Migrating to Adobe Commerce
General
For more than 5 years, BRAD TECHNOLOGY has been the global digital marketing company that experience-driven brands and retailers trust to accelerate their B2B and B2C growth. Working at the intersection of business strategy and customer experience, we are known for our thorough approach to technology assessment and our unmatched ability to deliver complex digital commerce solutions to leading lifestyle brands.
As the #1 Magento Adobe Solution Partner in Worldwide, BRAD TECHNOLOGY is a leader in the Magento Partner ecosystem. We have worked with Magento since 2015. We helped the Magento team fully vet their product roadmap, test the platform across a varied set of use cases, and complex challenges early and promptly, allowed us drive hundreds of important bug fixes. Solving these to strengthen our core relationship with Magento, get ahead of Magento 2 as a solution and to become known for our ability to tackle complex projects and customization
Introduction: For years, Magento has been the top e-commerce platform for leading retailers and many are currently considering or planning to migrate to Magento 2. As anyone in the digital commerce industry can tell you, migrating or upgrading an e-commerce platform is no small feat. We’ve created this guide to help retailers navigate the process of migrating to Magento 2, and to share key lessons we’ve learned
WHAT'S IN THIS BLOG
- The Top Benefits of Magento 2.3
- What to Know Before You Start
- A Top Risk-Mitigating Strategy
- The Value of Magento 2 Based on Retailer Data
- Real Insights from a Magento 2 retailer
The Top Benefits of Magento 2.3
If you are just beginning to consider migrating your site, you need to understand the top benefits and new features from Magento 2.3. Our clients have consistently pointed to three key benefits that have made a difference in their e-commerce efforts, here are the areas that stand out:
PERFORMANCE
From a performance standpoint, Magento 2 enables faster performance out of-the-box. This is an important factor to consider because customers are more likely to leave your site if they experience long page load times. With Magento 2.3 you will see improved indexing performance through sharing and parallel processing of indexers to reduce the indexation times. Magento has said this significantly reduces the indexation times by over 60% to support large sites and quicker product updates. For example, when BRAD ADVERTISING migrated St. John Knits to Magento 2, their page load times reduced from 9 seconds to 4 seconds.
SECURITY
Security enhancements and new tools bring forth preventative measures, as well as get rid of vulnerabilities on your site. The latest Magento 2.3 features ensure retailers have a protected and trustworthy site; these security features include ReCAPTCHA, Two Factor Authentication, ACL for Cache Management, and WAF for Cloud. This allows retailers to focus on what matters most, creating a powerful site experience.
ADMIN INTERFACE
An improved Admin user interface provides efficiency and flexibility in how ecommerce teams manage their day-to-day. This clean interface offers new user-friendly rearrangements from moving Pages and Blocks under Content to moving Email Templates and Promotions under the Marketing section now. They streamlined the process of adding products by adding all default required fields to the first screen of product creation. No more worrying about why your product isn’t showing up on the front end, between setting it to Enabled, in stock and adding a quantity greater than 0, Magento 2 has shortened the process to just a few steps. Another process Magento streamlined for users is adding products to a category, users just have to type in a category to add products to it. Checkboxes are now a thing of the past.
Additional Features from Magento 2.3
PWA STUDIO
The PWA Studio allows developers to build front end experiences easily while reducing the time and expertise needed to create engaging mobile experiences. Retailers can see an increase in mobile conversions and shopper engagement with PWA.
PAGE BUILDER
The Page Builder tool was created to save marketers time by giving them the ability to change content faster without having to edit any HTML or CSS code. With this new feature, it will save you time and money, while enables your team to create and update content quicker than ever.
MULTI-SOURCE INVENTORY TOOL
In Magento 2.3, you also have access to the Multi- Source Inventory tool, which will help you streamline your operations. This enables you to view and manage inventory quantities across multiple sources within the Admin, as well as the ability to control what sources within stocks can fulfill orders. Retailers are then able to leverage Magento’s Source Selection Algorithm, which automatically selects the best shipments based on the order of sources. These features allow you to understand your inventory in real-time, maintain what fulfills orders for each of your sites and improve your checkout performance.
With all of these new features in 2.3, you are probably contemplating if it’s worth the undertaking to migrate to Magento 2 as well as wondering what will happen if you don’t upgrade by June 2020. If you keep your site on Magento 1, it will continue to work but Magento will no longer publish Community and Enterprise 1.x security patches, leaving your site vulnerable. PHP 5.6 will also reach the end of life on December 31st, 2018 and will no longer create security updates. You are putting your site and customers at risk by leaving your site on Magento 1. To ensure you are providing a trustworthy shopping experience to your customers, we recommend you move forward with upgrading your site to Magento 2.
What to Know Before You Begin
REVISIT AND REFRESH
Have you been looking to redesign your site? With the updated mobile experience and responsive designs on Magento 2.3, the migration process can be the perfect opportunity to revisit the front-end experience to make improvements. Use this time to evaluate how your visitors experience your site and conduct an audit of what is still needed/not needed and what’s missing that can be implemented. For instance, you may want to make changes to certain templates in order to leverage Magento 2 native functionality. Or maybe you’ve been sitting on A/B testing results and want to utilize this time to implement some of those changes.
