The purpose of this article is to provide e-commerce merchants that are new to Magento or migrating from Magento 1 to Magento 2 with 10 key lessons that will help to ease the migration to Magento 2 from a completely different platform or from Magento 1. Magento 2 – and now with the recent release of Magento 2.4 – is packed with features that will benefit both B2C and B2B merchants. Magento is the most flexible and customizable e-commerce platform. Both are important drivers in a merchant’s decision to go with Magento but they can come with pitfalls if the project team doesn’t take these important factors into account when moving to Magento.

1. Confirm Magento is the Right Choice

We highly recommend conducting an initial discovery exercise before beginning an e-commerce replatform. This work should include a complete review of the current business, any anticipated changes in strategy, and then (the most important part) the development of detailed business requirements that are prioritized. Only once you have those requirements can a fully informed platform recommendation/decision be made.

Magento is typically a choice for merchants that have:

1. Very large and complex catalog

2. Complex B2B purchasing requirements OR B2C requirements that are unique and rich

3. Complex integrations with ERP, ESP, PIM and other systems

4. Global, multi-store architecture

5. Both B2C and B2B requirements with an operation that will run best on ONE (versus multiple) platforms.

If your business is simpler and doesn’t have requirements within these areas, it’s possible you may not need Magento and you can look at SaaS platforms like BigCommerce or Shopify.

2. Experienced Team / SI

There are a lot of talented digital agencies and system integrators with great design portfolios and experience working on SaaS e-commerce. It may be tempting to pick a vendor to help with your project based on a design portfolio or some awesome branding work that your team or that has an agency has done. That team may say that Magento is not a problem given their overall experience with e-commerce but the truth is Magento is very powerful and complex. It’s important to either place experienced, certified Magento developers on your team or to choose to work with a Certified Magento Solution Partner. If you don’t, expect problems with your migration or replatform.

You don’t take your Porsche to a Lexus dealer right? No. Same goes here.

3. The Experience Has to Include Magento 2 – NOT just Magento 1

Magento 2 is very different from Magento 1. There have been major advances in both the architecture and the feature set. Integrating with Magento 2 is very different than Magento 1. If your team or vendor has Magento 1 experience and you think it’s just a “quick upgrade,” even for the CE version of Magento, think again. It’s different. Make sure engineers and developers that are certified in Magento 2 are key members of the team.

4. Generate a Project Plan with MVP that Fits Timing Requirements

Magento is complex and it helps to take those prioritized requirements from the initial Discovery and Definition work and develop a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) that fits the timing requirements for your business. In lay terms, don’t try to “hit it out of the park” and meet all your requirements in 3 months. You will set yourself and your team up for failure.

5. Don’t Build for Seldom-Used Use Cases

Consider leaving functionality that serves seldom-used use cases out of your MVP. Even if it serves one important B2B customer. Work with your engineering team to solve the problem without complexity. Moving onto a new e-commerce platform is a big change that has a learning curve and the simpler you keep the first release the better things will go for all interested parties.

6. Integrations and Data Conversions Can Be Tricky: Have a Plan!

With complex migrations to Magento 2, we spend the most time completing complex integrations and data conversions f...