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Table of contents:
- Introduction
- Best practices for a successful transition to Magento commerce
- Real-world examples
It is a significant challenge to develop a new ecommerce site from scratch, whether you’re an existing business or a startup. More features, functionality, and flexibility are required as your business evolves and advances. It is high time to upgrade to Magento Commerce if you are still using outdated or inflexible technologies to run your digital business.
- As of 2020, there are more than 250000 active ecommerce websites powered by Magento which accounts for 12% of all ecommerce stores (Magento Developer Group)
- Over 270,000 merchants choose Magento for their business (Email Vendor Selection)
- Magento currently powers 1.2% of sites on the Internet (Envisage Digital)
- Magento handles over $100 billion in gross merchandise every year (Magento)
- There are more than 200,000 Magento developers around the world (ReadyCloud)
- Ecommerce businesses attribute 10–80% of their revenue uplift to Magento (AionHill)
Magento Commerce is not just an ecommerce platform. It is a robust and scalable software framework that and what makes it an ideal digital commerce solution is that it can be easily customized by software developers. Improve your brand’s online presence with effective digital marketing strategy and execution from San Diego digital marketing company.
It is important to understand the technical requirements of a business and also adhere to them during development. The following are some of the best practices which will be helpful in the transition of your online business to Magento Commerce.
1. Requirements Discovery
Have a detailed understanding of the following:
- Site’s Existing Features
- Functionality
- Business Rules
- Data Models
- Systems Architecture
- 3rd-Party System Dependencies
Every digital marketing agency is making efforts to lead the competition. Begin by conducting a detailed requirements discovery session with all stakeholders in the project. It usually involves in-depth Q&A sessions with each stakeholder and supporting staff so that everyone understands individual job functions.
Every functional area of the business that is going to be used to interface with the new site should be represented by stakeholders. The focus of the requirements discovery process should be on finding out which functionality should and shouldn’t change.
You and your developers can only create the best solution for your business if you completely understand your requirements.
2. Understand Your Data
Make sure your systems integrator completely understands your data. The reason for the failure of the majority of the ecommerce re-platform projects is that the development team fails to understand the data and the unique business rules that govern the data.
The focus of the requirements discovery process and analysis will have to be on ensuring that developers and systems integrators have basic information of the key data elements of the site including those for the product catalog, customer accounts, and order management.
The underlying business rules governing the usage and management of this data need to be well understood. Knowing the way data fits within Magento’s various data models is also a crucial driver for the scope of custom software development effort that will be needed.
3. Right-Size Your Architecture
Generally, in software development, more source code means more code to maintain and support. Evaluate all third-party extensions when developing a new ecommerce site on Magento Commerce. Don’t add an extension having 500 lines of code when the same purpose can be achieved by implementing 10 lines of custom code.
Properly implement each module in the new site’s architecture and data models to achieve functional parity when migrating or porting code from an old site to a new site.
Minimize the number of modules you create as each new system in the architecture means more:
- Integration points
- Points to monitor for failures
- Points to optimize for performance
- Added QA testing
- The higher total cost of ownership
4. Know Where Custom Software is Needed
One of the most expensive and time-consuming parts of your project will be creating and testing custom software for your new Magento Commerce site. In Magento Commerce, all the latest functionalities that are required are added by creating a custom software extension or by a third-party extension.
Magento Commerce provides a robust software framework that enables software engineers to use the platform to fulfill the particular requirements of each business. A key best practice for each system area that needs custom software development efforts is to:
- Define your business
- Technical requirements of your business
- How and where the customization will fit within the Magento platform
- What elements of Magento will be extended
5. Plan User Acceptance Testing
Testing for very large systems can take a long time, frustrate teams and increase costs. A definite user acceptance testing plan can offer accuracy to all your stakeholders, preventing a costly and protracted testing phase.
Share deployment, and rollback plans with all your stakeholders. Your pre-deployment and deployment tasks should be clearly defined. Consider incremental phases to lessen risks to your existing systems.
Real-World Examples:
Magento framework delivers features to develop and grow a unique online store. However, consider Magento Commerce if you require an all-in-one cloud solution. Two fast-growing businesses transitioned to Magento Commerce yet retained critical features and functions from their custom systems.
1. Case Study Summary – REEDS Jewelers
REEDS Jewelers of Wilmington NC is a full-service omnichannel retailer having an online presence and stores in 18 states. Before adopting Magento Commerce, REEDS.com functioned on a proprietary custom ecommerce solution built by Kadro. REEDS Jewelers’ required a commercial ecommerce platform as its ecommerce business grew to lessen its reliance on a proprietary custom solution.
Results:
- Magento Commerce implementation enabled functional parity with the features, functionality, data, and UI/UX of the highly custom site
- It was not needed to re-write or replace all technology as many existing components were leveraged by the new system architecture
2. Case Study Summary – LCI
LCI is a NIB-affiliated, not-for-profit corporation that offers products and services to the US Government. It operates under the auspices of the AbilityOne program and is one of the largest employers of people who are visually impaired in the United States.
Numerous distribution centers, ecommerce websites, retail stores, and manufacturing facilities are operated by LCI within the United States. They use three ecommerce websites to sell office supplies, office equipment, furniture, industrial supplies, and tactical assault gear to government and military buyers.
Results:
- Both the ecommerce system and supporting ERP system were changed together which increased the risks and challenges but the objectives of the project were achieved by LCI, Kadro, and LCI’s integration partner for Microsoft Dynamics.
- The key to meeting the project’s requirements was leveraging Magento Commerce’s B2B feature set.
Zahoor Bhat has over 10+ years of experience as an online editor and media manager. He has worked with major online news and content sites as a media manager. He is well versed with major content management systems and web platforms such as WordPress and social media networks including Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Google Business, Yelp, Instagram & Linkedin. He is an expert in content creation, proofreading and finally making it live. Being a social media expert, he is able to make relations with social media influencers and make sure to generate leads and grow business via different social media platforms.
