Top 10 Magento 2 Migration Mistakes And How To Avoid Them

Every business wants the best eCommerce store for its customers, which will enable them to provide an awesome experience. Magento is one such eCommerce platform that is used by a lot of businesses. If you use Magento and want more features with the Magento 2, you should migrate your existing Magento stores to the new version. However, this migration process is not easy, and it is prone to errors. 

In this article, we explore the top 10 Magento 2 migration mistakes and how to avoid them for a smooth transition.

Top 10 Magento 2 Migration Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

1. No Planning

Planning is the key to success in any migration project, and it becomes highly important when you are migrating something as important as a Magento eCommerce store. Without proper planning, you may disrupt your store or take it down, which will directly affect your business. Moreover, unclear migration timelines will keep the project running for a long time. 

If you want a successful migration, it is important that you plan everything about the migration process. Moreover, you should always migrate in phases so you are making smaller changes and progressing regularly without making any service disruptions. 

2. No Testing

Without testing your migration projects, you cannot be sure they work correctly. Even if you are in a hurry to complete migration and go live quickly, you should not risk skipping the testing phase.

When you first think of migrating your Magento store, you should also think about the time you will spend testing the new features. Add considerable testing time to your project plan to always roll out safe features. 

3. Not Outsourcing Projects

Magento migration is a tricky process, and it is better to have experts by your side rather than tackle this alone. Before you start your migration process, you will need to spend considerable time learning Magento 2 and adapting your existing eCommerce store to new features so that existing functionality does not break. All of this can be time-consuming and risky if you don’t have the right capabilities. 

To have a safe and secure migration process, you should outsource projects to service providers who have dedicated expert teams for Magento 2 migration. Such service providers can also help you save costs by offering competitive prices and working remotely. 

4. Not Using Readymade Themes

Creating your own theme for an eCommerce store is a good thing, but it can take a lot of time as your development team will have to rewrite most templates in the Magento codebase for your store. Though it can help your eCommerce store establish its own brand, it is not feasible if you are running a small store. 

When migrating to Magento 2, you will get many readymade themes to choose from, and there is no harm in choosing one. By choosing readymade themes, you can migrate faster and also save on migration costs significantly. 

5. Not Consulting with Migration Experts

Consulting with migration experts is an important step that many businesses don’t take. Before you plan your migration, you should get your current eCommerce store evaluated by migration experts and get their consultation on it. 

If you don’t take consultation, you may miss out on important parts of your migration process, which can negatively impact the business. Magento consulting experts will provide you with a detailed migration plan that can be followed to have a seamless and zero-downtime migration process. 

6. Not Taking Data Backups

Magento 2 migration can go wrong when it is not done correctly, and you can easily lose all your operational and business data for the eCommerce store. So, it is important to take a backup of your data before you begin the migration process. 

Having multiple data backups can ensure that you don’t lose out on data even if the Magento 2 migration process fails in between. While taking backups, you should only backup important data and leave out data that can be easily recreated. This will help you to take smaller yet faster backups. 

7. Not Planning SEO

When you migrate to Magento 2, your SEO rankings will surely take a hit due to a newer website structure and internals. If you don’t plan the migration properly and think about SEO, you will have a larger impact. 

Hence, it is important that you plan your SEO strategy and changes before migration to minimize impact. One way you can do this is by updating the robots.txt based on the new website structure, adding new keywords, and improving website performance. Making these changes will ensure that your SEO strategy stays intact and you regain your SEO rankings quickly. 

8. Not Creating a Cost Budget

Almost every eCommerce development company has a limited budget for technology and new development. If you are one of them, not creating a cost budget can make you spend much more than you intend to spend. 

Even if you outsource your projects at a defined rate, and later on, the service provider asks for higher charges, you will lose money for the migration project. Hence, it is important that you create a cost budget before starting the migration project and even finalize the costs upfront. 

Having a cost budget will help you evaluate service providers who are under your budget and save time. This will also ensure that you get a good return on your investment. 

9. Missing Out on Functionality

Another common mistake that takes place during Magento 2 migration is that teams miss out on functionality. Many teams don’t have a complete view of the features built into their apps, due to which they forget to migrate their functionality tothe  Magento 2 eCommerce store. 

Moreover, if you use a lot of extensions, you may find it hard to replicate the same functionality in Magento 2 if the extension is not available. So, before you start your migration process, you should create a list of extensions or plugins that your store uses and all the functionalities that your existing store works with. Having such lists will help you track your work better and quickly find out if you are missing any functionality. 

The functionality list can also be used by your QA testing teams to plan their testing efforts and validate the working of all existing functionalities after the migration.

10. Not Focusing on Performance

Every store owner wants to migrate to Magento 2 for better performance and newer features, but if your migration is not done correctly, you may not get the desired performance enhancements or benefits. 

Things like wrong cache configuration, inefficient database connections, and unindexed searches can quickly make the user experience bad for your customers and drive sales down. 

Hence, when doing a Magento 2 migration, you should focus on setting up the right setup, which will give you performance benefits.

Conclusion

By now, you know the common issues that you will face during a Magento 2 eCommerce store migration, and you also know how you can avoid these issues. However, if you still feel underconfident, you should work with an outsourcing service provider who can provide a dedicated development team and migration teams for your Magento eCommerce store. By partnering with such service providers, you will not need to upskill your existing teams or hire new developers for the migration project, and you can also save costs without compromising on quality.