Migrating from Magento 1 to Magento 2

John Cotten, Hello and welcome to another episode of Ecommerce Delivered, a podcast brought to you by the people of Push On. My name's Jonny Mangus and I'm your host and my guest today is the lovely John Cotten. John, welcome to the show. John Cotten, Thank you.

Thanks for having me, Jonny. John Cotten, Not a problem. Are you pumped for this? John Cotten, Yeah, very much.

I'm excited to hear what questions you've put together today. John Cotten, On a scale of one to 10, John, how excited are you? At least a 12, even though that's impossible. I was looking for something off the scale.

Otherwise, I would have had to try and pump some more enthusiasm into you. So, yeah, John, I know who you are. You know I stare at your face pretty much most days of the week. But for the people joining this podcast, a new heart, aware of who you are, what you do, why you're in here with me today, maybe it's worth giving just a bit about who you are and what you do at Push On.

Yeah, sure. So I'm head of business development for the development side of the business, which is solely Magento. We're a Magento house. We're a multi-service e-commerce agency.

So we do consultancy and marketing pieces, SEO, paid media, such as that. But my area of expertise is very much development coming from an enterprise software background. So I'm really first point of call for RFPs or any new business or prospects, conversations, networking, a bit of speaking, obviously going to exhibitions and not just that but very much communicating with the great ecosystem of partners and technology partners that e-commerce has. we see each other quite frequently actually exhibitions we all work very closely together so I'm very much kind of the conduit between a lot of elements within the business in terms of from prospects we're not all the way through to new business before they get handed over to account and project management for example and just point of first point of call within the business for for the initial discussions so the theme today the podcast and the reason we brought you in John is to talk about you know the big conversation which is in the industry and certainly within the Magento community that the Magento One platform which has been around for what 10 years or so now in its current version that sunsetting I mean what does that mean first of all for us as an agency and second of all for clients using the platform?

Yeah so you're quite right I think the first thing to say about Magento One or anyone who's still on the Magento platform is it's had a good innings. It's been around for 12 years. So it's been there, and obviously with any piece of software, it's going to have a shelf life in terms of its functionality before a new version needs to be created, and that, in terms of software, that's a long time. So it was necessary.

There's quite a lot of variables throughout the market in terms of why it needed to move forward. It's still built on PHP, so it's in the same language, but it's essentially a completely new piece of kit. So the sunset date, so there was a few different iterations, the information coming out of Magento, but it's very different. I appreciate where Magento were at in a way because they were being bought out, for one.

And so it's very difficult when you're dealing with such a vast community of Magento users to actually set a solid date that's going to make, not everyone's going to panic, but when you still need to actually set that kind of, that that date as a hard stop as it were um so that now is very much june 2020 we can completely confirm that um uh and what does that mean for for a magento user so there's two ways of thinking so one it's not going to be turned off so if you're thinking that that's not going to be true but if you're a transactional business and look we've just been through this whole GDPR piece.

In terms of being secure as a business and going through the right behaviours is crucially important for anyone who's audited or wants to function as a professional business. So what's going to be lost when it's unset is things like security patches and updates. They're no longer going to be available direct, so they'll be potentially available in the community, but that's a very, what are the words to say, quite dodgy way of doing it, as it were. So because that's not going to happen, So to me, it would be unthinkable to rely on that and have a transactional business online in things of security, data breaches, whatever it may be.

It's incredibly important if you're transacting online, more so than any other, almost any other industry online in terms of websites, that it's crucial that you're secure as possible. Yeah, and how do you deal with clients? And I'll certainly come up in my line of work as well. You know, ones who'd kind of recently platformed, you know, the last sort of three or four years and like their platform, feel it's a good, secure product to work on.

And now, you know, they're getting towards that sunset day and they're thinking, I've got to go for it all again. Yeah, I mean, there's another level of empathy that's got to come in there. I mean, we're not Magento. We're privy to the information that is released to us as a certified partner.

so we have to roll with the punches as does everyone Magento obviously a vast organisation they've got to make the best business decisions for them that's changed now as well because Adobe have bought them out within the last year so that's going to change their roadmap it actually makes them a more robust business but we can come on to that as a separate point if you so wish so what it means is yes unfortunately it means that of course there's going to be a huge question internally or meetings that are going to need to be had with the correct stakeholders about do we need to migrate?