It’s also an opportunity to review the customization you have in place and find ways to optimize their performance, and which pieces of functionality are actually needed. You should consider any and all of these facets in advance to more easily integrate them into the migration process. Take advantage of any low-hanging fruit, cut loose anything that isn’t serving your business goals, and make those changes you’ve been putting on hold.
BY MIGRATING TO MAGENTO 2.3, YOU HAVE THE ABILITY TO:
- Handle larger volumes of SKUs and daily orders
- Create better mobile designs and site experiences
- Manage and produce your content easier
- Leverage the improved search and SEO features
- Reduce the number of steps to checkout to combat cart abandonment
The Cost of Migrating
Magento 2 relies on a different framework than Magento 1, making data and theme migration in itself a significant driver of the cost of the project. In addition, the difficulty of migrating over is highly dependent on the level of customization on your site.
A standard migration is considered to be one with very little customization and few integrations points. Meanwhile, a complex migration could be one that has a lot of customization to the theme, many integrations and custom modules, or various business logic have been applied.
Magento’s data shows that for both standard and complex migrations, much of the effort and cost will go toward the front end, customization’s, extensions, and integrations.
The lists below, via Fit for Commerce, highlight the most significant drivers of cost and time for migration to Magento 2. Furthermore, BRAD ADVERTISING’s own client data reflects these findings:
THIRD-PARTY EXTENSIONS + TECHNOLOGY PARTNERS
A key component of a smooth migration is selecting the right third-party solutions and extensions. It’s important to determine what extensions work well with Magento 2, and whether you will need to make updates or changes. If your site has a lot of extensions installed, we recommend doing the research upfront and reviewing the Magento Marketplace to see what compatible extensions are available. As a result, you will be able to better predict problem areas and issues that may arise. Another approach is to partner with an agency to do this legwork for you. All of BRAD ADVERTISING’s partners have been vetted for their Magento 2 experience and working extensions. Furthermore, we work closely with our partner network to ensure their technology is up to speed with client and platform requirements. Whether you work with an agency or evaluate extensions and providers yourselves, it is important to make sure the technology works for your needs before you get started.
PREPARING FOR SUCCESS
Migrating to Magento 2 provides an enormous opportunity for retailers to access improved site performance and updated features and functionality. It’s also a chance to review your current e-commerce practices and refresh for the future. Setting your organization up for long term success on the Magento 2 platform requires preparation, and now is the time to start. By sorting through the recommendations above, you can begin to lay out a framework to move through a smoother migration.
SIGNIFICANT COST-DRIVERS:
- Data migration
- Complex UI requirements
- Theme migration
- Complex customization of business logic
- Experience of partner (risk mitigation)
- Early version of extensions
- When Magento 2 was implemented
NOT SIGNIFICANT:
- Revenue
- Transaction volume
- Integrations via APIs
- Widely used and mature extensions
- MVP Champion: A Risk Mitigating Strategy
What is a MVP Champion?
CHOOSING A CHAMPION
So who should you select for this role? The MVP Champion must keep the number of “must haves” to a bare minimum, so it’s important this person be someone who is inside the business, who the project sponsor trusts and listens to, and whose sole incentive is to have the site running successfully and stably on Magento 2.
“If you have a fixed timeline, keeping the project’s scope to a minimum is the most important thing you can do to mitigate risk.”
If the MVP Champion doesn’t understand the business, they won’t know where to draw the “minimum viable” line. If the project sponsor doesn’t trust or listen to them, their pleas for simplicity will be in vain. Lastly, if the MVP Champion is trying to incorporate special features on their own, their integrity is compromised.
It’s helpful if the MVP Champion has a project management background, someone who has experienced how scope, timeline, and budgets can change and seen risks emerge on past projects. The person with this background will foresee these challenges but these are not necessities. The key to this role is keeping your (and the rest of the team’s) eyes on the prize and making the prize as accessible as possible.
WHY DOES IT MATTER?
The advantage you get in having the MVP Champion is you can constantly keep an eye on exactly what is needed and what is not. This makes finding flexibility in budget and timeline a far easier and more scientific process. If you have a fixed timeline, keeping the project’s scope to a minimum is the most important thing you can do to mitigate risk. More time to do less work gives you a buffer. When working on projects for new technologies, a buffer is something you should constantly seek.
Having a strong MVP Champion will also give you confidence in your plan. By stabilizing the scope, you inject stability into every other area of your project plan – your budget, your timeline, your risk profile, and more. Sometimes schedules have to be pulled in unplanned ways, or budgets can get slashed and when things like this happen, you’ll have peace of mind knowing you have an expert who has been pushing for the “must haves” all along. This way, you know what features need to be squeezed into the newly abbreviated timeline or reduced budget.
- A team member who can consistently rule items out of scope and reduce complexity will make your project less risky and raise your chances of success. Trusting your MVP Champion’s judgment when they rule that new bell or whistle out of scope during the project can sometimes be painful. But when you have a stable, effective site with all the advantages that Magento 2 brings to your business, you’ll be happy you did.
