento 2, design your Magento 2 store similar to that in Magento1, set up the topology and more happens in this step. After building the eCommerce store, it is put through various tests.
#4: Migration initiation
Completely tests your Magento 2 website for issues before going live. Stop all activities on your existing admin panel except the order management functions and start the migration.
#5: Incremental data updation
Capture all your data like new orders, customer info, reviews, and everything and move it to your new Magento 2 store.
#6: Take your store live
After experiencing a brief period of downtime for reindexing and DNS change setting your site will go live.
Not always the process goes the way you plan or gets completed in these 6 steps. These steps are just an outline. You may experience a few issues to resolve or come across some considerations before getting your store live.
What happens during migration?
The basic components that are considered while migrating from Magento 1 to Magento 2 are,
Data (product and customer)
Theme
Extensions
Custom Code
Data Backup
To protect the product and customer information, the SEO optimizations together with tags, titles, descriptions and avoid severe data loss, data backup for the current Magento website is made. Since Magento 2 migration is a complex process, cloud storage, external hard drives, or Zip Drive is used to protect your data.
Theme Migration
There is no way to migrate the Magento 1 theme to Magento 2. So either the design of the current store is replicated in the new store with a Magento 2 theme or it is developed as a customized Magento 2 theme-based your business goals and objectives.
Extension Migration
Similarly, the Magento 1 modules cannot be converted to Magento 2. But, developers can help in adding the same extensions with the same features to your new store. Either you can find and integrate similar extensions for Magento 2 or develop custom extensions for your new Magento 2 store.
Custom Migration
Magento being an open-source platform, Magento 1 runs on custom code. To migrate these custom codes to Magento 2 platform Code Migration Toolkit is used.
Data Migration
Finally, the website data is transferred to the newly created Magento 2 structure. All the information including product information and prices are transferred. Magento 2 Data Migration Tool can be used for automatic migration if the current store is running on Magento 1.6+ edition. Or in other cases, a custom plug-in is developed.
Once the data transfer is complete, testing is done to ensure all crucial data is transferred correctly to the new structure without any bugs.
How will Magento-2 improve the performance of the website?
eCommerce stores migrated to Magento 2 platform experience the following benefits.
Decrease in abandoned cart rate: Due to the improved checkout process and accelerated loading speed, the checkout process is made more simple and convenient reducing the abandoned shopping cart rate.
Better SEO rankings: Currently, page loading speed, responsiveness, and visual stability are the major ranking features for Google searches. Magento 2 with capabilities to flawlessly meet these criteria and with upgraded SEO features help in the better ranking of the website on the search engine results page (SERP).
Significant boost in sales: Powered by Elasticsearch, Magento 2 enables shoppers to find and buy products swiftly. Also, the improved performance and reduced loading time contribute to a better shopping experience.
Increased conversions from mobile devices: The responsive design and mobile-friendly features of Magento 2 had made shopping on mobile devices more comfortable and easy. Thus, the number of order from mobile devices have witnessed a steep rise, leading to increased conversions.
Highly secure and safe transactions: Magento 2 comes with some advanced technologies, features, and security options making the site safer for the customers. With integrated payment gateways, frequent updates, and security patches the website becomes more reliable, trustworthy, and safe for both shoppers and eCommerce store owners.
New release: Magento open source 2.4.3 highlights
Substantial security enhancements including 33 bug fixes and improvements on platform security.
New composer plugin, Rate limiting built into Magento APIs and extended reCAPTCHA coverage to improve compliance.
Infrastructure improvements in functional areas such as customer account, catalog, CMS, OMS, export/import, promotion and targeting, cart and checkout, B2B, staging, and preview.
Performance enhancement to improve indexing times.
Platform enhancement upgrades to increase compatibility with PHP 8. x.
Adobe Stock integration and GraphQL coverage.
Page Builder is now made available as a bundled extension replacing TinyMCE
Scope for Upgrade Compatibility Tool expanded.
Vendor-developed extensions for Amazon Pay, Braintree, dotdigital Engagement Cloud, Klarna, Vertex Cloud, and Yotpo Product Reviews.
Wrapping up!
All together makes it clear that Magento 2 migration is the need of the hour for your eCommerce business. Magento 2 upgradation is the progress that business needs to stay ahead of the competition.
Though there are a few challenges on moving to Magento 2, clearly the platform offers a better user experience for both customers and business owners than the previous version. It also includes some of the advanced features and important add-ons to keep your business running smoothly and efficiently.
Professionals feel migrating to Magento 2 is the best option to keep up with the innovations happening in the field of eCommerce.
Strategic planning and expert assistance can help you have a hassle-free Magento migration. So, feel free to contact The Commerce Shop if you need a hand.
FAQs
1. Is Magento 2 the right decision for our eCommerce needs?
Yes, Magento 2 is built perfectly for all eCommerce needs across platforms.
Magento 2 Open Source best suits small-scale businesses. This open-source version of Magento 2 is free of cost.
The Enterprise version of Magento 2 is the right pick for medium to large-scale businesses. It is a paid version with extensive management abilities, business intelligence, B2B, and marketing options.
The cloud-hosted version – Magento commerce offers single contract and support options for commerce and hosting.
2. Will Magento constantly make these kinds of upgrades?
Magento 2 is one of the major upgrades by Magento to replace Magento 1. Not often such major upgrades are released. However, Magento releases smaller upgrades and security patches from time to time to improve the user experience and security of the store.
3. What will happen to customization done in the Magento-1 website, will those need to be rebuilt again in Magento-2?
If the extensions used in your Magento 1 store for customization are available in the Magento Marketplace then the same can be used for Magento 2 as well. However, if the extensions are not available then it has to be rebuilt from scratch for your new Magento 2 store.
