Starting from June 2020, the popular Magento 1 platform is no longer officially supported. What should hundreds of online store owners do? First of all, a lack of official support could endanger your business. Doesn’t it urge you to make a quick and irrevocable Magento 2 migration?
Yet M2 has practically nothing in common with the first platform. It implies a technically complex, costly, and time-consuming migration process. Thus, not everyone is quick to take this decisive step.
Nevertheless, by keeping your online store on Magento 1, you deprive yourself of all the benefits that Magento 2 has to offer. So is the migration from Magento 1 to Magento 2 worth all the trouble and investment? In this article, we’ll elaborate on seven reasons why you should boldly open yourself up to this change.
1. Better SEO
What should you bear in mind when maintaining a Magento store? First, prioritize smartphone users.
Сreating well-developed sites that are convenient to use from a phone is no longer optional but necessary. You know that Google stated mobile-friendliness to be part of its ranking algorithm, don’t you?
Another key point is website loading. A page shouldn’t “jump” up and down, open fast, and display the elements where they should be when a visitor launches the store. That’s why you can’t ignore Magento time to first byte optimization and other solutions to improve website performance.
With Magento 2 responsive web design, shopping can become seamless from both mobile and desktop. Magento 2 has become more consistent and Google-friendly with features such as:
- extended snippets on catalog pages;
- SEO-optimized URLs;
- image optimization;
- canonical tags for categories and products, etc.
Based on Magento 1 shortcomings, the developers have made many improvements to work with duplicate content and meta tags (no need to use SEO extensions). Of course, Magento 2 provides better SEO opportunities, greatly simplifying the work of SEO specialists.
2. Stronger Immunity to Cyber Attacks
Magento 1 no longer receives security patches from the official Magento team since June 2020. Simply put, an M1 store is likelier to compromise not only your business’ information but your customers’ data as well.
What does it mean if the store continues running on Magento 1 without proper security? You need to handle security on your own. If not, hackers can steal credit card details and any personal information for their use.
Another tricky reason is heavy fines for revealing their customers’ personal data. Just imagine: in 2021, cybercrime comprises $6 trillion in damages annually, according to the CyberSecurity Ventures report. And this figure is expected to rise by 15% and transform into $10.5 trillion annually by 2025. It’s like slightly more than three of California’s GDP.
Migrate from Magento 1 to Magento 2 to ensure strong data encryption in contrast to M1. You don’t need costly litigation from your loyal customers, so the sooner you decide to upgrade, the safer your store will be.
3. Compliance with Major Payment Systems
Another reason you need to consider is the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI). It’s a set of requirements intended to secure businesses from the risk of fraud and protect cardholders’ data while purchasing. Magento 2 makes it possible to comply with PCI due to its security support.
Lack of PCI compliance will jeopardize many Magento 1 stores in the future, as they won’t have the most important advantages.
For example, better protection against ransomware and counterfeiting not only preserves your peace but gives way to payment systems like PayPal and Braintree. More importantly, Magento 2 doesn’t stand still but continues to implement enhancements to these core payment methods.
4. PWA Compatibility & Mobile Friendliness
M-commerce is developing quickly as a flash, reaching 72.9%, up from 52.4% in 2016. So the official Magento team developers optimized Magento 2 for mobile devices to encourage mobile sales. They equipped the M2 platform with new responsively designed themes, integrated video, and easier checkout.
Magento 2 offers an easy experience and properly sized landing pages for all mobile users. All these criteria improve the look and functionality of Magento 2 stores equally perfect on all phones and tablets.
Speaking of mobile shopping, you can’t ignore progressive web apps. Magento 2 migration allows for building a PWA for your eCommerce store.
This solution is a website that looks and acts like a native app but works within a mobile browser. PWAs are considered to be essential for eCommerce retailers’ fruitful future. And there is a reason for it.
PWAs make it possible to use the site without downloading and cluttering the phone’s memory with heavy native apps. Also, they’re accessible offline.
Furthermore, PWAs are responsible for a substantial revenue boost to businesses. And delaying their implementation for one month may lead to a $1.4 million loss in revenue. The numbers rise if we speak of six months which totals another $6.8 million.
I share this screenshot as one of Magento 2 PWA examples. That’s Timetravels, a tourism service provider. The site is fast and has mobile-friendly UX/UI.
Screenshot taken on the official Timetravels website
Plus, page load time will dwindle thanks to the improved process of browser caching for static content.
5. Admin Panel Upgrade
The admin panel in Magento 2 is easy for new team members to learn. It reduces the time spent on managing an online store. For example, it provides the ability to quickly access critical business information and personalize it for each user. With new updates, the admin panel is now highly customizable to fit your needs.
So, the panel on M2 is much cleaner and more user-friendly than on Magento 1. Likewise, product creation is even easier with product import capabilities (4 times faster than before). Topping that, the admin panel on M2 is touch-screen friendly which allows you to manage your store on the go.
6. Choice of Plugins & Extensions
Security patches are not the only thing that Magento 1 will stop getting. Also, the developers won’t support new feature updates for Magento 1.9.x. It means that your store will lag in the competition for up-to-date functionality. It is a significant reason to start looking for a team to migrate from Magento 1 to Magento 2, isn’t it?
Although there are still over two thousand M1 extensions and themes on the Magento Marketplace, they won’t be replenished anymore. Unlike M2 third-party extensions, which will be constantly developed day by day.
To prove my point, only today Magento 2 provides a 30% wider selection of themes and extensions. Besides finding new extensions, it will be hard to fix bugs for the already existing ones on M1.
7. Availability of Specialists
The official team of Magento 2 experts works day and night to provide users with the latest updates. It not only concerns updating extensions but also seeks to contribute to the fixes of previous bugs.
As time is running out for Magento 1, more and more specialists will be involved in projects on Magento 2. It will become increasingly difficult for you to find someone to help you with keeping up your store on Magento 1, just as it will be difficult for you to find the necessary extensions from trusted vendors. So your developer will have to custom-code them for you.
To Sum Up
Taking all the aforesaid into consideration, the time to migrate from Magento 1 to Magento 2 is now, and it’s critical. Nobody wants to deal with a ghostly M1 platform that ceased to issue updates and security patches.
So, the longer you postpone implementing the best approaches in your store, the more thousands of dollars lost it may mean. Staying with Magento 1, which can’t perform properly, you simply turn a blind eye to such alarming statistics.
Yes, the migration won’t happen in a day. There are many implied complexities due to the drastic changes in architecture and logic that Magento 1 and 2 have. Yet with an experienced team, Magento 2 migration means a great time to freshen up the design, get new features, or even build a PWA to help your eCommerce store thrive!
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