Adobe has officially announced that it will stop support to Magento 1 at the end of June 2020.
For those merchants who have still not migrated their eCommerce stores to Magento 2, this is the last and final chance to migrate by using the services of a Magento development company. After this date, Adobe will not add new features or innovations to Magento 1 and as a result there will not be any new releases coming out.
In other words, ecommerce stores on Magento 1 will not receive any updates or support on modules that they are currently using. This includes updates, new releases and patches related to security. As a result, the security features of these stores will stand compromised in the face of new cyber threats and viruses, and they will be more vulnerable than before to security violations. They will also face problems related to performance and optimization because they would be running on old, unsupported software.
Migrate from Magento 1 to Magento 2
To avoid this situation, this is the right time to migrate your eCommerce store from Magento 1 to Magento 2, as this will not only provide you access to a host of new features that include advanced search engine optimization, easier checkout, enhanced security, marketing automation; but will also lead to an overall better performance and user experience.
Steps involved in the migration process
The migration process is carried out in a smooth and hassle-free manner and typically comprises a step-wise approach that is broken down into 3 main phases:
Pre-migration phase
This is the assessment stage in which the website’s data and content are evaluated in order to determine what sort of an approach needs to be adopted; and how much of it would be manual and how much would be automated. An overall project outline is prepared including technical design and functional design specifications and deadlines for each phase.
Migration phase
In the migration phase, a testing environment is set up on a new server. Magento 2 is set up on this server and all themes, extensions, plugins, data, and content related to Magento 1 are moved to Magento 2.
Post-migration phase
This phase involves synchronizing the order history and customer data in order to ensure a seamless migration from Magento 1 to Magento 2.
Role of a Magento development company in migration from Magento 1 to Magento 2
There are numerous challenges that you would face during the migration and in order to avoid them, it is best to engage the services of a Magento development company that has experience in custom software development to optimize business operations.
A typical Magento development company serves the interests of the merchants, regardless of their business domain, geographical location and organizational specifics. It develops new sites and supports migration initiatives to Magento CE (Community Edition) and Magento EE (Enterprise Edition) for companies of all sizes, ranging from startups to large enterprises.
A Magento development company addresses all the technology needs of merchants, irrespective of the fact whether they are upgrading their platform, redesigning an existing eCommerce application, or seeking development from scratch.
For instance, sometimes a Magento development company develops innovative extensions on the Magento platform that bring rich functional insights to eCommerce sites and in the process creates software code that meets the unique business needs and challenges of enterprise customers.
Challenges in migrating from Magento 1 to Magento 2 and how to overcome them
Some of the common challenges faced are as follows:
A Magento data migration is much more than just drag & drop
Merchants who think that migration from Magento 1 to Magento 2 is a copy-paste job are mistaken, because it is more complex and time-consuming than that. Before transferring any data from Magento 1, the Magento 2 platform has to be prepared to receive the data.
Thereafter, a combination of custom migration scripts, the official Magento Data Migration Tool, and various manual migration techniques are applied to transfer the settings and bulk data.
Only a Magento development company has the technical knowledge and extensive experience to migrate the database assets seamlessly. These comprise the customer data and product data. Other data such as meta titles, blog content, meta titles, and customer orders are migrated together.
Sometimes the Magento code is mesy and data structure is poor
In such a situation the Magento development company has to conduct an audit to assess the quality of code and how it is structured. If there are issues, then it is not possible to apply the standard migration tool and scripts. To overcome the defects in code, sometimes Magento has to be re-installed to structure the data properly.
SEO rankings may suffer in case migration is not done properly
In case migration is not carried out by a professional Magento development company, then there could be issues in SEO. Pages could be lost, duplicate content could surface, redirects might not work and URLs might be broken. These issues could impact marketing strategies and lead to a loss of rank in SEO rankings.
To overcome these problems Google Webmaster tools like Search Console and Analytics are helpful. They find and fix 404 error pages by applying 301 redirects, formatting all internal links based on the Magento 2 rules, and sorting all of the canonical URLs to avoid duplicate content.
Applying extensions in Magento 2
Magento 1 store extensions that add new features and functionalities for marketing, checkout, customer support, payment solutions, shipping, etc cannot be copied during migration and require replacement with the extensions that have similar features for Magento 2 store.
As most of these extensions are now available in Magento 2 environment as well, a Magento development company can easily migrate the settings and data. Moreover, installing extensions and updating features has become simpler now because of new technologies like HTML5, CSS3, Require.js that have been integrated into Magento 2.
Dealing with design imperfection
As Magento 1 templates are incomptabile with Magento 2, it is a good idea to hire a Magento development company to install either an available theme or create a new one from scratch. Some merchants even opt for a complete website redesign.
Risk of project getting stretched
A migration from Magento 1 to Magento 2 is a major upgrade that can sometimes take longer than anticipated. Phases such as project planning, implementing extensions, data transfer, custom development, and redesign can take longer than anticipated.
Completion of requirements
A Magento development company ensures that the scope defined in the pre-migration, migration and post-migration phases is completed in time and as per the functional and non-functional requirements of the merchants. The quality of code is checked and after user acceptance testing the migrated store on Magento 2 is handed over to the merchants.
Conclusion
With a few months left for Magento 1 support to end, this is the right time to migrate your store to Magento 2 and get benefits of new features & functionalities, new design, superior performance, enhanced security, and faster checkout.