Magento first came to prominence in 2008 and has since established itself as the number one eCommerce solution provider for many brands all over the world; with a healthy 28% of the total eCommerce market share & some of the premium brands investing their trust in it.
Magento is swell and all set to conquer the next paradigm shift in your eCommerce marketplace.
Now, if you are well set in your Magento 1 store and discovered later that Magento (recently acquired by Adobe) is pulling the plug from the earlier version of this eCommerce platform and introducing Magento 2.0, then this news has brewed some panic & raised many critical questions.
What will come of your Magento store, will this be an upgrade, how complex will the process be and so on? And due to this, many merchants sitting with Magento 1.0 are facing the dreaded decision to move to v2.0 at some point and believe it or not.
However, some companies are yet to decide on whether to move to the next version of Magento, as they seem clueless on the current happenings and how they should phase out their next move.
As it is, for many brands, sales are looking bleak, and you are under increasing pressure to drive revenue & hit quarterly numbers. So, it’s up to you now; whether you step up or watch your Magento marketplace collapse into obscurity. Take a call and don’t make this a nightmare.
So, what’s it about Magento 2.0 & what will the road ahead look like is something we’ll explore. Read on..
Why Now?
Magento 1.0 will cease to exist from June 2020; therefore, all the official support for its 1x version will stop at the same time for the sake of bringing in Magento 2.0. The functionality of the earlier stores will need customized solutions for any further expansions.
With Magento 2.0 hanging around since it was launched in 2015, the store owners have realized that to achieve the full potential of their Magento Marketplace, they must make the switch, before it’s too late.
Come what may, it’s time to call it quits with Magento 1.0. The store will not be around for too long, and store owners can start the prep for v2.0, which comes packed with all the previous functionalities; only better and more effective.
What went wrong with v1.0?
The flexibility that Magento 1.0 brought to the table was something that hurled the store to its peak. However, the absence of mobile responsiveness, performance optimization, and admin capabilities limited the store to a great extent.
Making it flexible just wasn’t enough to make it a user-friendly, high-performing platform. The missing features in the package would mean that users would have to extract the same from 3rd party companies then.
Aside from all this, v1.0 ceased to be a platform that brought the convenience users once expected. Letdowns over the site running slow due to a slow core-speed and other such setbacks had to be addressed somewhere in some form; which is what led to the next level for Magento in v2.0.
Pros of Magento 2.0 migration
Here are some key reasons that’ll make you jump to Magento 2.0, if you haven’t already done so:
Security
The prime concern for any merchant is the ability to showcase products without the fear of the store breaking down any moment, as such, going ahead the stability of your v1.0 store will be an issue.
Magento has decided to stop publishing Community and Enterprise 1.x security patches, leaving your site vulnerable to cyber-attacks and hacks. Besides this, PHP 5.6 met its end on December 31st, 2018, meaning there won’t be any security updates of the server software hosting your Magento website.
Persisting with Magento 1 would mean putting your site at serious security & performance risks. Magento 2.0, on the other hand, has more secure information handling, with the emphasis on offering a secure checkout process. Plus, the continuous process of providing security patches to protect your store.
Responsiveness
The support that Magento 2.0 lends to different devices makes it the idle platform for any store, which then helps the customer to access and complete the checkout from any touchpoint. Besides this, the admin interface is also touchscreen-friendly making it easier to manage the store from anywhere.
The User Interface by default gets adjusted to any screen, while the themes apply to any sizes & resolutions due to the “mobile first” approach. Which essentially means that the development of new themes starts with making them fit for small screens.
Additionally, the themes offer improved mobile responsiveness & add specific mobile features. Being mobile-friendly, Magento 2.0 also contributes to the higher ranking of your website; besides, making your store easy to navigate & lends an optimal viewing experience irrespective of the device & its resolution.
Caching
The page load speeds that will invariably contribute to the retention times of visitors on your site has been improved drastically in Magento 2.0; as a result, we now get faster page load speeds. All due to the full-page caching offered in both the Magento Community & Enterprise Edition.
Magento 2 makes use of the advanced caching capabilities, combined with Varnish full cache support; this feature makes it possible to ensure excellent eCommerce website performance due to easier cache requests, even when connectivity problems affect the mobile browsing experience of users.
v2.0 can also better handle more catalog pages without slowing down; which gives it the ability to scale and grow online business for larger stores. Thanks to this, the homepage, category pages, and product pages now load sooner and can handle more SKU’s.