- Website design and build projects require work best with a diverse team of experts – project managers, merchandisers, business analysts, designers, marketers, developers. Instead of having one or two people carrying all aspects of the project, each team member brings varied expertise to the particular role they own on a project. One role that is often overlooked is the Minimum Viable Product Champion or MVP Champion. This person doesn’t need to be an expert in any particular knowledge area; they just need to be prepared to keep the team focused on the ultimate goal and to repeat what can be the hardest word to say during a project – “no.” The minimum viable product will vary for each project you execute, but the principle remains the same. At the outset of the project, the core stakeholders should list and prioritize the goals of the project. Then the MVP Champion will make the case to the project sponsor on where to draw a line down the priorities list to separate the “must haves” from the “nice to haves.” Ultimately, the project sponsor should decide, but the MVP Champion should push to have as few “must haves” as possible since the rest of the project team will almost always push for more features, not less.
- It’s all too tempting to try to incorporate additional scope into a website rebuild project; after all, it can be more efficient to do more things at once since you’re already making changes. But with a re-platform to a relatively new software, it becomes even more important to limit the scope of the project to only what you truly need to make up a minimum viable product. The main goal of the project should be the re-platform itself, not every bell and whistle anyone on the team has ever hoped for.
- Retailers considering migrating their e-commerce operation to the Magento 2 platform have a lot to consider from the outset. In addition to third-party extensions, technology partners and cost, there are various risks unique to each business. It’s crucial to develop a plan to mitigate these risks before you begin the migration process. Setting up a framework within your organization can be the key to success when adopting new technology. One great strategy is to appoint a MVP Champion.
- WRAP UP: Magento 2 is an exciting platform, and many more retailers will continue to make the transition. June 2020 will be here sooner than you think, as you consider migrating to Magento 2, hopefully, this guide can serve as a foundation to your success. If you are interested in learning more about BRAD ADVERTISING and Magento, please feel free to email us at brad@bradtechnology.com
ABOUT BRAD ADVERTISING
We’re Magento Adobe Solution Partner which has proficiency working with global retail labels and growing startups for fashion, beauty, luxury, business, lifestyles, retails, home, and décor industry. BRAD TECHNOLOGY offers solutions for every Magento e-commerce service which includes development and design, under-performing websites, user experience bottlenecks, security vulnerabilities, bespoke development and more. As one of the Magento Adobe Solution partners worldwide, we’re confident that Top Web Design Companies, BRAD TECHNOLOGY can deliver the next-generation commerce solutions our customers need to future-proof their business. BRAD TECHNOLOGY is Top eCommerce Development Companies creating trans-formative commerce experiences for lifestyle, fashion, and beauty brands. Combining award-winning creative skills with technical capabilities concentrated on the Magento, WordPress, Woo commerce, Shopify platforms, BRAD TECHNOLOGY produces channel-blurred customer journeys designed to create heart-stopping moments and drive measurable results.
Laravel vs Django – Which One Can Win the E-Commerce Chase
General
A decade ago, building an e-commerce website was more of a daunting task that required careful coding, data configuration, manual feature integration, and whatnot. But the technological advancements have turned the table in the past few years, and now we have a vast range of development frameworks to design and build unique e-commerce portals and web applications.
Presently, there are plenty of framework options in the digital development arena such as Xamarin and Ionic that are ruling the sector with their functionality and features. For E-commerce, Laravel and Django are leading with the upper hand for their impeccable scalability and secure interfaces. Laravel is a PHP open-source framework whereas Django is formulated with Python programming language. Both these frameworks are so competent that it’s nearly impossible to choose between these two immensely efficient platforms.
Let’s have a quick overview of both these web application frameworks and identify the better selection after a significant comparison between their features.
Laravel & Django – A Brief Overview
Laravel knocked on the market door in 2011 for innovative web application development that precisely involves controllable architectural patterns and gets support from Symfony. This free open-source PHP framework soon became developers’ favorite for its authorization management, mail service integration, performance-enhancing tools, cost-effective development interface, and other unique specifications. Besides accessibility, error-handling and bug reporting is also convenient on Laravel projects.
On the contrary, Django was released in the development sector in 2005 with a Python-based web framework taking precedence over Laravel’s existence in the market. The framework is diligently known for clear-cut programming and spell-binding visuals that can be created through its numerous arrangements. Moreover, Django is one of the foremost frameworks in this series that hold significance in custom web development. Users get to configure a wide array of features on their web portal including multi-language support, database migration, RSS, session handling, and much more.
Laravel vs Django – A Comprehensive Comparison
Now that we are clear on the difference between both these primitive web development frameworks, let’s compare them based on their programming language, architectural setup, scalability, etc.
