Moving to Magento from platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, or Volusion — or even migrating from Magento 1 to Magento 2 — requires a high level of Magento expertise.
When evaluating Magento migration agencies, you should look for a top-rated development company that has:
- Experience with Magento migrations and customizing Magento sites. The migration process involves transferring your store's information, products, designs, and layouts from your old eCommerce site to the Magento platform. Then, after the migration is complete, many businesses require customizations and integrations to achieve their desired end product and support internal operations. An experienced development agency should be able to migrate and build out your Magento site to meet your specific requirements.
- Strong customer service and project management skills. By learning about your business requirements, website challenges, and goals for the future, agencies can tailor the migration to your needs and timelines. Your agency partner should collaborate with you before kicking off new projects and fill you in on what to expect, then provide regular updates on progress and results during your engagement.
- A dedication to the Magento and Adobe Commerce platforms. IronPlane's certified Magento developers have over ten years of experience working with Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce (including Cloud). We know how to avoid (and solve) the common problems that developers can encounter during a Magento migration, so we can manage the switch without code conflicts or website issues.
- Interest in providing long-term support. Your website isn’t a “set it and forget it'' project — it requires updates, performance testing, optimizations, and many teams eventually want to add custom themes, pages, or features. So you need an agency partner that knows the ins and outs of your website and can effectively manage your site in the long term. IronPlane’s dedicated Magento developers can make updates and continuous optimizations to improve performance and conversion rates.
IronPlane has helped many businesses manage the migration to Magento. We start our process with a consultation call and site audit where our migration experts can learn about your current website challenges, your interest in Magento, and the goals you have for your site. Then, we plan the migration with you — we work with your timelines and preferences to minimize business disruptions and keep operations running smoothly.
In this guide, we discuss each phase of our process and review two case studies highlighting past migration projects so you can get a better idea of how our agency works. You can also schedule a free consultation call and code audit to talk with our team about how to get started.
IronPlane’s Magento Migration Process
Before we take on any client or website project, we start with a consultation call — this gives us a chance to learn about your current website, the challenges with it, and your interest in Magento. During this brainstorming, we discuss the goals you have for your Magento site, in both the short and long term, so we can devise the best plan to build out your website with your timelines in mind.
Note: We can also help you compare eCommerce solutions and decide if Magento is the right option for your business. (And if so, choose which version of Magento — Magento Open Source, Adobe Commerce, or Adobe Commerce Cloud — suits you best.)
Our next step is kicking off one of our three audit options. The specific audit you select will depend on the urgency of your migration and your readiness to make it happen. For companies just starting out, we provide a low-impact, high-value free audit. For companies seeking a robust evaluation of their existing code quality, we offer the Code Audit. Companies needing a comprehensive view of their existing online store will choose our Comprehensive audit.
Let’s briefly review our audit options:
The Free Audit includes a brief analysis of your site's theme, extensions, modules, and security. Our team looks for problem areas and provides recommendations to improve website performance. (You can schedule a free code audit with our team here.)
The Code Audit offers a more detailed analysis of both the frontend and backend code of your website. We consider factors such as user experience, site speed, and search engine optimization and provide suggestions to improve the performance and functionality of your site.
The Comprehensive Site Audit is our most recommended option because it combines an in-depth look at your website code with virtually every other aspect of your online activity including site security, SEO, infrastructure, privacy, and accessibility. This approach allows us to learn more about your operational processes and business goals to determine how your eCommerce site can better achieve those goals. This not only helps us plan the migration, but it allows us to get a clear view of the projects we need to add to our docket and the results we are working to achieve.
After we wrap up the audit, and we know the steps to get from A to B, we can estimate the scope, timing, and pricing of the migration (and any other website projects we want to tackle).
Before we kick off the migration, you are paired with a Solution Specialist who acts as your strategic partner throughout our work together. They are familiar with Magento best practices and have past experience with B2B and B2C businesses, so they can help you make informed decisions about website projects, suggest ways to optimize your site, and track the results of everything we do.
Your Solution Specialist keeps you in the loop during projects so you know what we’re working on and what’s ahead. (We also give you access to our team’s project management dashboard so you can check on our progress when it’s convenient for you.)
Then, we’re ready to start the migration. Our Magento developers adhere to a strict protocol to ensure the process goes smoothly:
- Base site preparation and store data migration: We follow a structured approach for base implementation and data migration, with additional research as needed in preparation for the next phase. Our process ensures there’s no data loss, and your site remains live while we conduct our work.
