A growing number of online retailers are now migrating to Magento 2 from the earlier version, Magento 1. This trend of migration is driven both by functional advantages and strategic planning as Magento will stop supporting its 1.x versions after 2020. That’s the reason why so many business owners are upgrading their online stores with the latest technology.
The most pressing reason is the 2020 deadline for Magento 1.x-based online stores. However, several other factors should prompt you to migrate. First, the most crucial factor for an eCommerce website: it’s security.
Once the official support for Magento 1 version is withdrawn, stores built on that version could be vulnerable to numerous threats. This means that running a Magento 1 website after 2020 might be risky as you will not have any official solution for security-related issues.
A staggering number of consumers worldwide are using smartphones to buy online. This trend will only continue to grow. Online stores that are mobile optimized have higher conversion rates and better sales growth. Magento 2 enables you to stay ahead of the competition with features to help your store become more mobile-friendly. Magento 2-based stores provide a superior user experience than ones built on Magento 1.
Magento 2 provides a more carefully developed user interface (UI) that addresses various minor snags associated with the previous edition of the eCommerce development platform. The new version is more mobile-friendly, responsive, and renders a seamless experience. For example, Magento 2 provides up to 66% faster add-to-cart response than Magento 1.
Now that we’ve discussed the benefits of embracing Magento 2, let’s list what you need to do before you migrate.
There’s no point transferring irrelevant business data to the new store built on Magento 2. Try to filter the data to remove outdated and irrelevant information. Several data management tools are available for this task.
Thoroughly review your online store before starting the development and upgrade process. This will help you drastically improve efficiency by addressing potential bugs and snags. The results of the review will help you create specific requirements for developers and designers.
There are always some risks of data loss during an upgrade for the migration of a website. It’s safer to create a replica of the database before you completely revamp the old website. You can use this database as a source while migrating the site.
Continuing admin activities during the migration process may alter your database. It’s best to prepare for temporarily stopping all admin activities. Otherwise, your store may end up with patchy data migration.
The migration process should be meticulously planned. Efficiently implementing your plan will give you the desired results. Unless something critical happens, don’t let the original plan drift away.
Once you’re done with the preparation stage, the first step in the migration process is theme migration. There’s no standard tool for theme migration on Magento. You can easily buy a theme from Magento Marketplace or develop a customized theme.
Like migrating a theme, you have to check whether or not Magento 1 extensions are compatible with Magento 2. Plugins used in Magento 1 are unlikely to work for Magento 2. You will have to build new plugins for Magento 2. This is an opportunity to fix bugs and issues in the existing plugins.
Code Migration tools are available to customize your online store on Magento 2. Using such tools may drastically reduce the amount of code migration. The tools don’t complete the task on their own, though. You may need to manually edit and test the codes after using the tools.
As we discussed earlier in this blog, data migration is one of the most crucial parts migrating from Magento 1 to Magento 2. Complete data migration according to the below-listed steps:
Step 1: Download the Magento 2 platform excluding sample data. Follow the setup instructions and complete the installation process.
Step 2: Use a data migration tool to transfer your data from the old website to the new one. You can download the migration tool from the official website of Magento.
Step 3: Feed the authorization keys from the Magento website.
Step 4: Configure the data migration tool. The configuration process varies depending on whether you’re using a Community Edition or Enterprise Edition.
Step 5: Following configuration, you need to map between Magento 1 and Magento 2 databases.
Step 6: Stop administrative activities and prepare for the actual migration.
Step 7: Last, but not least, migrate the Magento 1 website to Magento 2 alongside features like shipping, shopping cart, and payment processing.
Your e-commerce site is your storefront. Make sure your customers have a great experience by making their journey engaging and the process to buy as simple as possible. Troubleshooting problems with your Magento application can be very difficult without the proper tools. Implementing an Application Performance Management tool into your environment can help you easily pinpoint and optimize your Magento Application. Stackify’s APM tool, Retrace, makes it easy to find slow web requests, slow database queries, application errors, and view your application logging.
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