How to Migrate Magento 2 Successfully and Without Mistakes

July 6, 2020

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How to Migrate Magento 2-Successfully Without Mistakes

As of June 2020, Magento 1 will no longer be supported by Magento, which is going to mean drastic changes for those online stores who are supported by it. While there’s a lot of benefits to migrate to Magento 2, the actual process of switching from one to the other is an essential process you need to get right.

By flawlessly switching over, you won’t need to worry about any problems, and you’ll minimise disruptions to your business. With this in mind, today we’re going to explore the top tips to help succeed with your transfer and how to avoid making mistakes on the way.

Table of Contents

Tips To Migrate Websites To Magento 2

1. Don’t lose database assets

Of course, using the Magento Data Migration app is essential for transferring everything over to Magento 2, but it’s also risky. After all, you don’t want to lose your data on the way and then have to put it all back in manually.

Recommendation: Magento 2 Data Migration Tool, Magento 2 Code Migration Tool

The best way to avoid any problems is to make a backup of your data BEFOREHAND. Remove your backup file and put it on a flash drive or external hard drive. This way, if anything goes wrong or you lose some data, you can simply restore it from your backup relatively pain-free.

2. Minimise effect to SEO

optimize SEO to migrate Magento 2 successfully without mistakes

You’ve probably spent a lot of time optimising your eCommerce store for high SEO rankings but moving over to Magento 2 can cause some issues, most notably, double links and duplicated content that could negatively affect your SEO ranking in the future.

“You need to make sure you’re going through your website after transfer using the Google Webmaster tool to fix all your error 404 pages and making sure all links have proper canonical URLs, so Google indexes them as being the same links, not duplicated or plagiarised content.” shares Lisa Turner, a tech blogger at Britstudent and 1day2write.

3. Don’t spend too much money

When moving from Magento 1 to 2, you may find the theme you’re using on your store, or other Magento 1 plugins, are not compatible with the new version, which means you’ll need to find replacements from Magento 2 extensions. Be sure to spend wisely and not just invest a ton of budget on themes and extensions that you don’t really need.

Make sure you take time to plan and prepare your budget before making any new changes. Remember, a new website can cost up to $2,000 and decent themes can cost up to $200, which is a rather large investment for a small business to spend in one go; especially if you’re hiring a company to handle it all on your behalf.

4. Plan the migration process

“In many cases, transferring everything from Magento 1 to Magento 2 is going to take around a month. Of course, it all depends on how data you have to transfer and what you’re moving over, but this rough estimate should be about accurate for most stores. Be prepared and make sure you’re aware it’s going to take this much time.” explains Nick Berry, a business writer at Nextcoursework and Write My X.

You’ll also want to factor in the time that you might need to spend addressing problems and making sure everything is optimised and working smoothly. What’s more, it’s highly recommended that you avoid transferring over the holiday season since the Magento staff will be on vacation, and they’ll be unable to provide support if you need it.

5. Use a professional agency if required

There are plenty of agencies out there that are experienced and trained to help make the migration period as pain-free and as efficient as possible. If you’re unsure of what you’re doing yourself and you don’t have someone in your team who can manage the process, it may be worth investing in the assistance of these agencies.

All of the services and considerations we’ve listed above to migrate websites to Magento 2, such as loss of SEO, data loss, and bugs can all be addressed by a trained agency. Therefore, using one from the start can help minimise the risk and ensure you stay on track and are running as smoothly as possible in the least amount of time.

Author of article How to Migrate Magento 2 Successfully and Without Mistakes

Vanessa Kearney is a writer and eCommerce manager at Thesis Writing Service and Write My Coursework. She is passionate about helping eCommerce businesses succeed and get creative with their approaches to the modern marketplaces. She also writes for Originwritings.com blog.