5 Pitfalls to avoid during Magento 2 Migration

by JONATHAN PAUL Jonathan Paul working at PHPProgrammers, a leading

If you have an existing Magento 1 store and are planning to migrate to Magento 2 now, then make sure to look for a professional Magento developer and avoid these pitfalls during the migration process.

Magento has already stopped supporting version 1 last year and now many Magento 1 store owners are seen busy migrating to the latest version that’s Magento 2. But the migration process may not be as simple as it may seem. This makes it essential to choose a professional Magento developer to do the task. But even then, the developers and the store owners need to consider several things during the migration and avoid the most commonly made mistakes to ensure a flawless process.

And here are the most common mistakes to avoid while migrating a Magento 1 store to version 2.

Losing any important database asset during the migration:

Migrating all your Magento store’s data is not only important but quite challenging as well as it takes into account all data transfer. To manage and transfer the data, you need to be aware of all the store functions and different areas of the site. Also, you must have experience in Magento store migration. Without solid knowledge and practical experience, you may have to face some critical challenges like data disorders, several data loss, etc. And be it a small online shop or a big webshop, losing database assets can have a negative effect on the customers and the products of the store.

However, you need to migrate from Magento 1 to version 2 very carefully with all the data. And the best solution for this is to take the backup of the existing store using an external hard drive, which can be a Zip drive or cloud storage. This is always the best way to lower the risk of losing any data during the process.

Abandoning and replacing the Magento 1 themes and extensions:

You may get confused and think that Magento migration is similar to Magento updates. But this is not the case actually. Once you update the site to Magento 2, you won’t be able to use the extensions and themes of your previous store that was running on version 1. But in case of migration, you will have two options, which are either you can buy the ready-made themes available in Magento 2 and can create new customised themes based on them or you can even migrate and use the same theme that your Magento 1 store had to give the same look and feel to your customers. However, it is better to go with the second option instead of simply abandoning your version 1 extensions and themes.

Affecting SEO and rankings:

Most of the online store owners may face some common issues while migrating to version 2. You may come across things like duplicate content due to improper canonical URLs, broken internal links, and creating web pages on the new version of the CMS. And all these may affect your store ranking or SEO negatively and can even decrease the rank of the site on the SERPs.

As the best solution, what you can do is use the right Webmaster tool to identify all the 404 error pages still existing in the new Magento 2 store. You can fix the errors by using the right 301 redirects. You must also format the internal links according to the Magento 2 guidelines. Also, do not forget to audit the changes once you have migrated to Magento version 2.

Trying to migrate quickly may have a negative impact:

Migrating to Magento 2 has become a must now. And the process may take at least a month or more to complete. Even though the professional Magento developers are taking care of it, it is essential not to hurry and carry out the process carefully taking the required amount of time as per the store size, the volume of data, and the other factors.

Avoiding these mistakes is essential to ensure your store is migrated rightly with all the required data and the other assets of the store. The migration process must be done smoothly with no loss of data taking care of these common pitfalls and the other migration factors.

Jonathan Paul is a highly skilled and dedicated Magento developer associated with a leading Magento development company in Australia, PHPProgrammers. The author has written this article to help you identify the pitfalls and avoid the same during the migration process.