Migration from Magento 1 to Magento 2: Risks and possible issues

In this post you will learn about main risks of the migration to Magento 2.

You know that this process is migration. It is the key problem and the key opportunity for business.

The minimal time of migration is 240 hours. Magento developers spend 40 hours on the data migration. And 200 hours it is the preparation of Magento 2. What conclusions can you draw?

1. You want to copy Magento 1 e-shop

Well, you have functionality customizations, wonderful design and set of extensions. But you can’t. Magento 2 doesn’t Magento 1 functions and extensions.

If you try it, you faced many risks. This is going to create more costs and losses for you.
Of course, developers can find alternative, but...

2. You want to add many features, extensions and customization in first version of Magento 2 e-shop

The better way to implement only important and necessary features.

Why? You need to learn more about Magento 2 features. You have collect more information about. You can save budget. And you will get optimal solution at no additional cost in the right way.  

If you try to implement old features on new site, it won’t give you a measurable advantage.

Better for you spend time and efforts on the new approach.

What about risks?

If you try to implement old features on new Magento 2 eshop, you will risk to lose a lot of money.

If you choose the new way, you can lose features which has been successful.

Many experts give the advice ‘See this as an opportunity to ‘clean up’. But I desagree. The majority part of successful eshops haven’t redundant functionality.

That is why you need the deep analysis.

3. SEO ranking drop.

Wait... What? After migration eshop will lose traffic. Why? Because structure of site will change. The site navigation, internal linking and user journeys will change.

But it is no problem. The eshop rank will recover in 2-3 weeks. So, you need to wait. But sometimes we had ‘pretty coincidences’. We launch eshop during Google core upgrade. The eshop owner was in sick. But eshop ranking recovered in 2.5 weeks. Now we are continuing work on this eshop to implement new features.

The risk adressed here are many SEO issues and mistakes during migration. Because Magento developers, web and UX designers haven’t enought knowlege about SEO. Honestly, we haven’t mistakes with SEO. But nonetheless you need SEO specialist. He can give good advice to you.

What about risks?

If eshop ranking drop, you will lose sales. You need to remeber about possible mistakes. To check eshop after migration (index, URLs, canonical tags, meta tags, redirects). 

4. The mistakes.

The humans can make mistakes. It is experience and headache for you. It could be your mistake, or developer’s mistake, or QA’s mistake.

May be it is the main risk of migration from Magento 1 to Magento 2.

You will find many articles how to avoid mistakes. For example you need strategy, good plan or experienced developers. But mistakes will be always.
Because nobody knows enough good how it works and how it will work.

You can share your experience to Magento 2 migration or ask qoestions on comments.