| Django | Laravel | |
|---|---|---|
| Programming Language | Django is designed on Python programming language that straightway carves the road for increased usability and multi-admin support as per the requirements. The platform has a library set up for storing a large database for a long time along with a vivid community for recurring technical help. While the coding isn’t much of an issue in this part, developers might come across a few speed limitations and threading problems. Apart from all this, the lack of responsiveness can be a major setback for Django which has been covered up to some extent in its latest update. | Comparison is in the commencement order with their programming language because that’s the main arrangement laid for the possibility of differentiation. Laravel framework is written on PHP language that provides a conventional route of development for users. From static reading portals to the dynamic and fully functional e-commerce platform, this programming method can cover everything. Although, the development process might be significantly time-consuming. |
| Architectural Setup | Conversely, the Laravel framework is backed by a model view controller pattern that bestows users with the freedom to customize every minor detail of the online platform through effective coding techniques. Although, this immense power of customization comes along with a lot of work that also consumes time. Laravel is comparatively more customizable but Django can be more helpful in developing web portals in limited time spans. | Laravel may have won the race in programming arrangements, but architectural setup puts Django forward for a comparatively simpler navigation structure. Django has a model view template architecture that facilitates database management from the perspective of coding control. Coding often consumes a certain amount of time while building a web application, but Django has its support on MVT design that saves users from this hurdle. |
| Scalability & Standardization | Django with its compatible interface arrangements and coding accessibility is considered to be more scalable than other famous development frameworks. | Laravel, on the other hand, requires a set of coding implementations to set a mark for scalability and convenience. When it comes to their standardization, you can’t witness any noteworthy difference between these two. Because they both follow a community-based technical paradigm for tackling frequent problems faced by the users. |
Other than these features and specialties, several elements bring together both these framework giants in terms of advancement. They both support cross-platform development which is the need of the hour for every business aspiring to beat the competition and boost the growth rate.
Nonetheless, any elaborated comparison does not subside the impressive efficiency and handiness a web platform can gain from Laravel and Django individually. Both these frameworks are crucial and can work for a distinct range of campaigns and products depending upon the utilization and integration of the right techniques.
ABOUT BRAD TECHNOLOGY
We move to great lengths to offer our clients the best solution for their requirements for this reason we try to cooperate ourselves with other businesses that are in peaks of their industry.
Magento 2 Launch Checklist
General
Here is a checklist to offer support for retailers seeking to launch an all-new Magento 2 store. It prominently focuses on certain areas of store integration that need to be taken care of throughout the project development and after the launch.
Introduction
Let’s talk about one of the most recurring scenarios in the eCommerce realm that often begins with hopes but doesn’t end quite well. A new website is created using Magento 2, launched on the web, and the pivotal performance of the platform begins to backslide. The organic search traffic is drastically affected by the changes leading to nearly a 50% drop in the conversion rate. It simply means that something crucial has either been missed or is accomplished improperly.
However, these minor issues can be easily avoided if the development project follows an explanatory and straightforward launch checklist to make sure that nothing is overlooked during the build period.
Following is an elaborated Magento 2 checklist that consists of pre-launch, launch, and post-launch phases of complete website development. As per this brief checklist, a website is ‘completed’ in terms of development & quality assurance if the ecommerce/project manager confirms all these checks before making it live to the world
Pre-Launch Checklist
- To be assured when the site is almost complete and ready to be launched
- To accommodate responsiveness through brief checks on mobile, desktop, and tablet devices
Third Party Reviews
- Moved to production mode and test reviews have been added to confirm the working status.
-
- At product level
- At site level (if applicable)
- All product reviews includeproper schema markup.
- Existing site reviews have been imported across the platform.
Category Pages / PLP
- Product images show correctly, as do hover secondary images if applicable.
- Correct pricing is displayed for:
-
- Simple products
- Bundle products
- Configurable products
- Grouped products
- Gift cards
- Filtering works as expected.
- Category title is clear and wrapped around an H1 tag.
- Category description is feeding through correctly onto the front end.
- ‘Sort By’ option functions correctly.
- Pagination functions as planned.
On-Site Search
There is a precise checklist to be followed while using the out-of-the-box site search or a 3rd party service. To garner the benefits of numerous search functionalities, you need to make sure that everything from this checklist is implemented on the website:
- Suitable attributes for optimized searchingsuch as SKU, name, description, etc have been selected.
- Popular searches on the site (that can be identified via Google Analytics) are assessed and customized to retrieve the projected results.
- The search result filtering features work as planned.
- All potential search term redirects have been migrated from the previous site and checked for correct functioning.
- Create and assign new landing page redirects for popular search terms.
- Applicable synonyms for common terms have been added.
The structure of site search results is subject to inclination due to the individual preferences of users. However, you can gather a collective algorithm for optimal efficiency by performing a series of relevant searches. Also, keep in mind that 3rd party services take time to properly assimilate into the system and that section of the platform calls for post-launch monitoring.
SEO
Search engines tend to index the website before it’s even ready to be launched which can proliferate into a myriad of technical problems. Therefore, it is essential to prepare the site for lucrative search engine optimization. Make sure to abide by the following SEO checklist in the pre-launch phase:
- The site is set to noindex/nofollow.
- Robots.txt in this phase should:
-
- Block search engines temporarily from reading the site
- Prevent the indexing of dynamic URLs.
- Implement a product schema.
- <title> tags and meta descriptions have been correctly implemented and checked from the current website.
- Both of these should not contain HTML.
- Fall back <title> tags and meta descriptions have been set up.
- leave meta keywords blank (don’t use them if possible).
- Href-langs implemented if applicable
- Images should:
-
- Contain alt tags.
- Be optimized for the search engine
- 301 redirects must always be manually checked by the team for corrections. Make sure that these redirects are ready to be added at the server level.
- Canonical URLs for products and categories have been set up.
Promo codes
- All ‘test’ promo rules should be disabled.
- Check all active Shopping Cart rules to ensure they function properly.
- Check if the Catalog Price rules work correctly and amend prices on the front end in accordance with it.
Breadcrumbs
- Breadcrumbs appear correctly across different parts of the website.
- Breadcrumbs link to destination page is accurate
Social links
- Check all social icons for appropriate linking to the destination.
