Migrating From Magento 1 To Magento 2: Quick Solutions To Your Magento 2 Migration Issues

The content on this blog is not just to write and lengthen the size, but are the actual migration issues experienced by ecommerce businesses while magrating their website from Magento 1 to Magento 2.

There were many drawbacks in M1 and to overcome that Magento launched M2 and stopped M1 support.

“Magento 2 is experiencing massive growth since its launching”

Despite M2 has several benefits it still has problems that can easily be solved if migration is performed keenly following the standard process.

We believe, “One of the basic rules of the universe is that nothing is perfect. Perfection simply doesn't exist.....Without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist” ―Stephen Hawking

There are usually 5 stages that come when migrating and those are the only stages where a developer needs to play his role sincerely.

You will read:

1. Magento Website Code migration
2. Design migration
3. Data migration
4. Theme migration
5. Extension migration

1) Magento Website Code migration:
Code is the backbone of any eCommerce store. A messy code will not allow any migration tool or script to perform smoothly, instead will give you an error, again and again, that will take your time, irritate your mind, and will make your business bear loss.

Listening to the word migration from M1 to M2 sounds so simple and easy, but the actual doer knows how tricky and breathtaking a process it is. Trusting on an inexperienced developer for migration can even cost you lose entire business.

"Merchants using Magento 2 grows their business 3 times faster, on average."

This is not a threat but our experience we have got from the clients and sad to hear that they come with pain, unsatisfaction heart and with the hope of at least getting everything on track as it was before whereas they were promised with the golden words and showed stars in the day of having unbelievable site after migrating.

“Top names like Ford, Omega Watches, Christian Louboutin, Bulgari, Cocacola, Nike, Fox connect and more use Magento”

Yes, we agree any Magento developer can migrate the store, but the question is HOW?

We consider the migration process as the lifeline of the store owner and we take all precautions in case if any wrong happens in between or after the migration to have your business model always alive.

When we perform the migration process, we meet the situations where the data structure is screwed up which leaves us no choice but to reinstall Magento 1 and structure the data properly first before performing Magento 2 Migration

Important to know:
With our years of experience in website migration, we have the best method to prevent all problems and that is a Website audit. You can do a code review to find mistakes in the earlier development phase that will help you to find defects in code and its structure, you can then decide if you can run migration scripts or start from scratch with a clean installation of Magento.

2) Re-Design & Migration:
It is possible that you may or may not find the same design in Magento 2. You got to make sure if the M1 design is compatible with M2 and if it's not, you can download the extension that will help you to fit the M1 design and if there is no extension, you can clone the design for M2 or have a whole new design for your M2 store.

3) Data Migration:
Risk of data loss during migration: Be it you or the Magento migration service provider, there is always a fear of losing the data. Data loss is the business loss.

“According to the data with BuiltWith, the number of Magento-based websites is even more impressive than any other online stores. ”

Back up the data before executing the process of data migration to prevent any loss in the future as data loss is a business loss, and to safeguard your business, always have a backup of the data and resources before performing the data migration to a refuge or restart the process again if any error or bug found while migrating data.

Stick to the strategy that is made by the experts before data migration. “more analysis leads to paralysis” thus, instead of disturbing your operations, it's better to brainstorm once and stick to the strategy that was decided once.

Test before deploying is the best method to prevent any bug or error and achieve the desired outcome. Testing on each milestone or after completing the entire data migration process will help you fix any mistake in the run time that is made in the operation.

Solution: The Magento 2 data migration tool can be used to successfully transfer the key data to Magento 2. It will allow you to transfer;

1. Product
2. Customer data
3. Order data
4. Store configurations
5. Promotions

Data that will not be migrated automatically using the tool.

1. Indexed data
2. Google shopping
3. Data that is not supported in Magento 2.0
4. These 3 category data need to be migrated manually.

4) Theme migration
The layout of Magento 1 and Magento 2 is different, you cannot simply copy and paste the theme. Things you got to keep in mind:

1. Is the theme of M1 supported in M2?
2. Does M2 have the same theme as M1?
3. Does M2 have any extension that enables you to migrate the M1 theme?

If you do not find any of these, you can either clone the M1 theme, design it again that supports the M2 version.

Solution:
Magento 2 now has several new approaches and technologies that give merchants a never forgetting shopping experience. To give the advantage of these innovations and technology, Magento 2 marketplace has the availability of Magento 2 themes, layouts, and customization that are compatible with Magento 2.

Magento theme migration issues:
90% of the M1 themes are not supportive and compatible with the M2 store. While migrating the theme, there always occurs an error of the theme not supported.

“Nearly 7500 customers have migrated to Magento from OpenCart, osCommerce, and VirtueMart in the last year. ”

It is recommended, if you want your store to have the same theme as M1 you can clone it or If you want a new theme for your store, you have the option of customing the theme from scratch that will give your store a new look.

“Magento also offers the use of thousands of themes and templates”

5) Extension migration:
It is discovered that hardly 1 or 2% of the Magento 1 extensions are compatible with Magento 2 that too if you dive deep and use the code migration toolkit.

“There are over 4,000 extensions at the Magento marketplace”

Either it is Extension or Theme, both are recommended by the Magento experts to be recreated to make your store fast, scalable, and make 100% compatible with Magento 2 structure. You can check out the Magento 2 themes and extensions, compare and decide if any of them suits your store requirement.

If you find none that your store needs or you find few and others are missing, you always have the option of a custom solution.

Be it Theme or Extension, if you have any concept or feature that you cannot find in the existing ready-made Magento 2 Marketplace, you can always create your own to give your store a unique look with exceptional features.

If you are B2C and have technical knowledge yet you are lacking somewhere, it is always advisable to take help from an expert to save time and get your problem fixed.

If you are B2B and are looking for the talent that knows the ins and outs, always look for the one that is ready to help and ready to give a demo.

Solution: Magento development community has updated the most widely used extension in Magento 1 to make it compatible with Magento 2. You can easily find them in the Magento marketplace.

Magento 2 migration process affecting SEO Website ranking & Revenue

When migrating to Magento 2,

1. It usually happens that the older URLs are kept as it is
2. New URLs are added but old URLs are not deleted
3. Same URLs are added to Magento 2 store without deleting the earlier records

This confuses Google and as a result,

1. Google does not give weightage to your URLs
2. Instead it throws down the ranking
3. Reduces page load speed
4. Negatively affects your business

Remember, “Magento handles over $155 billion in transactions every year” but you won’t get the benefit of the migration is not done correctly.

Solution:
Delete all old URLs from Magento 1 and reframe it or keep the same but have them post in the new store keeping no records for google.

Show Google that you have only one URL and not many.

Don’t confuse google, keep things simple.

Wrap Up:
Magento 2 migration could be time-consuming, the business end, or a lifeline for your business. It all depends on the method and people that do. Use technology wisely to boost the business. Follow the standard process of migration is it from Magento 1 to 2 or from another eCommerce platform to Magento 2.

Don’t forget that there is a definite issue with the M1 store and possible issues with M2 if not followed the standard migrating process. No store owner can bear the loss during the migration process as it directly affects the

• Order management
• User experience
• Data security
• Product description
• Payment gateway and more and such damages will ultimately reduce the revenue which no owner will want any minute.

Out of 205 countries, 140+ countries have trusted in Magento platform for an eCommerce store. Precisely 250,000 are total Magento sites and only 40% of them have migrated to Magento 2 till now, remaining are at risk with unsupported software, securities, and updates that are a great threat to every M1 store owner.