Solvature: Your Best Chance to Take Full Advantage of Magento 2

We are happy to introduce you to our new partner! Solvature is the company you should consider if you are a serious e-commerce player who is thinking about switching to Magento, or if you already have a Magento store, but want to upgrade to the latest, much more advanced version.

Below you can find some details about how the creation of a Magento store looks like, so you can get a better idea why Solvature is worth checking out.

Introduction to Solvature

“Our success is measured by yours” – this is an unofficial motto for the team. They are experienced developers dealing with the most complex e-commerce ecosystems and tackling problems that can hold online stores back.

With many successful clients and the case studies to back that up, they are one of the most determined teams out there, specializing in Magento.

If you want to get an idea about how they work, the best example is probably their Magento 2 migration process, which you can learn more about right now…

The Complete Magento 2 Migration Process

Some clients may think of a Magento 1 to Magento 2 migration as actually just that – a migration, moving your data, settings, themes and so on to a newer version of the same infrastructure.

But Magento 2 is a fundamentally different system than its previous iteration – a migration, in reality, is a complete rebuild.

There are several steps to a complicated process like this – so let us introduce you to how Solvature tackles the task.

Since moving to Magento 2 is basically building a store from the ground up, you should think about this as a great opportunity. As you can see from the detailed process below, you have a chance to look at every single aspect of your store and decide if it’s worth keeping, if it needs to be changed and if you should also consider adding functionality that might have been missing.

Magento 2 will streamline a lot of processes and offer better performance, and as the deadline for the official EOL (end-of-life) draws near, it is a great opportunity to keep ahead of your competition. (Magento Commerce 1 (formerly Enterprise Edition) and Magento Open Source 1 (formerly Community Edition) EOL is June 2020.)

#1: Evaluating what you have

Before anything at all can be done, the current site needs to be thoroughly evaluated. The developers must be able to see any extensions, plugins, custom development, and should be decided what should be kept, added, or changed.

This also applies to products, content, site structure and so on. For example, you could get rid of pages that have little function and don’t bring you organic traffic, and/or deteriorating the SEO performance of your entire site. You could also have a look at your products and think about reorganizing them and getting rid of unpopular products.

This also means that in this first stage you should set up your long-term business plans, or if you have those, re-evaluate them considering how the new store, the new functions can probably enhance your business performance. We have to make sure that business plans and set goals are realistic and that the new store can fuel your growth the way you would like it to.

This is also the phase when the design should be reevaluated. Themes cannot be migrated to Magento 2, which gives you the opportunity to enhance the appearance of your store, shake up or even change the look of the brand if necessary.

#2: Set-up of Staging Server

The very first thing we do is to create a safe environment where the development and testing can take place – and in the meanwhile, your store can function just as it did up until the start of the migration.

On this staging server, the new store will be created, capabilities, new custom developments, plugins and everything else will be tested. This way going live with your new Magento 2 store is a seamless process and will cause the least possible amount of friction to your business.

#3 New extensions

After the evaluation stage, we have an exact picture of what the store should be able to do, including what functions should be kept and what should be added. For the Magento 2 store, new extensions and plugins should be found that are compatible with the Magento 2 architecture.

This is necessary because the underlying core APIs of Magento 1 and Magento 2 are so fundamentally different those extensions won’t be compatible across the versions.

This is a chance to expand on the previous functionality of the site, however, the site should be kept simple enough and not overstuffed with extensions just because they are available. (This is also something that should come up during the valuation.)

With the number of extensions that are necessary for the new store the time the migration takes also increases, so new additions to the list assembled during the evaluation can shift deadlines and prolong development.

#4 Custom-Built Modules

Everything that was added to your previous store as a custom development (and that should be preserved) will have to be rebuilt. As with the extensions, it is also important here to set the needs and requirements in stone at the beginning of the process as custom-building new functionalities, modules can have a very serious effect on how much the entire process takes.

The Code Migration Toolkit offered by Magento can assist with the basic of migrating extensions. But custom code is difficult to predict and it the internal PHP API has changed significantly. It is not recommended to convert custom extensions to a new Magento 2 module without the assistance of an experienced developer.

#5 Data Migration

At this point, the store should be mostly ready in terms of functionality, so it is time to move your data. We create a mapping that will help to migrate all your settings, product catalogs, registered customers and their data, sales history, promotions, 3rd party data and everything else that you are going to need to guarantee a seamless transition.

The Data Migration Tool by Magento is an essential component of the initial migration from Magento 1.x stores, however, it does not help if you are coming from a different platform. This is where Firebear Studio’s Improved Import/Export adds significant value.

Whether you choose Magento’s or Firebear’s tool or both – your data is the single most important resource. You should never ever try to migrate yourself, without an experienced developer’s help.

#6 Design

As themes cannot be migrated to Magento 2 your design should be recreated for the new store – or a new design can be implemented if needed. If you want to change how your store looks, this is your chance to do it as part of the migration – the theme has to be built from the ground up anyway.

But any changes you want to make also have to be planned carefully and included in the roadmap that is prepared during evaluation.

#7 Testing and Launching the New Store

Finally, when everything is in place the testing can begin. Developers along with the client make sure that the store is bug-free and there are no errors left. If any are found, those are fixed and the site is tested again. Once the site is bug-free, you are ready to go live.

If the servers and data synchronization is properly set up, then this should happen seamlessly without much interruption to your business.

Services of Solvature

Magento 2 migration is not the only service Solvature offers. They offer the following services for ecommerce companies:

• Build: besides migration Solvature can redesign your store, introduce new custom-built features or recreate it entirely to make your customers happy and your online store profitable.
• Operate: If you want your store to be run by experts, if you are tired of the technical issues and want a simple solution, you can hire the Solvature team to operate the technical side for your store, making it possible for you to concentrate on the most important thing: marketing to maximizing your sales and revenue.
• Improve: The team diagnoses your store, making sure that it is healthy and working properly. They look at what kind of user experience your store provides and implement best practices, eliminating any problems that might deteriorate the end-user experience.

Firebear Partner Loyalty Program

If you also want to become our partner, follow this link: Firebear Partner Loyalty Program. We can discuss all the nuances of our Partner Program to make it suitable for your business model.