- Check the linking and redirection of social sharing buttons on product pages.
General admin/setup
In Magento2 development, it is crucial that all tabs within ‘Stores > Settings > Configuration’ are checked for each site on the newplatform to conclude that nothing important has been missed. The following checklist consists of some commonly avoided options:
- General
-
- The selection of a default country and applicable shipping countries is complete
- Store information is correctly filled out.
- Single store mode is enabled for managing just one store.
- The email addresses for contacting the store have been updated from the placeholder
- The contact placeholder has been replaced by accurate details.
- Currency – Add the currenciesacceptedby the store
- Catalog
-
- Catalog – the fallback meta data should be added
- XML sitemap – Adjust the setting to‘update daily’
- Customers
-
- Customer configuration – The share customer accounts option should be enabled to ‘as desired’.
- Sales – This part of the checklist will potentially take time, but it’s essential. The sales setup must enclose the following information:
-
- Tax – Make sure that properly calculated tax info can be seen sitewide.
- Checkout – With the selection of checkout look & function, follow your instincts and finalize it accordingly.
- Shipping settings – Fill in a suitable origin.
- Shipping methods – A pivotal check!
- Google API – to add in credentials for GA and/or GTM
Make sure that payment methods have been changed from sandbox to production. It will facilitate the testing of live transactions.
Transactional emails
If you need to customize Magento for transactional emails, you will need to ensure that the following emails function and look as expected on various devices:
- Sales order
-
- Guest
- Logged in user
- New account sign up
- Forgotten password
- Link to reset password
- Back in stock notification
Tax
- Tax rules, rates and classes have been filled in.
- Tax display settings in configuration have been set up.
- The front end displays the accurate VAT price per product on:
-
- Product pages
- Category pages
- Page builder blocks
Cart
- Cart total aptly displays the following details:
-
- Subtotal
- Total
- Tax
- Discount
- Promo code field
-
- Showcases valid codes.
- Displays precise and user-friendly error messages for invalid codes.
- Updated changes in the product quantity as planned.
- The removal of products from the cart functions properly.
- Clicking on the site logo should always return users to the homepage.
- The ‘Continue Shopping’ button should function correctly and return users to the homepage.
- The gift card field accurately works.
Checkout
The following checklist must be carried out for both logged in and guest users (if applicable):
- Error messages on address/billing information are accessible.
- Promo and gift card fields function as planned.
- Applicable shipping options with appropriate shipping value.
- Multiple payment options.
-
- Configured as per the guided instructions and adjusted to production accounts.
- Show explanatory error messages for invalid information.
- Set payment acceptance only to the submission of correct details.
-
- Order shown in a suitable state in Magento.
- Order exports effectively to ERP.
- Payment is received in assigned gateways.
- Order completes successfully as planned.
- For guests checking out after the order, keep the registration option on the success page.
Account area
The account area functionality doesn’t obtain any significant adaptation from the proposed changes due to coding limitations. Nonetheless, the following checks are definitely worth the attention:
- Options for pulling through the personal details and updating passwords.
- Address feature must cover:
-
- vivid visibility for existing addresses
- Addition of new addresses
- Regular update of addresses
- Orders
-
- New orders appear with the correct order state.
- The re-order button functions properly.
- Newsletter subscription
-
- Displays the right mailing list user is subscribed to.
- Allow users to unsubscribe from the mailing list whenever they want.
- Wishlist
-
- Items in the Wishlist should appear as planned.
- Clicking on specific products in the Wishlist will redirect the user to the corresponding items.
CMS pages
With a circumspect use of Pagebuilder functionality, the possibility of changes in CMS pages rises high. Hence, it becomes essential to monitor the functioning of each block on different types of devices. In that case, creating an example page with pagebuilder blocks can come in handy! This way, you can assess the look and functionality of various blocks across a wide range of devices.
Cookie policy
- Available on the website for new users.
- It doesn’t appear for users who have already accepted it.
Google Analytics / GTM
Live GA/GTM credentials to be added if you are filtering out traffic to a live website
404 page
Looks and functions as expected.
Holding page
The launch of a new website can possibly result in downtime that often lasts for a couple of hours. This is the span during which the holding page appears. Make sure that your page is ready to be displayed in front of the key stakeholders and users with the following details
- Check holding page for launch is correct
-
- Phone number (including tel: link)
- Email address
- Content
Launch Checklist
The big day of official launch is assumed to hit the roads with the removal of holding page and elimination of IP restrictions. Now, your website is all set to make a mark in the world. Now that your website is about to get started, make sure that you go through the following checklist.
Test orders
- Place multiple test orders
-
- Logged in and as guest users
- Same billing/ shipping address
- Multiple tests of numerous payment options
- Orders go through as expected
-
- To Magento
- To ERP / Order management software
- Tax amount correction
- Payment is captured in the suggested gateways.
Website address
- Resolved to HTTPS
- Non-HTTPS redirected to HTTPS
- Non www resolved to www or vice versa
SEO
This is the vital part of a website launch! Make sure everything mentioned in the following listis checked as the site launches:
- Spot check for 301 redirects.
- XML sitemap(s) creation in Magento.
- Site set up for INDEX/FOLLOW.
-
- View page source across several on FE to confirm the text.