Improved Checkout
A clumsy/long checkout experience will raise cart abandonment; as such, it became vital for every brand to acknowledge the importance of this. In Magento 2.0, the same has been vastly improved and made easier and faster - making it smoother to go from cart to order completion.
Checkout is available for guests without registration with the ability to automatically identify registered customers based on their email addresses; alongside giving the one-click registration option after the order confirmation page. When Cart abandonment sits at a whopping 70%, you got to take it seriously.
Besides being highly customizable, reducing checkout time due to fewer stages & requiring less customer info while placing orders; in the process making it more user-friendly. Now, every Magento 2.0 comes pre-configured with a more intuitive checkout process, that brings with it more in-built features than v1.0.
Improved Dashboard
In the new system, the dashboard has been given a major upgrade, as you can access all the essential information in one place. The dashboard gives you a synopsis of lifetime sales, average order amount, previous orders, top searched terms, top viewed products, new customers, financial data, and so on.
The admin interface allows users to navigate all parts of the admin panel easily, find information easier, manage the store more efficiently and getting new advanced reporting features through the web interface located in the Admin panel; besides being able to customize the panel as per your convenience.
A benefit that increases productivity and becomes a boon for amateurs, who lack technical skills and experience when managing products, orders, & customer data. Adding products in the admin panel is easier than before, with faster item import capabilities.
Integrations
Extensions will always add newer features and functionalities to simplify your store to a great extent, by bringing in more customizations and making it possible to achieve a more personalized outlook for your webstore. Magento 2.0 offers just that - the ability to integrate plug-ins of all sorts.
Payment options, shipping options, promotional extensions, inventory management - ERP & CRM, security, and other such tools offer convenience to make the store a lot more smooth and secure. So, now bring in apps to make your Magento store more dynamic and robust.
Beyond this, the ability to Install and update new extensions has become easier and cheaper, as the installation and modification process has become easier because of the latest technologies (HTML5, CSS3, Require.js) introduced in Magento 2.0.
Beyond this, here’s some more positives of opting for Magento 2.0 at the soonest:
- Improved search in “Elastic Search“ allows online shoppers to find and buy their products faster that saves customer’s time and effort.
- Latest versions of PHP 5.5.x+, MySQL 5.6, JQuery, HTML5, CSS3 and has in-built components Magento UI Library, CSS Pre-processor.
- Admin gets to manually add SKU’s due to the convenient mobile drag-and-drop feature.
- Offers & Special promotions can be customized for different customers, depending upon their credentials, i.e., age, location, past orders, gender, and so on.
- Better organization of mobile product category pages, which in-turn improves conversion rates.
- Customization of newsletters & emails, which in turn boosts the eCommerce experience of customers.
- Final Order summary, fewer confusing forms, and choices, simplified registration process, Ajax add-to-cart, Advanced reporting - accurate measurement of customer and visitor activity, Split database solution, support for Web (REST/SOAP) APIs.
Conclusion
On its arrival, Magento 2.0 bought with it some apprehensions; however, the growing acceptance since 2015 has made it clear that this upgrade provides a better experience for customers and admin.
What’s the resistance from migrating to Magento 2.0? As it is v2.0 performs better than v1.0, and when your site performs better, your customers have a better experience which can then lead to an increase in conversion rates & ultimately an increase in sales.
Once in 2020, it will not be a matter of choice, and those in v1.0 will have to move up or risk losing their stores. Might as well do it now and face the challenges that await. Ensure long-term stability and do not leave re-platforming to the last moment.
Besides, if you are having trouble, doubts, and other initial constraints; it’s a good time to get in touch with the Magento certified experts at Virtina. Our years of diligently serving various industrial clients in several areas of Magento have made us the most reliable partner for any help you need.
Virtina is equipped with the right blend of resources, Magento developers & eCommerce wisdom to help you roll from Magento v1.0 to v2.0., in the process scale your store for all the new possibilities that await your brand.
Moving to 2.0 will include full migration of your product catalog, customers, orders, & theme/design. The process can get a little clunky, due to Data migration issues, Image migration, Custom extension, Theme and template issues.
Get in touch with us and smoothly ease into v2.0, with the lowest risks, zero data loss, all the entities, and their relations preserved. Don’t fall back; make this complex switch to the latest version successfully with our reliable Magento support
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