The answer is if you're going from M1 to M2, I would stress yes, you do. But you're going to get, in terms of ROI, yes, it's further investment that you might not have prophesied or pre-seen. But ultimately, Magento are doing it for the benefit of the community and the benefit of merchants wanting to be better online. So I suppose that leads me to the next question.

What's new on M2? So, yeah, various stuff. Like I said, it's built on PHP. A bit of a misconception is that it's kind of an evolution just to migrate from M1 to M2, and it's relatively simplistic.

The language is the same, but it is effectively a rebuild of the platform. There's no way of getting around that as an agency. To corroborate that, in a way, we've had to put our developers through new exams for Magento 2. So it's a separate exam.

So to become certified you need X amount of front and back end developers within your agency to maintain your certification with Magento Yeah it a really good point because I mentioned to you before about how much does it change agencies as well as clients As an agency ourselves we had to go through such a big change in a way. Incredibly. I mean, it's important that we upskill, not just for that platform, but for example, if you were to entertain another platform or a different e-commerce agency in there, It's a huge job to upskill.

So the decision that Push On has made because of the opportunity with Magento 2, and let's face it, there's a huge commercial opportunity for an agency with Magento 2 because the businesses are going to have to migrate, and that's great for an agency. There's no way of getting around that, and I wouldn't suggest otherwise. But at the same time, we're going to have to upskill. We're putting through the exams, the investment we have to make.

We run Magento meetups in the north, which are very successful. I think they're one of the most successful in the country in terms of attendees. They're agency agnostic. We get other agencies there, developers, so on and so forth.

But going back to your point, what's new in M2, the fact it's a new platform, improved UX, improved checkout options. One of the most important differentiators versus other platforms is without doubt the native B2B platform. Within that, it's very much a first of its kind in terms of its usability and how that will change the B2B market. So because that's native out of the box for commerce, then that means that this transition...

I mean, the biggest thing with B2B is the growth of millennials, for example. You look at someone like Under Armour. They've got an incredibly young workforce. So the expectation of the millennial...

I'm not necessarily a fan of that terminology. But that age group is that their expectation, their technology is a lot more savvy than even I would be at 37 because they've grown up in a different generation. So B2B commerce, my point is B2B commerce is becoming very similar to B2C. There's that journey.

Yeah, the lives are definitely blurred. Yeah, certainly blurred. So Magento have clearly spotted that. the ability versus, for example, Shopify Plus, they need separate admin user panels to manage each one for B2C even.

So the fact that Magento 2 can do multi-storefront under a single license and do a hybrid of B2C and B2B is hugely important, especially for companies that want that B2C and B2B or just B2B. Yeah, definitely. um so bearing that in mind what are the important considerations when looking to migrate to magento 2 well yeah so the the first thing is um obviously take stock from from where you are um i mean it's always helpful for us as an agency if an RFP or an RFQ is released to us based on where that business currently sits in terms of the way they're set up in terms of their technology stack and the technology they use.

Yeah. I mean, people ask me, what do you do for a living, John? And if you say build websites, that's not really a part, that's not a clear picture of what we do because we build businesses because quite a lot of the businesses we have don't have bricks and mortar, for example. So it's not just a website.

It's their livelihood. it's their brand and they need complete control. So one of the key elements, therefore, is making sure all the platforms in the business are integrated, for example, into Magento 2, are the ones that need to be in terms of push and pull of data, speaking to each other, and that's where we certainly excel on those parts. I'm having a huge amount of experience with integrations and third parties who manage those, people like NetSuite, BrightPearl, ERP, CRMs, you know, a vast amount of experience.

