When considering Magento 2 upgrades, there are several key factors to evaluate that will assist you in making an informed decision about migrating your e-commerce platform.
- First, calculate the maintenance cost incurred on your existing platform, bearing in mind that a stable platform would drastically reduce its associated cost by at least 50%.
- While considering your industry and business model, streamline and review your projected online revenue using at least three years of revenue data to build conservative, moderate, and aggressive growth plans.
- To determine a budget for the upfront cost of the platform, review the costs of building and customization for the existing platform over the past three or more years, including minute expenses, fees paid for services, and other internal resource costs and salaries.
This should not be overlooked and treated with utmost importance if the baseline goal is to establish feature/function parity from the current to the future site.
Forrester, while discussing platform migration budgets, recommends using a factor of 5:1 to allocate for the cost of upfront implementation versus platform licensing costs. When the capital expense exceeds the budget, we at Christopher Queen Consulting can provide options to allocate that cost over time as an operational expenditure.
- Evaluate the costs of transactional errors if orders are managed through an outdated platform, especially if you are expanding from an existing B2B footprint. A new platform is projected to significantly decrease costs associated with errors and translate to more efficient self-service transactions for your customers.
- If your business aims to make its first push into the digital B2B space, Magento 2 upgrades are the right choice, as it has proven effective in leveraging B2B and direct-to-consumer experiences.
Re-evaluate the cost per acquisition of current clients, as it is expected to reduce with upgraded brand exposure. This is particularly true in a business model focused on future generations and new accounts.
- Review the current cost of incorporating legacy systems handling order management and assess the need for an order management system (OMS) upgrade.
- Consider the current site conversion rate, knowing that rates can increase with improved page load times and performance across devices.
- For older sites, examine the bounce and conversion rates across desktop and mobile. All Magento 2 platforms utilize responsive design, enhancing the experience for mobile users.
- For existing Magento sites, note that by 2018, Magento will no longer support the Magento 1.x sites, even for security patch updates. Switching is essential to retain a safe and PCI-compliant platform for future purposes.
Ever introduced a beautiful product into the market only to face challenges due to its newness and affordability? That was the initial reaction when Magento commerce was introduced in 2008. Skeptics believed large corporations would hesitate to adopt e-commerce software without a licensing cost.
However, its successes have been unparalleled since its introduction, evolving from a disruptive technology to the most sought-after software by industry analysts. It serves a significant portion of the market, including high-potential volume e-commerce initiatives, medium-sized businesses, and emerging enterprise merchants.
If your business is running on an older version of Magento 1.X or you are considering a platform change, we at Christopher Queen Consulting recommend investing in scalable marketing, features, and functions rather than managing an outdated commerce platform just for visibility.
As demonstrated by Christopher Queen Consulting’s recent Magento 2 launches for aftermarket vehicle parts manufacturer SuperATV and whole food protein bar brand RXBAR, the business case for migrating to Magento 2 focuses on reallocating maintenance costs to investments in stable technology and growth potential. As RXBAR and SuperATV continue to expand their physical and digital presence, their decision to select Magento 2 has been reinforced by a robust roadmap that has already begun to yield results.
Merchants who have migrated to Magento 2 testify to its success in managing both direct-to-consumer and B2B operations on a single platform, alleviating concerns about obsolescence or outgrowing the platform in the coming years.
Here are a few pointers to consider that go beyond implementation costs and software licensing fees.We urge any company reviewing Magento 2 to initiate a demo and discussion for deeper insights into the following upgrades. These features should be assessed against current Magento 1.x functions if you are a Magento merchant, and also compared with other competitive platforms.UPGRADES: “Perfect upgrades” have been a significant aspect of SaaS platforms over the years, and Magento has made substantial strides in facilitating upgrades to Magento 2 with changes to the entire site structure. The use of service contracts indicates that modules and customizations have minimal impact on Magento’s core code, leading to faster and seamless upgrades.
SITE PERFORMANCE: With advanced technologies like PHP 7+ and Varnish for caching, sites will experience improved page load speed and performance, especially during peak periods like the holiday season. As mentioned in the business case, this has additional benefits such as boosting page load and conversion rates, which are factors in SEO rankings.
ORDER PROCESSING PERFORMANCE: Magento 2’s architecture allows for split databases, including checkout, to mitigate peak order stalls and reduce the resources needed to handle such situations.
