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  • Should I upgrade from Magento1 to Magento2?
on December 30, 2019
  • Magento

Before we dig into why you should upgrade from Magento1 to Magento2, let us have a look into Magento’s history.

Magento is one of the most loved and widely used open-source PHP based e-commerce applications. The very first beta version was released in August 2007 with a lot of features no other e-commerce platform at the time could beat and updates kept flowing to improve as the day passes. The updates and support provided made Magento stay at the top of the list but not too long when other applications started to come up with more features.

In November 2015 Magento came up with Magento 2.0 with a pack full of improvements which again made it the best available e-commerce solution. The release of 2.0 was at a time when people started complaining about load times and user-friendliness of Magento1, and developers were amused at the new release which was way faster than average website load times and had a revamped clean user interface.

Now if you are a Magento1 user, you took the best decision at the time by choosing Magento as your store platform. If you have already decided to upgrade to Magento2, then this post will ascertain your decision. If you haven’t yet decided whether to upgrade, this post will give you an insight into why it is best to upgrade to Magento2 now.

So the big question “Why Upgrade to Magento2?”.

The answer has two parts.

  1. Magento announced that there won’t be any more updates, patches, and support for Magento1 after June 2020. 
  2. The tremendous improvements Magento2 offers over Magento1.

As developers, we have heard mixed responses from e-commerce store owners’ for Magento’s announcement on discontinuing Magento1. Some take it as an important fact whereas some argued that they never updated or required an update from Magento after setting up their store. True that there is a huge number of stores that are running smoothly without any need for updates, but the time and expense you spare for upgrading to the latest version is no comparison to the security flaws and performance the old version has. From a user perspective, most upgrades won’t have a visible impact but will have a solution to hidden vulnerabilities. 

Unlike regular updates, upgrading to Magento2 has noticeable changes more like an entirely new platform, that takes you to the second part of the answer. Let’s see what has changed here. 

Improved Performance and Scalability

Magento development team re-engineered Magento1 to Magento2 keeping performance in mind. Magento2 loads pages faster by 30% to 50%, even without front page caching. Magento 2 can handle approximately 10 million views per hour with the minimum requirements whereas Magento 1 can handle only up to 200 thousand.

An analytic study showed that Magento2 can process 39% more orders per hour with 66% add-to-cart times than Magento1.

These improved performances will retain more customers in the site and tend to add more to the cart rather than abandoning the cart due to loading times. 

An improved caching system with native support for Varnish.

Search Engine Friendly and Responsive design capabilities

It is developed with more SEO capabilities and also the capability to make it responsive across all screen sizes. This will also be an added advantage in Google search algorithms as Google is now giving more prominence to mobile-friendly sites.

Improved Product Search

Magento2 product search is faster and has advanced search options out of the box. This helps customers find the desired product with less effort.

Improved and Enhanced Checkout

Checking out and processing order was never been easier. Magento2 allows guest checkout as well as identifies registered customers based on the email addresses. Out of the box ajax add to cart has been introduced so that page won’t reload when an item is added to cart thereby reducing page load on hosting and by providing a more responsive shopping experience for customers.

Extension Integration

With Magento2, it is easier to integrate an extension and is faster. Magento2 CLI makes managing the application from the command line easier for advanced users.

Improved Administrator Interface

Managing the entire website is from the administrator interface and hence it plays a vital role. The administrator interface is more user-friendly and clean now. It is faster which makes it easier to manage the store efficiently. It is made in a way that a non-technical person can handle the store with the utmost ease. 

Product creation, search and managing from backend is easier now. With Magento2, you can add product videos from youtube or Vimeo along with product images. 

Magento2 lets multiple admin users manage products simultaneously and each user can customize data grids/ fields in product view. This makes each admin user manage products efficiently as the interface will be less cluttered. 

These are the major improvements Magento2 has over Magento1 and it is still not too late to think about a positive digital transformation. 

However, migrating from Magento1 to Magento2 requires some development effort which includes

  1. Product Data migration
  2. User migration
  3. Hosting Upgrade
  4. Theme change/ theme customization
  5. Extension upgrades/ customizations.

In contrary to the development expense, the improvements you get from it is tremendous and is advisable to upgrade before it’s too late. 
Livares Technologies’ Magento development team can help you overcome the challenges and keep your business updated. For a seamless Magento 1 to Magento2 migration, contact us here.

Written By
Livares Admin

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