The Ultimate Checklist For Magento 1 To Magento 2 Transition

The countdown has begun! As per the official announcement done by the Magento team, the “End of Life” for Magento 1 is near. Merchants who are still active on Magento 1, will need to look out for Magento 2 migration service and make a move as soon as possible, else might end up risking their own business by staying active on an unsupported platform before 30^th June 2020.

A platform without support is prone to vulnerabilities! Web skimming attacks on web stores are increasing day by day. Staying active on an unsupported platform is a risk for both business and customers. Your customer’s information could be easily hacked and infected with codes that can steal your customer’s payment details, bringing down your business forever!

There’s no time to think, the clock is ticking! Now, is the time to take action

Migrating to Magento 2 will avoid the downfall of your business. Many leading businesses have already contacted Magento 2 migration service providers and have migrated to Magneto 2, as they understood that a simple and easy migration can bring a lot of business opportunities in the near future. Magento 2 comes with brand new architecture and design, improving performance & providing advance security for your business.

Also read: The Future Ready Enterprise eCommerce Business

Let’s take a look at the benefits of migrating to Magento 2

• A Mobile Friendly User Interface – It’s imperative to have a responsive mobile site, as an approximate 46% of online shopping comes from mobile devices. Magento 2 improves onsite search, friendly checkouts and gives your customers a new user friendly experience.

• Improved New Admin Interface – The new interface is easy-to-get-along-with and it’s perfectly created for non-technical Admins.Magento 2 has eliminated the limitation of single admin user to engage with product data. It now allows multiple admins to access the product data, options to personalize the admin panel, add new product listings and has enabled easy monitoring of your online store products.

• Improved Performance & Scalability – Magento 2 sites will run on average 20% faster than Magento 1. It enhances database flexibility & scalability to deal with peak loads, boost server response time & enhance proficiency of backend operations. Highly performant sites have been proven to increase sales and improve search engine rankings, migrating to Magento 2 will boost your business growth & revenue.

• All New Database Design – Magento 2 has overcome the need of using a single database to cater information on Product data, orders and checkouts. Admins are now able to utilize separate databases to access the information. This eliminates system failure and database overload, a current drawback in   Magento 1.

Migrating to Magento 2 will bring a lot more benefits to your business. Magento 2 is one of the major platforms used by over 128,784 businesses around the world. A study conducted by Alexa reveals 20% of e-commerce sites in Alexa Top 1 Million sites use Magento as its platform. It’s time to migrate and see what difference it makes for your business.

Also read: How E-Commerce Is Flourishing Amidst The Coronavirus Outbreak

Time to get started! All you need is a “Migration plan.”

To migrate successfully and avoid issues, you need to thoroughly plan and test your migration. A basic migration plan will look something like this;

• Look for an opportunity to clean up old and outdated data – Take time to remove outdated and redundant data from your Magento 1 database to simplify your migration. Determine which extensions are now part of the core Magento 2 code. Many find that they need far fewer customizations on Magento 2 than they had on Magento 1.

• Check if any new themes/templates available that you want to replace – While migrating from Magento 1 theme to Magento 2, you can make User Interface level changes, and also add new themes that are available in     Magento 2.

• Build and prepare a Magento 2 store for migration – In order to provide redundancy in the event of unexpected issues, it is a best practice to replicate your Magento 1 database. Use this replicated Magento 1 database as the source data for your migration.

• Dry run- Before you start migration on the production environment, follow the best practice of going through all the migration steps on your testing environment. It is best practice to cease all administrative activity on both Magento 1 and Magento 2 during your migration test runs (and during the actual data migration)

• Start your migration with the Data Migration Tool – This tool will migrate customers, catalogues, orders, shipment, and your core configuration. However, it is important to know what it does not migrate. Your custom data, admin rights, media files, and certain other custom technical aspects will not carry over seamlessly on the tool.

• Update incremental data – After migrating data, you will then have to gradually collect the data updates that have been added in the Magento 1 store (such as new orders and reviews) and go into Delta mode to transfer these updates to the Magento 2 store.

• Before you Go live! – Prepare a detailed regression test plan and have it reviewed by all stake holders to make sure all cases are covered. Check if Magento 2 site files are up-to-date and is functioning normally, you can then cut over to the new site!

The above is only a basic “Migration Plan” and it can be customized as per you. Before you start, it’s always good to have a “Checklist” handy to avoid any miss outs during the migration process.

Consider this to be your checklist before migration:

1. Ensure you don’t miss anything in the migration process: Your Themes, Extensions or plugins, Customizations (Code, Data model) and Data. It’s always good to prepare a detailed list and have it reviewed.

2. While the migration is going on, keep track of bugs filed in current M1 instance and make sure they are not missed to be retrofitted in the M2 instance.

3. A clear agreement on scope between stakeholders is important. Knowing the exact objective before the migration process plays a crucial role here (Only migration or migration + UX overhaul including any new functionality).

4. Make sure all software/hardware requirements are properly met and verify if they meet the compatibility criteria.

Now that you are ready to migrate to Magento 2 – it is recommended to take professional guidance and reach out to experts for help for Magento 2 migration service. This will make your migration process safer and smoother.

At Apexon, we can help you migrate your store seamlessly without breaking even a tiny link. We have been doing this from a long time, with Magento Certified developers that worked on many eCommerce projects for clients globally. We can help you migrate your store to Magento 2 without affecting the overall Customer Experience.

Reach out to us! The time is ticking, you need to take action now!