And so it's the mapping out of the project and understanding across the board what a business does is really important to us. So if those can be clarified to begin with, it makes the potential success of a project far greater. Because do you find a lot of time when someone makes a decision that they want to migrate onto Magento 2, everything comes into question, such as the design of the site, the structure of it, the user journey, and then your ERP system, CRMs, all that different types of stuff.

It's a really good point. I mean, if you've been on Magento One or another platform and you feel your brand might be dated or it could be modernized as the better way of doing things, then certainly it's an opportunity to move your brand and your products or your offering and business forward and bring it up to date. or the terminology future-proof. So not just up to date for now with some forethought.

We can maintain that to years to come with good UX, good design, good functionality, everything that you'd expect from a decent agency. But sure, it's a good opportunity to look at those things as a business. And let's not forget it. If you're on Magento 1, let's be realistic.

It is an opportunity to review what platform that you use as a market and what's best for you as a business. quite, you know. I mean, some people call it migration, you know, some people sort of don't like that word and say it's actually just a rebuild, but it's a complete rethink, I suppose, as an opportunity for a client to do that, because, like you said before, it's not just about building a website, there's so much that connects into that, some of the things that we just mentioned, and all these things, you know, the magnifying glasses put onto them as they want to migrate platforms, because they'll ask themselves a question, you know, is this what we want, is it an opportunity now to do this, rather than do it as a phase two or a phase three, because it's a key piece of work we need to think about now.

Yeah, I'll give you an example. A Magento One user came to me, a commerce user, and at the enterprise version. They'd had their current Magento One website. They basically wanted us to replicate.

They were happy with the branding. It's really good branding. The website was good across the board, but their motivator was they knew they had to migrate because it's sunsetting, which is fine, which is a great motivator. but they were happy which is good to see at the same time there's nothing dramatically wrong with it with with a lot one of the things they did do however is if you're engaging with an agency you've almost got to allow them to to kind of their expertise to kick in so for example if someone they came to me and said look we've got a 107 extensions within the site currently can you replicate them yeah and my response was well why do you want us to replicate them why don't we go away and actually see if there's a better way of doing it reducing the extensions which a knock-on effect is reducing your risk reducing the amount of technical support time that you need to maintain those extensions and so so forth it's a very much a cascade approach so again going back to the fact that it's it's it's quite refreshing or it should be for everybody to take a not a clean slate but yeah but certainly make some some in some cases some major improvements to the way of work So in addition to actually talking about the benefits of M2 John how do you go about making partner recommendations?

You touched on some of the areas that might want to plug into this site, such as functionality and integrations. How do you approach that conversation? Yeah, I think it's best to go back to the embryonic stage. of a so if someone wants to work with us and we've kind of we've agreed that the first part of a project is called is always the functional specification project for development so it's typically a six-day piece of work it's a ring fence piece of work so it de-risks it for both sides it means that we're not going to a client going we think you know we know what you want it's this much that's not really giving anyone else assurances if i was the client i'd want to be proven i want it proving to me that i know what the the agency knows what i'm talking about and actually reports that back to me so i can go yes exactly yeah you know you know what i'm talking about so that's what i want so the functional specification is six day piece of work um one of those days is typically spent in our offices in manchester and it's with all stakeholders and the important thing there is that we get under the skin of the client that we're working with.

And we talk about all these things that we're talking about today. Design UX, wireframes, marketing, technical SEO, how that plugs into a development project, not forgetting that we're a full e-commerce agency so we have the marketing side to the business. But even if someone's just engaging us on the development side, it offers peace of mind that we definitely know what we're talking about in terms of technical SEO because that's a really important milestone in terms of maintaining authority for a development build.

so yeah that's the embryonic side so the deliverable of that initial foundation piece is that we present that back to the client and that gives a finite time scales finite deliverables and cost importantly so it can be can be budgeted for so we we can't give a finite we can't give those finite details unless you spec it first yeah you know any anyone who does that I'd go to the extent where it would, I'd call it a missed sell because it's impossible to know what those are until you really get into the nitty gritty of a requirement.

