If you are a Magento store owner, you are probably afraid of "Magento 1 End-of-life" that is predicted to happen at the end of 2018. And the solution that most of the merchants like you now are thinking about is implementing Magento Migration from 1 to 2. It is undeniable that Magento 2 can make an overhaul for your website, from design to functionality. However, there are some problems related to the Magento migration process that you should know before starting the work. In this article, I will show both potential risks of migration to Magento 2 and the ways you can handle those. Let's get started!
Magento Migration Can Affect Current Site Performance
In many cases, the website speed is not as fast as it would be during the Magento migration process. As a result, the customers might have a worse experience when visiting your store for at least one month to five months. To deal with that, there are two possible solutions. The first one is that you should notify your shoppers of the migration, get their empathy, and promise for a more powerful website with the much better user experience. The second useful idea is that the Magento 2 upgrade should be conducted in your low-sale season when the visit volume is the lowest.
Data Loss Might Occur During The Transition
It is the most dangerous risks of Magento migration the store owners. If you migrate from Magento 1 to Magento 2 yourself without strong knowledge and experience about it, the data loss is unavoidable. Another case is that you hire bad Magento developers, they might make all of your precious database assets from sale orders, products and customers disappear without recovery. Here, the solution is simple, you should look for a reputable Magento migration service provider, who have years of experience in Magento 2 migration and is willing to show you their portfolio. Also, remember to make a backup for your site before the migration.
Some Hidden Costs Of Magento Migration Are Ignored
Obviously, Magento 2 migration comes at a cost. This cost might be immensely pricey or reasonable based on your choice of Magento agency. For example, if you prefer working with local Magento development companies in the US, UK, Canada,... the Magento migration cost is never under $15,000 since their labor cost is very high ($60-175/working hour). Meanwhile, if you don't mind outsource your Magento migration project for an offshore Magento migration service provider in Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, India,..., the cost you have to pay might be just a half or even less (from $2,500-10,000/project). Nevertheless, the mentioned cost is just the payment for the developers. The other fees might include buying new Magento 2 extensions and theme, hosting, third-party software, maintenance service after project, and so on. It is highly recommended to make a detailed list of the expenses so that you can well prepare your budget.
Less Time For Day-to-day Operational Management
Even when you hire a reliable Magento migration company, you still have to spend a lot of time on your project. The developers might need your help anytime during the migration process to ask for the site information, clarify your requirements or solve some unexpected issues timely, etc. Because of that, as a store owner, you have to not only manage operational work as usual but also take time for supervising the migration process. You might apply the same solution to the first problem (moving from Magento 1 to Magento 2 in the low-sale months) to this issue. Another recommendation is that you should ask your developers to provide weekly reports that summarise all of the tasks they have done throughout the week so that you can easily follow the work.
SEO Might Be Affected Negatively
After Magento 2 migration, if your website structure is changed significantly, it might have a negative impact on your rank on Google search engine pages. Therefore, it's necessary to make no changes to the page structure so that the search engines can realize and confirm that both of your sites are the same identity. Moreover, using the sandbox might be a good idea since it allows you to test the site performance and make sure that all redirects are handled effectively before moving the site to live. Apart from that, Magento 2 migration can lead to broken internal links. To deal with it, the format of your broken links should comply with Magento 2 rules.
Hope you can migrate your site from Magento 1 to Magento 2 successfully!