Magento 2 Migration Issues: Most Common Challenges to Consider

If you have built an eCommerce platform on Magento, then you might have heard of Magento 2. If you are thinking of a Magento 2 migration, there are some issues to consider. But first, what is Magento?

If recent years have taught us anything, it’s that every retail store needs an eCommerce platform to sell their goods online. This is where Magento comes in. Magento is a CMS that can help businesses build their own online platform. This CMS platform offers a wide variety of tools to allow your business to build and customise its own platform that conforms to its business ideals and appeals to its target audience.

For those with less experience with creating a website, and a lack of HTML knowledge, then Magento offers a simpler alternative for website creation. As with any online platform, Magento will have updates and changes every now and then. If a business has set up a website on Magento, then migrating to Magento 2 would seem like a natural choice.

However, there are some challenges that should be considered before you migrate over. Understanding the key differences between the two platforms can help the migration go as seamlessly as possible. Read on for the most common challenges when migrating from Magento to Magento 2.

Magento 1 Themes Don’t Transfer to Magento 2

As Magento 2 has a different code structure from Magento, once you migrate over, you will have to find a new theme. This also means that you will have to add in all your customisations again from scratch.

This might put you off migrating to Magento 2, especially if you don’t have the time to be creating a theme from the ground up, but there are options that can make the migration easier.

Magento 2 offers pre-made themes that you will only need to install and customise. Some of these themes even come with extensions built in, meaning you need to spend less time migrating your site.

Magento 2 has a better code structure, allowing it to work faster. This means that your website is more likely to perform better. A better website performance can improve your website’s overall rating, which in turn will hopefully bring it up in the rankings on Google.

Finding All The Extensions That You Used To Have

Migrating to Magento 2 will also mean that you might want to find the extensions you had before or their equivalent. Finding all the extensions that you used to have can be a frustrating process, and as some extensions are third-party plugins, they might not exist in Magento 2.  Work out which extensions and themes you want beforehand and set up a Magento 2 migration plan.

This could make the idea of migration even more off-putting, especially if you relied heavily on one of those plugins.

However, migrating could be a good opportunity to review the extensions that you had on Magento. You might find that you had obsolete extensions that were slowing down your site. Along with the faster speed and increased functionality of Magento 2, this could help you better optimise your eCommerce platform.

SEO problems

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is crucial to the success of your website. SEO affects the ranking of your website. Poor SEO will lower the quality of your website, making it appear on later pages in a Google search. This means that there will be fewer people finding your site, resulting in lowered traffic and conversions.

Magento 2 has a different database structure than the original, and this means that URLs will be re-indexed into Google, possibly leading to a loss in traffic. This could be seriously detrimental if your website falls out of the rankings.

However, there are extensions available that can allow you to rewrite URLs. This tool will easily allow you to change a URL as well as its separators, suffixes, paths, and canonical links. This is a useful SEO tool for making your URLs more appealing to Google by following standard SEO rules and will hopefully boost their rankings.

How to Solve These Problems?

The issues addressed in this article might seem like enough to put you off from migrating to Magento 2, but it is far easier than it seems.

There are simple solutions to these problems, and the benefits of an eCommerce site with better performance and functionality should not be ignored. Many people are immediately put off by poor design, or slow performance. Having a faster website can go a long way toward helping your conversion rate, especially if your platform is easily accessible.

Another aspect to possibly consider is the support made available to you. When new software is released, the support for older versions will be diminished. This adds incentive to migrate to newer software, so when issues might arise, support will be readily available.

If you still need help with working out details like themes and extensions, then there are websites available that can give advice on which themes offer the best extensions, as well as what add-ons you should get for your platform.

Conclusion

Building an eCommerce platform can be time-consuming and stressful. If you have little experience in building a website, then using a CMS platform can help you with the more difficult aspects of website creation. After building an eCommerce platform, you might see little reason to migrate to a newer version, especially if you don’t have the time to do so.

Migrating to Magento 2 can ultimately be a good thing for your eCommerce platform. While transferring and updating your theme and extensions can be time-consuming, the benefit of a faster platform should not be ignored.

Added functionality and optimisation can make Magento 2 a stronger platform in the long run with enough investment. Overall, the benefits will outweigh the issues. The added functionality could end up boosting the performance of your website and increasing its traffic. The sooner you migrate, the sooner you can get used to how the new platform works.