Sana safinaz

Magento 2.2.3. to 2.4.0 Version Upgrade for Sana Safinaz

Sana Safinaz is one of Pakistan’s most popular fashion brands with over 30 physical stores worldwide. As a leader in Pakistan’s fashion and apparel industry, Sana Safinaz’ online store has very specific Requirements.

However, the store had many problems. In addition to general performance issues, poor coding was a major issue, and system failures during sales & online promotions. Regularly, the store was not available in the first 2 to 3 hours after a sale launch which was causing the management huge revenue losses.

The initial store audit identified two major problems beside many smaller issues: an outdated Magento version and badly written & obsolete code causing extra load on the server.

RLTSquare worked together with Sana Safinaz to achieve multiple goals: First, to update the store from Magento 2.2.3 to Magento 2.4.0 and, second, to optimize the overall store performance.

To help Sana Safinaz with its performance problems, multiple steps were taken starting with updating Magento to the latest 2.4.0 Version. Beside using an old Magento version, the database structure was also outdated. Main reason to update the Magento version was improvements in speed and performance that were enabled with a newer version of Magento. The upgrade process turned out to be difficult due to problems with the cloud-based hosting. The challenge was to first optimize & upgrade the cloud server and to enable required services.

The big jump in the Magento version itself led to difficulties with the database and modules. In total, 60+ modules/extensions were installed, 12 out of those were freely available on the marketplace. In regards to the paid modules, there were 14 of them which were purchased and installed with the latest versions available. Last but not least, 38 modules were custom developed for Magento Version 2.2.3 so they had to be made compatible with the 2.4.0 version. However, they could be solved without further complications for the project. In the end, the upgrade process led to improvement in both speed and optimization.

The second step was to implement configurations and techniques suggested by Magento Cloud’s Site-Wide Analysis Tool. Server crashes and unavailability were caused by the poor code leading to too much load on the cloud server. To resolve the issue, the cloud server and the code were optimized. Furthermore, the Redis cache was configured and optimized accordingly so that customers can have a smooth and frictionless front-end experience while surfing through the store. Unused code and extra modules were removed before the JS script and CSS libraries got optimized. In the end, the resolution and format of images on the website were fixed and the Magento Cloud server was configured to enable text and image compression techniques. As a result of this optimization, store ranking has been improved from 43%to 60% in Page Speed Insights and 47% to 78% in GTmetrix.

During the project, asynchronous processing of orders was implemented, enabling customers to check out more efficiently. Moreover, a solution was developed to automate order processing, tracking generation, refunds, and courier booking. As soon as a customer place an order on the website, the invoice, consignment booking on couriers, and the shipment will be created automatically.

The latest and optimized store was deployed on the Upgrade24 branch of Magento Cloud. Consequently, services such as PHP, MySql, ECE-tool, etc. of the cloud’s staging instance were updated and the 2.4.0 version of Sana Safinaz’ store was installed. At the end of the project, the store’s performance was boosted by 80% and all major problems were solved