Well, let me get this out there from the off, I am afraid there is no upgrading to Magento 2! You can’t get a release that will upgrade your Magento 1.x to Magento 2 and a few bits of tweaking later you have a Magento 2 website. You might be thinking “darn you Magento, you are now forcing me to spend a chunk of money on a new site and this is not something I was planning from either a budget or time point of view”!! BUT JUST WAIT A MINUTE…
So, rebuilding Magento was one of the many brightest things Magento have in fact done! We all know that Magento 1.x was becoming a bit unstable as demand drove them to add more and more functions. Come on, give them a break, the greatest ever online shopping platform was born 9 years ago! They did well to keep it going that long and it was wise to restart, take the best of what they have created and rebuild it on the latest technology frameworks. Now, with Magento 2.1, we have a much more stable, faster, feature rich platform to build some of the greatest online Magento shops ever! And now they have given you a prime opportunity to give your online shop a great boost!
Ok, so let me get off my high horse talking about how great Magento is! What about upgrading to Magento 2!
So, you can’t upgrade to Magento 2 and as I have said, it has been completely rebuilt from the ground up, so you need to be super careful choosing the right Magento agency to do this. This needs to be an agency that has proven experience of building a Magento 2 website or be happy that they take a loss and not have you pay for their learning! There are certain things you can brief your agency with that could save you money on a full rebuild and here are some ideas:
- Assuming you are happy with the design of your website and it is, of course, responsive (a must these days for your SEO rankings), then you can tell them no design is required, just copy exactly what is there.
- Get them to export and import your products. This is not a straightforward export->import, but the work is nothing like it would have been when you first had to get all your products into Magento from wherever you had them before.
- Tell them to use the new versions of any Magento Extensions, assuming you are happy with the ones you have. If they are not available yet, then don’t get them writing custom code to replace them, you ought to wait or find alternatives, they will soon be ready.
You really must see this as an opportunity to really take your online shop to the next level. Hey, YOU DON’T NEED TO PANIC, you have time, Magento only stop supporting Magento 1.x in November 2018. So, take your time to choose that right Magento 2 agency and get your web brief spot on! .
Really hope this has been helpful, but if you are worried or have questions, concerns, queries, then just drop us a line and we will be happy to chat it over with you.
Rebecca Jones, Managing Director of a London based Magento 2 Agency