So we present that back, that then goes through two iterations and then it gets signed off and then we crack on with the build. Now as part of that process as well, going back to your original question, Johnny, is where do we plug in extensions, tech partners, who we think is going to be. So we have partner contracts with all these. but we only introduce people on relevance so if they're looking for an ERP for example and we think BrightPill are going to be particularly relevant or they want an email system acknowledging the fact that these companies are no longer just email people like .

digital, they're far more than that these days we can introduce those people to talk to them and have their own conversations Nostu, Klavu, Klarna, UK Fast for hosting a great partner of ours that's where it comes down to the the ecosystem of e-commerce is great we know these people can pick up the phone and we can make those recommendations but always based on relevance so we'd never proffer a third party unless we thought they were doing the correct job for that particular requirement yeah because it wouldn't make sense for us to do so because we want the best thing to work for the client it makes our lives easier and one thing certainly I've found in my experience about working with trusted partners who are part of that you know really tight-knit magento community and ones that we have relationships with it allows us almost to solve problems quicker you know when we do have the site and we're supporting the website if we're working with somebody who's we've never really particularly heard of and we don't understand the way they work it can sometimes be a bit of a blocker sometimes if you just can't pick up the phone and speak to that person yeah and especially i mean working with third parties on integrations for example you've got to trust them because you're you're giving time scales that can easily be pushed back based on not your fault on a third party's fault if they're not adhering to time scales um same with things like content or or or things so some some elements of builds are always going to be pushed back on the client or they're going to be pushed back on a third party potentially so the last thing you want in the is in the neck because they'll they potentially blame the agency for example where actually it's the lack of information flow or the lack of deliverables that we've set out previously so it's really important as part of the build to hit the dates that everyone plays ball and they play it and their time management and their deliverables that they're passing on to us are also met and that's where the skill of project management and making everything come together is really is a skill.

Yeah big time. Technical SEO you touched a bit there before obviously sits aside from the more developer world and it moves into the marketing side of things clients uh businesses have obviously worked hard over you know quite a long period of time now when they had that platform to build that visibility how do you speak to them about retaining that equity and moving into that new platform and kind of ease their concerns about drops in in search visibility yeah so um last thing we want to do is um take a site migrate it to m2 and then suddenly they've got a huge drop off of visibility so what i would do is the the initial piece acknowledging that we have a full seo department technical seo content so on and so forth is that as part of the initial spec i would discuss with the client the amount of days that i would recommend for seo work as part of that as a as a as an element of the development build so it could be 10 days seo for example and as part of that all the work technically and um so and so forth is is done to ensure that authority is maintained so when we switch on the m2 site go live um that that it that it stabilizes you'd always expect to see a little bit of drop off yeah that's normal um what you don't expect to see is is a cliff um and we have seen that um so it's really important or it should often we pick up rescue jobs based upon migrations that have gone bad not because the developer platform is it's particularly bad you know it's because because of that you know they've come with a bit of an sos yeah absolutely we see that in development as well i mean um going back to the being uh the exams that the guys have to go through guys and girls um for um for the magento certifications and the exams they're not easy um So we do get rescue jobs or hospital jobs come to us because they see our certifications and that offers peace of mind obviously And I seen some horror stories in the you know going with an SEO agency for a Magento build Not really got you not going to have the experience or the ability internally It's important to check whether an agency outsource and who they're outsourcing to.

And if you know even about it, I've seen agencies or one came to us, turnover of 15-ish million, not a small business, and they'd chosen an agency who'd then outsourced it to a back-end developer in a cottage in Wales. These things happen. And obviously you should live and learn, but by going with a decent agency, you're looking to someone like us to not only just steady the ship to go the extra mile and obviously exceed their expectations in a way. 100% as an account manager, that for me is a really important thing.

For them to kind of see the agency, know the people, have direct conversations with the people who are going to be working that site, and then you really become that extended part of their team through that if you get that bit right. So yeah, John, I suppose where I'd probably end is what if you wait to migrate? I mean, it's a good question. It goes back to one of the first questions, I think, is it's not going to be turned off.

However, businesses these days, we've all got audits or accreditations or certifications that you want internally. You want to run best practice. You want to be in a position. We've got businesses.