- Search engines unblocked from robots.txt.
- Webmaster tools account is created/updated
-
- New sitemap(s) are added
- Check for broken links across the site and fix.
- Run product pages through schema markup tool https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool
- Double check canonical URLs are in place.
- Double check href-lang implementation.
Transactional emails
The next segment of the checklist is a repetition of the pre-launch steps. Evidently, checking on twice never hurts! Make sure that the following emails go accurately on all types of devices:
- Sales Order
-
- Guest
- Logged in user
- New account sign up
- Forgotten password
- Functioning ink to reset password
- Back in stock notification
An error-proof addition of SPF records with the help of the development team can simplify the flow of emails and prevent them from going into spam
Google Analytics
- Use real-time reports to ensure that the external traffic surfaces on the website.
- Revise the site search parameters to make sure that the search queries are recorded.
- The recording of transactions must be in working order.
Performance*
Running Google lighthouse audit to compare the site with the older version can be precisely helpful.Don’t skip to address any apparent concerns with the technical team.
Third party service checks
There is a wide chance that your site will acquire a set of 3rd party modules to function unstoppably on the web.This form of configuration can result in license issues and affect the site performance drastically.The following checks must be ensured shortly after the site launch:
- Site Search – run a re-index and check results for correction.
- Email - sign up for marketing email lists is enabled.
- Live chat
- Personalization software
- Reviews
- Tax extensions
- Shipping extensions
- PSP modules
Post-Launch Checklist
The post-launch span isn’t probably the time to settle down and forget about potential technical errors plummeting the performance of the website. Following is a checklist of the elements that need to be taken care of over the next few weeks post-launch:
Post-Launch Checklist
The post-launch span isn’t probably the time to settle down and forget about potential technical errors plummeting the performance of the website. Following is a checklist of the elements that need to be taken care of over the next few weeks post-launch
SEO
- Ongoing checks of the following in webmaster tools.
-
- Error log and address
- Easily readable sitemap(s)
- Valid robots.txt file
- Frequent checks of search listings.
-
- Title tags properly displayed in the results.
- Accurate visibility of meta descriptions.
- Unaltered schema markup.
- Reviews and ratings are displayed distinctively.
- The correct store version appears in the correct search engine locale.
- Daily update of XML sitemap.
- optimization of every new content and images added to the site.
Google Analytics / GTM
- Go through the following traffic sources to compare with old site data:
-
- Organic traffic
- Direct traffic
- Referral traffic
- Ensure that all orders continue to flow through to GA.
- If using GTM, all tags are firing.
Customer services
No matter how flawless your project strategies have been throughout the development span, having a word with the end-user will always result in something far more efficient. Communicate with the customer service team to go through the feedback your website receives. It will help you address the issues you possibly may have missed
Sales
The complete order cycle discretely encompasses Magento status change and utilization of relevant 3rd party software
You may acknowledge the fact that some aforementionedfeatures and functionalities don’t apply to your website while some of them need to be customized on your platform. Nevertheless, this complete checklist will help you keep up with project development, so your website can be launched with an infallible appeal and embark on its commercial journey.
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User experience consulting
Magento 2.4 vs 2.3 – A Calibrated Comparison
General
Magento 2.4 became the talk of the town right after its launch on July 28th and now everyone in the ecommerce sector is talking about it. Even with such an impeccable set of new features and simple fixes, it is quite difficult to differentiate Magento 2.4 from its earlier version 2.3. If that very same question is tickling the brain of your creative digital team, you might be in for an absolute answer. Read on to learnthe facts about Magento 2.4 vs 2.3 that every digital expert should be aware of.
Table of content
Highlights
- Magento 2.4 vs 2.3: Stronger & better security
- Magento 2.4 vs 2.3: What has changed in platform upgrades?
- Magento 2.4 vs 2.3: Infrastructure Improvements
- Magento 2.4 vs 2.3: Performance Improvements
- Magento 2.4 vs 2.3: The new Adobe Stock Integration
- Magento 2.4 vs 2.3: New features of GraphQL
- Magento 2.4 vs 2.3: Latest PWA Studio version
- Magento 2.4 vs 2.3: An All-New New Media Gallery
- Magento 2.4 vs 2.3: Enhanced Inventory Management
Fixed Issues
- Backend
- Cart and checkout
- Catalog
- Customer
- Images
- Orders
- Sales
- Search
- Theme
Highlights
Magento 2.4 vs 2.3: What has changed in platform upgrades?
- Support for PHP 7.4 and deprecation of PHP 7.1 and PHP 7.2
- Support for PHPUnit 9.x and deprecation of PHPUnit 6.5
- Elasticsearch 7.6.x– Magento will now be using Elasticsearch 7.6.x as the default catalog search engine. Any installation or upgrade to Magento 2.4.0 will also require the installation of Elasticsearch 7.6.x. Read more about Elasticsearch here.
- MySQL 8.0 support- The most updated version of Magento contains MySQL 8.xsupport known to deliver better performance, security, and reliability.
- Removal of MySQL catalog search engine– Elasticsearch will take the place of MySQL in this version. Installation of Elasticsearch 7.6.x is essential before upgrading the platform to Magento Commerce or Magento Open Source 2.4.0.