CHECK OUT/CONVERSION: With many merchants using older versions of Magento with similar checkout processes, Magento evaluated data and adopted the most efficient approach to enhance user experience and create an organized checkout process.
PAYPAL/BRAINTREE: The transition from eBay has allowed PayPal to flourish, maintaining a strong relationship with Magento. PayPal and its partner Braintree have become standard payment methods with the launch of Magento 2.1, featuring saved credit cards and an in-line modal checkout experience that expedites customer conversion and eases the merchant’s PCI compliance burden.
Braintree’s hosted field provides innovative control over the checkout appearance with small, clear iFrames for secure payment data transmission.
PCI COMPLIANCE: Beyond PayPal and Braintree, all other local Magento 2 payment methods have been redesigned to lower PCI burden technologies like direct post.
CONTENT: As the lines between content and commerce blur, local e-commerce platforms have enhanced capabilities for staging, content production, and deploying non-product content pages. Magento 2’s staging capabilities empower marketers to display content without relying on IT or development resources to release essential guides, feature lists, blog posts, or instructional videos.
PROMOTIONS: Marketers and merchandisers can showcase promotions and benefits, monitor their performance, and ensure all discount rules are applied correctly during checkout. For instance, a sportswear seller anticipating a win from a well-known team could prepare a congratulatory post with a hero image and placeholder text to celebrate the win in advance, implement a promo code, and test everything before high traffic influx.
B2B: The demand for B2B digital commerce across various industries has grown, and B2B commerce is increasingly encompassing goods and services sold online. Furthermore, B2C companies are developing their platforms with B2B foundations, incorporating features for user levels, cart-to-quote, purchasing workflows, and tight integration with essential downstream back-office systems. A unified platform reduces maintenance overhead and enhances usability with an upgraded feature set.
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE AND ANALYTICS: Many merchants rely on Google Analytics for a primary view of their e-commerce channel’s KPIs. While a strong tool, GA is designed for all website types and lacks specific configurations for digital commerce channels. Magento business intelligence was developed from years of research and collaboration with e-commerce leaders to provide a convenient, configurable platform integrated within the Magento catalog and customer data. Christopher Queen Consulting endorses Magento BI as a valuable alternative to Google Analytics for validation.Similar to other major platform upgrades, audit processes must be carefully considered when transitioning to Magento 2, regardless of the current e-commerce platform. Christopher Queen Consulting has provided the following examples, but for a more comprehensive review, please refer to Christopher Queen Consulting’s e-commerce platform checklist white paper.Enhancements made to the site over the years should be assessed to determine if your customers are still utilizing them. This is an opportunity to streamline features that may have become cluttered, such as gift guides or product widgets that were once popular. In some cases, Christopher Queen Consulting has found that less is more, and achieving total feature parity with your current platform is not always the best measure.
You could allocate funds for post-launch marketing, A/B testing, and driving initiatives instead of wasting them on rebuilding a module that lacks value.
- BACK END DATA MIGRATIONS: The first step is to examine the online catalog content porting from your existing system and identify data that needs to be deleted or created, depending on the status of the available product information. Consider how to transfer existing customer and order information into the Magento interface or if it will be a new initiative. Magento has developed a comprehensive set of data migration scripts to assist solution providers and clients in porting legacy data and ensuring a smooth transition for current customers to the latest Magento 2 platform.
- MODULE AVAILABILITY: If your current site utilizes third-party modules and middleware, this is an opportunity to evaluate data integration and determine if Magento supports pre-built software connectors. The updated list of certified 2.0 modules can be found here: The guide to Magento 2 upgrades Christopher Queen Consulting.
- 3RD PARTY INTEGRATION: Some current back-office systems (like ERP) are crucial to your downstream business beyond the e-commerce channel. The level of effort required will depend on the number of current “hooks” into the systems and the desired communication rate. IT personnel should pay close attention to service providers experienced in integrating with specific software based on past projects. Fortunately, Magento 2 has alleviated concerns about cumbersome and costly third-party integrations with its asynchronous technology, which simplifies the process of linking data to other systems. Understanding your current commerce system ecosystem in a flowchart format can help clarify the data flow in and out of the platform.
With numerous Magento 2 customers transacting millions of dollars, and many more on the way, Christopher Queen Consulting will continue sharing insights with the new wave of Magento merchants. Do not hesitate to reach out for assistance with complete replatforms or transitioning from a legacy Magento application. Our team is here to help you achieve the right level of growth, stability, and success for your e-commerce platforms.