You could be an owner-led business. You've got lots of people relying on you and you've got lots of staff. The last thing you want to do is not do something that you acknowledge is a risk. you know you don't want to why run the risk if yes it's investment but it's it's investment for the future yeah you know we're not saying that it that it might might not make you stop and think and go god we've not done this so long ago we've got to do it again of course there could be a little bit of that um however you know it is it is necessary in my mind it's it's it's a positive step because adobe have bought magento so the roadmap will be really strong some of that will move towards the cloud of course it will um which we'll probably could cover in a in a in a different chat yeah i mean just just on the adobe buy up magento what what's your thoughts on that well where it's come from in the background previous owners i think it's a really positive thing obviously they're a juggernaut of a business and with that comes investment road mapping they are a cloud business and there's a huge amount of on-premise uh deployments of magento out there so that is going to be a shift in terms of how agencies sell and and how merchants look at the provision and the deployment methods that they can choose from.

But I would stress, you know, it is going to go to the cloud, but, you know, it is happening, that level of adoption, but it's going to take time. Yeah. So, yeah, I haven't, I can't give you the, you know, every business is different. Every business has got different motivators.

So on-premise versus cloud, it's going to move to the cloud, but without a doubt, and there's different levels, you know, starter cloud all the way up to £10 million plus turnover, which is Cloud Pro, I believe. But again, those conversations, because we work closely with Magento, I plug Magento in at those points, because if you're going for a commerce licence with Magento, for example, that is a direct relationship between Merchant and Magento. We can help those conversations, we can give advice, but ultimately it's really important that Merchant speaks to Magento as well.

and that's where we can support and plug Magento in as well. Yeah, I mean, going back to the, you know, the what if I wait to my great question, I suppose for me a big thing is just to get in touch with, you know, your agency, people like ourselves and just talk to people like yourself, John, you know, and just kind of ease some concerns that they may have, you know, help us provide reassurances in areas where they might be concerned about, but actually it's really exciting what they've got to look forward to.

So it's just through dialogue and through constantly speaking to people that you'll be able to understand as much about this migration, well, M2 as possible. Because I suppose the big thing, it can seem quite daunting and quite scary if you're kind of happy. I think it's an attrition thing. I mean, software will naturally degrade over time.

If it's no longer having patches or security patches or having the level of support that it does currently or is going to go soon, then you would expect it to degrade over time. So clearly there's a risk involved in that. So I'd say it's not something that we all understand there's peak selling times. Everyone's busy.

It's not the sole topic within businesses by any means. Yeah, certainly, yeah. But it's certainly not something that anyone should bury their head in the sand about either. No, definitely.

And I think when you talk about the actual lifespan of Bajenso 1, you think what's happened in the world of e-commerce over the last 10 years. I mean, what are we going back to now? Sort of 2008, I don't even think I had an iPhone then or anything like that. I don't think I ever bought anything online or using social media.

I think it was just part of that course where things were really turned towards that. So it does seem long overdue for Magento to really look at things and build. And from my experience of people who have done the migration and are sat on M2 now, they are seeing the benefits of that and seeing the long-term benefits of how it will secure their platform and help them to really grow as a business as well. So, yeah, that's brilliant, John.

Thanks for your time. And I suppose it's just worth ending on the note that if you have enjoyed the content of the podcast today and do want to listen to more from e-commerce delivered, you can visit the Push On website, which is pushon.co.uk forward slash podcast.

And yeah, and if anything that you heard today in today's podcast you want to speak more about, John, I suppose you're their man if they want to just give you a ring and have a bit of an informal chat about how to move things forward. Yeah, absolutely. we're a very non-pushy open agency so it's just an initial conversation, it's really finding out what a requirement is, what the motivators are and having a progressive conversation about that really yeah so yeah that's initially how we do it, the first thing is obviously finding out about the business and as much detail as we can, finding about all the, talking about the subjects that we've covered today and, you know, moving things forward so they can migrate in the best way they possibly can.

100%. John, thanks for your time. No problem at all. Thank you.