- MariaDB 10.4 support - Followed by the support for MySQL 8.0 is MariaDB 10.4. Magento experts suggest that merchants must deploy MariaDB 10.4 for its outstanding performance and trustworthiness.
- Migration of Zend Framework to the Laminas Project
- Decomposition of Magento Controllers
- Removal of the core integration of the Signifyd fraud protection code- Signifyd Fraud & Chargeback Protection extension is the alternative.
- Removal of core Brainee module- Check Braintree Payments to see new features.
Magento 2.4 vs 2.3: Infrastructure Improvements
- Deprecation of Magento core payment integrations
- Support for partial-word search for Elasticsearch
- PayPal JavaScript SDK upgrade
- Deprecation and removal of the Web Setup Wizard
- Composer update plugin
- Seller-assisted shopping
Magento 2.4 vs 2.3: Performance Improvements
- Enhancements to customer data section invalidation logic
- Multiple optimizations to Redis performance
- Improved caching of results of SQL queries to inventory tables
- Improvement of up to 25-30% to Quick Order add-to-cart performance
Magento 2.4 vs 2.3: New Adobe Stock Integration
Merchants can now license stock image previews with the new and upgraded media gallery. Unlike Magento 2.3, your efforts with integration in this version will be reduced.
Magento 2.4 vs 2.3: New GraphQLFeatures
- pickupLocations query backs up the Inventory In-store pickup option.
- categories query can now create a list of categories after applying specific filters.
- After logging in, users can add all previously ordered items into their cart with reorder Items mutation.
Magento 2.4 vs 2.3: Latest PWA Studio Version
Magento 2.4.0 supports PWA Studio 7.0.0. Check this PWA Studio 7.0.0 Release to get through more features. Check the Magento full list of compatibility here.
Magento 2.4 vs 2.3: An All-New Media Gallery
Magento 2.4 introduces you to the search-friendly interface of the new media gallery. According to Magento, this gallery version is up to 30x faster than its forerunner in terms of searching, filtering, and arranging images. Although, merchants need to know that extensions deployed for the previous version of Media Gallery will not workthe same for this version
Magento 2.4 vs 2.3: Enhanced Inventory Management
- Support for in-store pickup. The inshore-delivery method of Magento 2.4 allows users to select a certain source as a pickup location while checking out.
- Support for bundle products with multi-source mode.
Fixed Issues
Magento 2.4 core code doesn’t include the issues of its earlier versions. Throughout this segment, you will come across 10 salient elements behind the massive fix that merchants should know about
Backend
- Admin can now enable JavaScript minificationand preview Email templates (Admin > Marketing > Communications > Email Templates). This fix will remove the empty popup window issue.
- Administrator accounts despite restricted permissions can now access the Admin. The log-in link navigated to a 404 storefront page made it impossible in the last versions.
- Duplicated products will not be attributed as duplicate SEO data (URL key, meta title, meta keywords, and meta description).
- Magento users can delete images created from Admin > Content > Pages >Add New Page resulting no potential errors.
Cart and checkout
- The Synchronize with Backend configuration setting can be enabled to preventerrors during checkout.
- The checkout flow will also encompass the addition of radio buttons for shipping methods.
- Now merchants can select multiple addresses to ship an order, enable Terms and conditions with the Applied Manually setting and experience the 404 error-free loadings of the order review page in the checkout workflow.
- The price updating process of the cart will also consist of the spinning icon.
- A message about out-of-stock products in mini carts will be sent to the customers before checkout. The Proceed to Checkout button will appear right after the removal of these items.
- This Magento version has customized an informative error message to let customers know when they can or can’t use the Order by SKU option due to corrupted file upload.
- The cart price rules only to child products matching the criteria rules. This is not applicable for the whole products within a bundle.
- Storefront Minicart Section will replace Storefront MiniCart Section in MFTF tests.
- The shipping address form doesn’t have any obscure coded references to the country selector component anymore.
- In Internet Explorer, when the cursor is moved to the Delete icon in the shopping cart, it doesn’t show any underlines.
- When users select the same address for both billing and shipping address, changes in the billing street are not inflicted upon the shipping address.
- The promotion region of the mini cart is changed as requested.
Catalog
- Users are allowed to modify the name of a tiered product included in a scheduled update without causing any errors.
- Users can save Custom attribute values from the Admin.
- The ‘Recently View Products’ is displayed when Stores > Configurations > Catalog > Recently Viewed/Compared Products > Show for Current is set to store view
- Product images in the mini cart will remain unstretched and unaffected as there is no need to fill the whole image container anymore.
- The getBasePrice function will return a float value instead of a string.
- The product compare feature perfectly shows products according to the current user’s compare list.
- You can assign a default watermark to various themes without any significant error.
- You can edit a configurable product with many subproducts (approximately 5,000) without errors.
- Alphabetical order will now be applied to sort the attribute sets on Admin > Catalog > Products
- The use of invalid prices to filter products on the Category page will not cause any errors now.
Customer
- If customers subscribe to newsletters as a guest and then later register for a new account, their subscriptions will remain the same.
- A new PHPSession will be put into use during every password change.
- To associate a customer with a particular website, you can use the Associate to Website dropdown menu on Customers > All Customers > Add new Customer.
- Magento’snew version can automatically update the default billing or shipping addresses in the My Account section.This way, if customers use incorrect payment info and later complete the purchase with proper details, it will not affect the checkout flow.