- Development, staging, and QA: This phase includes custom design and development, followed by deployment to the staging environment and quality assurance testing.
- Launch to live: Upon successful testing, we push to the live environment and conduct a final round of user testing.
During the migration, we’re careful to consider SEO enhancements, ADA compliance, and site security and monitoring, and we’ll look for opportunities to optimize conversion rates, UX, and site speeds. Our top priority is to successfully migrate your site with minimal downtime, and ensure it meets all your business requirements.
Remember, migrating to Magento is just the first phase of our work together. Most of our clients stay with us for years as we manage their sites and their business needs evolve. Your Solution Specialist keeps you informed about current work and future projects, and they monitor the results of website changes to help you customize your Magento store, optimize conversion rates, and enhance the customer experience. Plus, our expert Magento developers can update your site when Adobe releases new features and security patches.
Ready to get started? Get in touch with our team to talk about your interest in Magento and schedule your free website audit.
IronPlane’s Magento Migration Case Studies
Below, we review three case studies where our dedicated Magento developers seamlessly migrated online stores to Magento 2 (from Volusion and Magento 1, respectively).
Russell Marine Products’ Migration from Volusion to Magento
Prominent fishing technology retailer, Russell Marine Products (RMP), originally built its website on Volusion’s eCommerce platform, but as they planned for future growth, it became clear that Volusion could not meet the needs: the platform lacked integration opportunities, automated order fulfillment capabilities, mobile optimization, and the ability to implement custom functionality.
These limitations led Russell Marine Products to consider alternative platforms — when they contacted IronPlane, we helped them compare options and identify Magento as the best solution for their eCommerce business.
We started the migration process by utilizing our Colibri Foundation. We use this lightweight build as the starting point for all migrations and upgrades because it guarantees code quality, performance, scalability, and a lower total cost of ownership.
Next, we focused on:
- Sourcing a hosting partner and completing the setup.
- Custom data migration and extension migration.
- Designing and developing a mobile-optimized Magento site with a modern look, intuitive UX, and fast page speeds.
- Redesigning and optimizing complex integrations with each integration partner.
- Implementing shipment automation.
After the migration, Russell Marine Products had a mobile-ready, highly usable, and SEO-friendly Magento website. They experienced improved operational efficiencies through successful integrations, which reduced manual data management and resolved complex commission structure issues. These changes also gave their staff the ability to generate pre-built reports for quick sales data analysis. In addition, our work created a foundation to tackle their next project, a custom Boat Builder.
After migrating RMP to Magento and rolling out site changes, we saw:
- Conversion rates increase by over 27%
- Average page load times decrease by over 54%
Bosca: Migrating from Magento 1 to Magento 2
Leather product retailer, Bosca, originally built their website on Magento 1 and knew they needed to migrate to Magento 2 (and make sure their site was on the latest version of Magento). Aside from upgrading their Magento site, Bosca wanted to create a visually appealing and user-friendly site design, and improve page-load times, conversion rates, and mobile user experience — all in six weeks.
Since we were working on a tight timeline, our project management team worked closely with Bosca to prioritize their requirements and determine the best order in which to complete website projects. Then we utilized the Colibri foundation to start the Magento 2 migration process, which allowed us to speed up project completion.
We also developed the following key elements:
- Customized home page layout
- Product monogramming
- Custom RMA forms
- Configurable product swatches
- Migration of non-native product and customer data
- ERP/Magento sync
- Google Shopping product feeds
- Google Tag Manager integration
With proper planning and strategic collaboration, IronPlane was able to launch Bosca’s new, user-friendly Magento 2 website within six weeks. Then, we continued to work with the Bosca team after migration to help them achieve long-term goals; we made a number of additional optimizations that resulted in faster page load speeds and improved conversion rates.
In the five months following the launch, they experienced:
- 36% faster page loading times
- 10.8% increase in transactions
- 7.8% increase in revenue
- 45% increase in organic conversions
Read more: IronPlane Magento 2 Development Services | 2023 Guide
Getting Started with IronPlane for Your Magento Migration
Moving your eCommerce website to Magento from another platform is a risky endeavor if you don’t have an experienced development company by your side. Failed migrations often lead to ‘Magento Rescues’, which involve bringing your site to a new agency after another developer failed to launch it successfully.
IronPlane has been developing and migrating sites to Magento since 2011, and our team of Magento experts knows how to perform smooth migrations that enhance your eCommerce store, leading to better performance and increased conversions. We work closely with our clients to understand their business needs and identify the most effective ways Magento can help them achieve their goals.
Schedule a free consultation and code audit to get started!
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