15 Compelling Reasons You Should Migrate Your Web Shop to Magento 2

Ever encountered prompts to upgrade your software applications? Yes, of course! We all have at some point, for our applications, software suites or operating systems.

Every few years, software product manufacturers do come out with an upgrade in order to re-envision the possibilities of their platform keeping pace with the latest development practices.

Magento, the leading ecommerce platform, also followed suit and unveiled Magento 2 in 2015 to lay a strong technological foundation for future growths.

Our team of Magento Certified Solutions specialists was super-excited to explore the new advanced features of the latest version.

Addressing the dilemma of e-commerce owners

New releases, however, do not leave everyone excited! Some of our e-commerce clients who were running their web shops on the previous version, Magento 1 were confused about their future moves after the launch of Magento 2.

Unfortunately, the scenario hasn’t changed much and some degree of confusion is still lurking among a lot of e-commerce owners. They aren’t so sure whether to upgrade to Magento 2 or not and even if they should, why?

If this sounds like you then you are on the right page! In today’s post, we would be unearthing an array of capabilities of Magento 2 and empowering you to make an informed decision.

Why should you migrate to Magento 2?

Here are 15 persuasive reasons compiled by our Magento development experts to help you overcome the barriers that are hindering your path towards Magento 2 advantages.

Besides functionality enhancements, your web shop has also been missing out on major improvements in terms of performance and modularity.

Let’s take a look at the notable improvements and new features of Magento 2 that can help you to deliver faster and seamless shopping experience to your online customers.

#1 Mobile and SEO-friendly

Contemporary online shoppers perform more than 50% of online transactions on mobile devices. The responsive frontend design of Magento 2 makes it possible for you to deliver intuitive shopping experiences to your customers across all types of devices.

If your web shop is not responsive, here’s what you are missing out! Responsive themes not only enhance user experience but also impacts ranking of your website in search engine result pages (SERPs).

#2 Ajax cart

If your web shop is running on Magento 1 then you are well aware that each time a product is added to the shopping cart, the system reloads the page. This in turn negatively impacts the user experience.

And this is a known fact that if a page takes more than 3 seconds to load then it usually leads to cart abandonment. This is something you cannot ignore if you want to run a profitable web shop.

In case your customers are adding more products to their cart then this page reload time can add up and become a major pain point.

Magento 2 addresses this issue by including an Ajax Cart out-of-the-box, i.e., without you having to install any module.

Ajax Cart uses JavaScript to add items to the shopping cart and it doesn’t make the entire page to reload, thus enhancing user experience.

#3 Varnish caching system

Caching systems store the page elements of frequently accessed web pages to serve your site visitors faster by reducing load time.

Thus, caching systems accelerate performance of your website and help you deliver great user experience.

The best thing about Magento 2 Enterprise Edition is that caching system like Varnish, a widely used HTTP accelerator, comes built-in with native support.

#4 Modern admin Dashboard and simpler navigation

In Magento 2, the admin Dashboard enables you to find crucial business information about your e-store in one single place; thanks to its sophisticated and intuitive interface.

It allows you to find out the overall state of your business effortlessly by just viewing the financial data displayed by the dashboard.

The Dashboard primarily presents an overview of:

• last orders placed,
• frequently searched terms,
• most viewed products,
• average order amount,
• new customers,
• lifetime sales, etc.

Furthermore, the admin interface of Magento 2 is simpler making it a welcome feature for e-store owners.

E-commerce merchants who have already used the complex admin interface of Magento 1 would definitely enjoy this easier and simpler admin navigation of Magento 2.

So, with Magento 2 you can manage your online store efficiently as well as effortlessly.

#5 Installation of modules easier and cheaper

Magento enables you to make a robust and profitable online presence; thanks to its amazing out-of-the-box features.  

Moreover, it also provides you with the flexibility to enhance your e-store’s overall performance with the myriads of Magento extensions available.

However, installing new modules and extensions in Magento 2 is easier as well as cheaper compared to Magento 1.x versions.

This is because of HTML5, Less, CSS3 and require.js which makes the front-end development simpler and thus modifying the functionalities easier.

#6 Easy integration

Yet another useful and welcome feature of Magento platform is that it allows you to integrate various systems like inventory management software, customer relationship management tool and enterprise resource planning software to your e-commerce website.

The integration at times doesn’t go smoothly and while Magento communicates with the other systems, the messages get lost. To track those messages becomes a daunting task, however.

This issue is addressed by the Magento 2 Enterprise Edition with a framework called RabbitMQ (Message Queue) which monitors communication between Magento and enterprise softwares.

As the second part of its name suggests, this framework stores unsent messages and forwards them to the relevant system as early as possible.