- By enabling cron and settingUpdate By Schedule for Customer Grid indexer, the import of customer data by the Customer and Addresses (single file) option can be easily achieved.
- Creating a new customer was some chore in the earlier versions even though you enter a valid date. Magento 2.4 has successfully evoked this problem out of the system.
- Withthe default customer group setting, creating a new customer from Admin is simpler than ever.
- When a customer logs out and then logs in again, the PHPSessionId gets changed.
- Every time a customer adds a product to the cart from a non-default website, that product will be shown in the Admin. In previous versions, even the Share customer account to Global setting couldn’t help.
- From the Admin, you will only view the products customers put into their cart. It will not display the entire product list in the catalog.
- the date of birth of a customer can be edited from the Admin without resulting in any technical errors.
- You can now leave the email field empty while placing an order from the Admin.
- In mobile view, from the My Account dashboard, email address values are displayed correctly.
- Even if you click the Create an Account button on the customer registration form 100 times, it will accept the registration request only once.
- An authorization email with the expected RMA status will be shared with the customers when they request a return.
- In case the customers report a forgotten password in multi-site deployments and their accounts are shared globally, they will be able to stay on the current site. The last Magento versionsredirected the users wherever they created their accounts.
- In the order confirmation email, customers will be able to see the list of all ordered items. This feature was not available in the previous form of Magento.
Images
- Category images are now saved in pub/media/catalog/category instead of pub/media/catalog/tmp/category.
- A bigger watermark image overlaying a smaller product image will not overshadow the visibility of the actual product.
- When you save an image to a category from the Admin, there will not be any changes in the image URL and you can access the image even after it.
- png images can be uploaded and displayed properly.
- You can make an image thumbnail by using REST and there will be no errors.
- You can add your own custom attributes to images created byBlock\Product\ImageFactory without much hassle.
- When you view a storefront from an iPhone, the display of the image will be just as per your expectations. Say goodbye to blurry and distorted product pictures.
- When the Magento_blank theme is used, you can now see the default store logo on the storefront.
Orders
The website display settings can be customized to display that taxes should be excluded, and the order summary subtotals will not show any excluded taxes. Before Magento 2.4, the defined setting in server variables was used for stores in multiple websites despite the store-level configurations
Sales
- The completion of an order will be displayed in the payment system and Magento successfully. The last versions didn’t provide the display settings in Magento.
- Magento now honors a customer’s default shipping address given that the Same As Billing Address setting is enabled by default.
- Now there is an error-proof setting to calculate the refunds for orders with discounts.
- When a new customer creates an order in multi-site deployments, it will be assigned the correct Group ID. Before Magento 2.4, merchants used the default customer group for this task.
- Administrators with restricted permissions can view an order (including invoice and shipments) from the Order pages without any hassle.
- As long as the number of a product added to the cart is higher than half of the existing product stock but lower than the total stock, customers can still proceed with the purchase.
- In case there is just 1 product remained in the stock, you can add that product to the cart from the Admin without errors.
- Instead of a report page, Magento 2.4 will skip the report page and notify with a message when the product admin tries to re-order has the number of characters exceeding the maximum.
- The refactored layout of the Sales order address information edit form will now be similar to the Admin form library conventions.
- The checkboxes will effectively work on the Products section of the Catalog > Categories.
- Re-orders can be disabled as per the merchant’s choice.
- Merchants can successfully change the re-order settings by this config: Admin > Store > Configuration > Sales > Reorder > Allow Order.
- By setting a custom price for an order in the Admin, getPrice() method will not make a return.
- Instead of a status, a state is displayed in the State Code and Title column of Admin > Stores > Settings > Order Status now.
- PDF invoices created in a GB locale will not capture the incorrect date or wrong data anymore.
Search
- Elasticsearch 7.6.x is the new default catalog search engine. The installation of Magento 2.4.0 will initially require the installation of Elasticsearch.
- < and > symbols are properly adjusted in storefront catalog search strings.
- Running cron:run in deployments implementing Elasticsearch will show products in categories.
- A new product attribute can now be easily searched on the storefront without the full search re-index requirement.
- Now you can apply filters for a configurable product without being distracted by the display of out-of-stock items.
- Clicking on the search input box on the mobile view of Safari will not cause the viewport to resize or change in any way.
Theme
- The bug in JsFooterPlugin.php spoils the display of dynamic blocks, but it can now be fixed without errors.
- i18n method can help underscore templates by adding a string.
- The refactored section-config module will now control the errors resultedfrom requests from third-party.
- This version has eradicated the LoadCssAsync HTML format errors
Final words
With all these above-mentioned distinctions, you will be able to compare the features of Magento 2.4 vs 2.3 with ease. Clearly, Magento 2.4 exhibits the level of effort and dedication the Magento team has put into this magnificent platform development. We will keep you posted on the latest upgrades and technical reforms that can transform the world of the web
We are very proud of our Magento solutions as Magento/Adobe Commerce one of our core services. We’re Magento Development Company have experience consulting on a host of Magento projects – from replatforming to Magento, to migrating Magento 1 stores to Magento 2 & bespoke design & development– as well as providing consultancy and platform guidance on retails businesses. If you want like to discuss working together on a Magento business, reach out to us today!