Magento 2 comes with a lot of improvement in features, functionality and user experience. Here are 15 reasons why you should upgrade to Magento 2.
Scalability and enhanced Performance
Magento 2 loading times are way faster than Magento 1. The homepage, category pages, and product pages load in less than 1.5 seconds, even without using frontend cahing.
Responsive and search engine friendly
Magento 2’s responsive frontend design makes it easy to browse on all devices. This is a big advantage, because Google’s algorithms have been officially favoring mobile friendly websites in ranking.
Streamlined Checkout
The new streamlined checkout process has made the checkout process faster and easier for customers. Guest checkout is also available as a built-in feature in the new Magento 2 checkout. Cart abandonment rate has decreased significantly for merchants having Magento 2 stores.
Elasticsearch
Magento Enterprise Edition also supports Elasticsearch. Elasticsearch has imporved the quality of searches and user experience. It also handles 33 languages. Third party Elasticsearch extensions for M2 are also available.
Cheaper and easier extension updating
Installing new extensions and modules has become simpler in Magento 2. Installing even a few basic extensions in Magento 1 can take a lot of time. The process has become simpler thanks to HTML5, Less, require.js and CSS3.
Ajax add-to-cart
When a product is added to the cart in Magento 1, the system reloads the page, which has a negative impact on its performance.
If you’re selling products of smaller value or your customers usually add more products to their carts, this can mount to seconds.
In Ajax add-to-cart system, the system doesn’t have to reload the entire page when a new item is added to card, which enhances user experience.
Simpler Navigation
Admin Navigation in Magento 2 is user-friendly which makes it easier for users with less experience to manage their online stores effectively. Simpler admin interface is a welcome feature for those without their own Magento developers.
Split Database Solution
Magento 1 has a central database for customers, admins, and developers which causes a lot of database overload.
Magento 2 Enterprise Edition offers you the opportunity to use three separate master databases for:
- Product data
- Checkout
- Orders
Dashboard
In Magento 2, you can find the most important information in one place.
The Dashboard provides the overview of:
- Lifetime sales
- Average order amount
- Last orders
- Top searched terms
- Most viewed products
- New Customers
- Financial data
Simpler Product Upload
The new system guides you through the simplified process step-by-step.
You can also upload product videos besides product photos.
More efficient customization
Magento 2 provides more efficient customization by giving the customers a personalized experienced.
Up-sell and cross-sell offers, personalized payment methods, or even giving coupons based on earlier behavior are all available to merchants. By analyzing the behavior, we can determine what content we want our customers to see, what discounts and offers we want to give them.
Platform compatibility
Magento 2 supports advanced technologies such as CSS3, HTML5 and MySQL. It also uses jQuery instead of prototype.js.
Hardware requirements
Magento 2 has lower hardware requirements to ensure the same level of performace. It has a positive impact on costs. New hardware is not cheap, and can be a huge burden on a growing business’ budget. Besides, more servers mean more potential complications.
More efficient testing
Adding new features and modules would conflict with the existing system. But testing has become a lot easier in Magento with built-in testing framework. It makes running automated tests on any Magento site easy.
Simpler integration
Magento is known for its ability to integrate a lot of different systems like inventory management software, ERP, CRM.
When there’s an issue with the integration, it’s not easy to find out exactly what messages got lost in the communication between Magento and the other system.
Magento 2 Enterprise Edition addresses this particular problem with the built-in RabbitMQ framework that monitors the communication between Magento and other systems.
Bottom Line
Thinking long term, you can ensure stability by upgrading to Magento 2, because one way or another, Magento 1.x versions will start to become dangerously outdated in a few years, typically due to the lack of official support, security patches, and updates.
If you have well-functioning ecommerce store running on one of the latest versions of Magento 1, you should make plans for upgrading to Magento 2 in one or two years. If your online store runs on an already outdated 1.x version, then you should definitely continue development on Magento 2.
Either way, you’re going to require a lot of development, so, if your budget allows it, upgrading to Magento 2 is must in the long run – Magento 2 versions are going to be the prominent ones for the upcoming 7-8 years.