#7 Streamlined checkout

Smooth and simple checkout process plays a crucial role in increasing conversion rates. Magento 2, with its new and streamlined checkout ensures faster and easier checkout process for customers. Let’s see how:

• It allows customers to register after placing an order rather than during the checkout process.
• Customers can find order details in every step of checkout process thus keeping them at ease.
• With fewer confusing formalities and fewer forms, customers can now focus on completing the checkout process thus minimizing cart abandonment.
• Integration with PayPal has been improved as you need not provide additional information like billing address which is handled by PayPal.
• It includes product photos in order summary which builds up on buyer confidence and cuts down on returns leading to higher conversions.

#8 Elasticsearch technology

Magento 2 Enterprise Edition comes with Elasticsearch which improves quality of searches and thus user experience.

It can easily handle large catalogs and scale search capacity as the number of queries rise. It already handles 33 languages out-of-the-box which translates into simpler global deployments.

Misspellings in customer searches would no longer be an issue because Elasticsearch offers suggestions as well as synonym management via Magento Admin.

In short, this improved search powers you by increasing relevancy and conversions of your Magento 2 store.

#9 Multiple master databases

In Magento 1, often there are problems on the customer side due to straining of the platform from the admin side resulting from database overload.

This is because customers, website administrators and developers use the same database in Magento e-commerce website.

Magento 2 Enterprise Edition offers three separate databases for product data, order management and checkout respectively.

This scalability ensures that your customers’ shopping experience is never affected by the merchandising activities or order management.

Even Magento development experts enjoy scaling different database tiers and allocate separate master databases to support different website activities.

#10 Simplified products upload

Magento 2 makes creating new product easier by facilitating product upload through simplified step-by-step process.

Moreover, it offers a great opportunity to merchandise your products by allowing you to easily add videos from YouTube or Vimeo besides product photos.

 #11 Improved customization

Any e-commerce store that takes business seriously considers personalized customer experience a basic requirement.

Personalized payment methods, up-sell and cross-sell offers, providing customers with discounts comes easy to web shop owners using Magento 2’s advanced promotion rule builder.

You can determine what content you want your customers to see and what specific discounts and gift coupons you want to offer them by monitoring their on-site behaviour.

#12 Lower hardware requirements

Magento 2 is far better than its predecessor no doubt for it has lower hardware requirements to yield the same level of performance.

Acquiring new hardware not only incurs cost but can also serve as a potential source of complications.

Thus, Magento 2 is more cost-effective than Magento 1 even if you are using a hosting service.

#13 Improved performance and scalability

Enhanced performance of your e-commerce website translates into more user interaction with your e-store and fewer abandoned carts. It has been observed that page loads in Magento 2 are twice as faster than Magento 1.

Research data from trusted sources reveals that Magento 2 stores can handle up to 37 percent more orders per hour compared to Magento 1 stores.

This also means that a Magento 2 store can handle more traffic and manage million page views per hour efficiently without breaking down during peak hours.

#14 Strong data encryption

Security is the primary concern of web shop owners as news of cybercrime is rampant these days. Magento 2 effectively addresses this concern with its security features including strong data encryption.

This security feature protects passwords and other sensitive information like credit card information, payment and shipping module passwords, etc by enciphering with the AES-256 algorithm.

This confidential information is further decrypted and the remaining information is hashed with a robust SHA-256.

You can either let the encryption key tool that comes with Magento 2 platform to generate a key during installation or choose to set the key as per your requirement.

#15 Built-in testing framework

Regression testing, unfortunately, wasn’t easy with Magento 1 to screen it for bugs.

Especially, when your site is complicated with lots of customized features, modules and extensions, and also gets massive traffic, it is highly important to minimize the risks.

Magento 2 with its built-in testing framework makes it much testing much easier. You can run automated tests on any Magento website irrespective of its size and complexity.

Is upgrading your e-store to Magento 2 an onerous process?

Any migration process is not absolutely painless; however, if you get proper assistance from professionals then the process can get easier and smoother.

Migrating to an entirely new platform would demand serious commitment, on the part of e-commerce owners as well as developers, to the planning and implementation of the procedure.

When you consider migration from Magento 1 to Magento 2 platform you would need to keep the following things in mind:

• Find out if your server meets the Magento 2 requirements or you would need to upgrade to a new one.
• Your Magento certified solution specialists would need to check whether all the third-party extensions installed on your web shop have compatible Magento 2 versions or not.
• Remember that the structure of Magento 2 is completely different than Magento 1; hence all your site’s themes would have to rebuild.
• In case core tables Magento 1 database were changed during installation then migration would get more complex.
• The more customizations you have done to your Magento 1 store the more amount of work your migration process would demand.
• You can also consider this as an opportunity to revamp your site and enhance user experience of your customers.

Why partner with Helios Solutions?

We have been a Magento e-commerce development company for more than a decade empowering clients with a robust and meaningful web presence.

Our Magento developers have hands-on experience in enabling e-commerce clients to get early-adopter advantage with Magento 2.

Many of our clients have leveraged the new feature enhancements of Magento 2 to move their business forward by delivering great shopping experiences and driving sales.

You too can make your web shop scale and evolve with this industry-leading technology and leave your mark in the e-commerce space. Happy selling!