As your business grows, the number of your customers will grow too. While this, without any doubt, is amazing, your store management process will become more complicated as well. The need to expand the product range, high load on the server, outdated design – all these may be the reasons for your sales to drop despite the increasing number of customers.
When you start thinking that your store needs a more powerful platform, it may be the best time to switch to Magento. But why exactly Magento?
Being one of the leading e-commerce platforms with 19.64% market share, it offers retailers rich functionality and secure and stable hosting. So once you identify one or more of the warning signs below, you can start planning the migration strategy.
Signs that you need to migrate
Migration is usually needed when you are not happy with the performance of your store, plan to expand its functionality, or change the design. In addition, store expansion usually causes a higher load on the server and some e-commerce platforms simply cannot support it.
Though every business is unique, there are some common signs that indicate it’s time to migrate.
Traffic overload
When your website is flooded with visitors, it can start to perform slower. This may happen due to the weak hosting platform that is not optimized for high traffic volumes.
Slow performance impacts your sales directly. People expect websites to load in 3 seconds or less, otherwise, they will leave. To avoid that and keep the sales up, you will have to switch to a more powerful and scalable platform that will be able to handle the growing number of requests.
Low conversion rates
Your conversion rate depends on a number of reasons: UX and UI, code quality, overall site appeal, load speed and optimization for mobile. And sometimes, your current e-commerce platform just cannot give you all that.
To ensure that your store performs at its full potential, you need a powerful platform with a sufficient range of features. This is why experts advise switching to Magento as your store grows: it supports plenty of options that other platforms simply do not have (or require tremendous investments in customization).
Poor content
Website content, same as product package in the brick-and-mortar store, plays a big role in boosting sales. If your design is not appealing enough or the copy is not engaging, the user is likely to leave your store and switch to the competition.
To provide seamless user experience, it is important to have a huge variety of tools ready at hand. If the platform cannot provide you with all the required tools, you won’t be able to adjust your website design in accordance with the users’ expectations.
Another issue here is the level of SEO and marketing optimization that the platform offers. It’s not enough to just create content and leave it there - it should bring you real benefit in terms of traffic and engagement. Click To Tweet
If you identify any of these issues with your site or simply feel like it can do better, you are ready for step #2 – planning your migration strategy.
Magento is probably the best option for middle-sized and big businesses. It is an incredibly scalable and customizable platform with rich functionality, recognized by over 250,000 stores worldwide.
The benefits of migrating to Magento
Magento is listed among the most powerful e-commerce platforms worldwide for a few valid reasons.
Optimized for high traffic load
If compared with other e-commerce platforms, Magento is very well-optimized for handling high traffic volume. The reverse side of the coin is that the platform is quite demanding towards hosting solution: Magento requires a powerful server in order to provide smooth performance. It is, therefore, more suitable for middle-sized and big businesses and is a good example of a solution where quality meets the price.
High level of customization
One of the most powerful and distinctive platform features is a high level of customization. When a reliable Magento development company says anything is possible with Magento, that is most probably true.
Magento allows almost limitless customization options. In addition, it has a good set of built-in functions, like support of multiple languages and currencies. Click To TweetMobile-friendly
No need to say mobile is on the rise. The number of mobile users in 2018 reached 4.57 billion, and is estimated to grow up to 4.78 by 2020.
It is, therefore, crucial that your online store runs equally well on both the desktop and mobile. Magento is tailored to have great performance on all mobile devices and offers an intuitive experience for all mobile users. In addition, Magento is one of the leading platforms in terms of mobile pages load speed.
Integration with third parties
The platform allows seamless integration with over 5000 external services and full customization of all built-in features. While being a bit demanding for the programming skills, the platform rewards the user with near-endless opportunities for modifications. Truly a gem for those striving for website unicity.
A quick guide to the migration process
The complexity of the migration process will depend heavily on the platform that your website currently runs on. However, there are some general steps that apply for almost any platform-switching process:
- Data backup: Any data stored on your server should be copied and transferred to the Magento store securely. The data may include customers’ private data, passwords, product categories and much more.
- Design: You will have to re-customize your store’s design in correspondence with the new platform.
- Product transfer: This process is rather complex and involves a lot of detail to keep an eye on.
- Customer data migration: Such data include contact information, shipping address, purchase history and more.
- URLs transfer: You will migrate the product and categories URLs to the new platform.
- Payment gateways: This implies copying the API keys, API signature, and secret key.
Platform migration can be performed manually or with the help of available tools. The method depends on your store size and complexity and, of course, your current platform. There is an existing tool for transferring from Shopify to Magento so it will save your time and resources to use it.
Final thought
Migration to another e-commerce platform is a complex process that has to be planned carefully. If you are confident in the website growth and wish to expand your business, Magento will grant you a plethora of options to elevate your business and boost the efficiency of your store performance.
Interested in taking your business to the next level? Reach out to us through the form below and let’s help transform your business into a sales machine!
