Ever since Magento announced it will stop support for all its M1 versions after June2020, the demand for Magento 2 developers has been on the rise. Merchants simply can’t afford to risk their stores to be hacked or to malfunction in the case of no security patches and quality fixes. Those who knew this and could foresee the amazing features of Magento 2 have already embraced the change. Others are still on the lookout for professional and qualified Magento 2 developer to make the transition.
What will happen if you fail to upgrade to Magento 2?
If you haven’t already upgraded your store to Magento 2, now is the time to do so. Failure to take the plunge now will lead you to the following problems.
- After June 2020, many M1 extensions will become outdated. You will not get support and upgrades for the extensions you are using on your store. This will leave you nowhere to go if your extensions malfunction or require customizations.
- New extensions will be unavailable or very difficult to find since very few agencies are working on M1. And you have guessed it right, you can’t enhance your store’s functionalities without new extensions.
- Without necessary security patches, you will invite intruders to hijack your store or steal valuable data from it.
- You will miss out on all the advanced features that Magento 2 has to offer. These features have been introduced in light of the limitations in the previous versions. They contribute to a much better user experience and store conversions.
The bottom line of all this is that your store will lose trust, credibility and reputation that you might have worked for years to achieve. Sticking to Magento 1 is like making your store available for all kinds of vulnerabilities.
The Magento 2 migration process is long and takes between 3 to 6 months. Starting the process now will ensure your new store is ready before the expiration of Magento 1.
The Demand for Certified Magento 2 Developers
As stated above, it’s not as easy as it may seem to migrate to Magento 2. It involves everything from theme migration to extensions migration and from data migration to customizations. This requires that only a certified and professional developer for Magento 2 should be entrusted with the task.
Roughly, a hundred thousand Magento stores are going to be impacted by the end of Magento 1 support. Sensing the importance and urgency, entrepreneurs around the world have started working with Magento agencies to upgrade to Magento 2. With so many potential customers and each one wanting to build a store that fully meet their business requirements, the need for Magento 2 certified professional developer has been unprecedented.
Why should you upgrade to Magento 2?
If you are still not convinced staying on Magento 1 will limit your store’s functionalities, the following features of Magento 2 will definitely change your mind.
Improved Performance
It is probably the most important feature of Magento 2. Magento 2 offers improved performance due to its improved indexers and caching. The new Varnish caching reduces the server load time and speed up the page load. Similarly, full page caching allows all the content of a page to cache, thereby reducing the server load. Magento 1 does not support full page caching.
Faster Load Time
Magento 2 offers approximately 20% faster page load speed than Magento 1. It can handle much more page views in less time than Magento 1.
Greater Security
Magento 2 is one of the most secure ecommerce platforms. It offers integration of secure payment gateways such as PayPal, Braintree, Authorize.net, etc. Customers can go with their preferred payment gateway and be at ease while checking out.
Simpler Admin Interface
Magento 2 has a better admin interface which even non-technical staff can manage. It’s just a piece of cake to track orders and do other admin activities. It saves time while managing day to day tasks.
Easy Testing
It’s easy to test and fix bugs in Magento 2 using its own testing framework MTF (Magento Testing Framework). You can run a test anytime to check the core functionalities after any customizations.
Upgraded Minimum Requirements
Magento 2 supports the up-to-date and the latest versions of PHP, MySQL, and CSS. It has PHP 5.5, CSS3, MySQL 5.6 and HTML5 as minimum requirements.This accounts for greater reliability.
Other features include mobile friendliness, simpler checkout, and better SEO and marketing options.
Wrapping up It’s always good to embrace the change, the sooner the better. Sometimes it is advisable, other times it is mandatory. Keeping in view the above Magento 2 features and the dangers of not catching up with the change, it is undoubtedly obligatory to upgrade to Magento 2. If you are planning to do so, you are also going to contribute to the ever increasing demand of Magento 2 developers.