Knowing when to upgrade to Magento Commerce

One of the toughest challenges for growing eCommerce businesses is scale. Growth is exciting, but it requires systems to grow with it. Magento Open Source is a great starting point for small eCommerce businesses, but as their businesses grow, eventually they will need to look into moving to a platform that is better positioned to scale alongside the business and upgrade to Magento Commerce.

While there are many considerations that need to be discussed internally and with a Magento or technology partner before making a final decision, these signals will make it pretty clear that it is time to upgrade to Magento Commerce.

1. TRAFFIC IS STRAINING THE EXPERIENCE

As a digital business grows, more and more shoppers and searchers will visit the site. Eventually, this traffic will reach the limitations of the Open Source platform and begin to negatively impact the experience. Add in seasonal shopping spikes and promotions, and slow loading speeds, broken pages, and site crashes can do lasting damage at the worst possible times.

Technical limitations can be expensive and time-consuming to upgrade, but the cost of not addressing these issues can be catastrophic. Magento Commerce offers enhanced caching and database capabilities that enable sites to remain stable under increased traffic loads. Cloud hosting options – exclusive to Magento Commerce – ensure sites have the bandwidth and scale they need regardless of traffic.

2. STAGNANT CONVERSION RATES

Conversion rate – how often a visitor performs a desired action – is a great way to measure the success of a digital store. High conversion tells you that the site is visible to the right audience; they are finding the information or products that they want, and are willing to buy from you.

When these rates stagnate, though, it’s a sign that your experience is in need of optimization, and businesses can only do so much with Magento Open Source. An upgrade to Magento Commerce not only improves site performance, but offers an enhanced suite of conversion optimization tools such as segmented messaging and content, gift wrap options, gift card and payment options, customized cross- and up-selling features, and dozens of various promotion types.

3. PAINFULLY COMPLEX INTEGRATIONS

Smart businesses continually add to and optimize their customer experience as they grow. Functionality like Buy Online, Pick Up In-Store elevates the experience, but also requires integrations with other systems like an Order Management System (OMS).

Building custom integrations for these systems is expensive, sometimes to the point that integration costs trump the value of implementing new strategies and systems. Magento Open Source is positioned to be more of a standalone commerce system, whereas Magento Commerce is prepared OOTB to integrate into larger enterprise solutions. For example, the Magento Order Management system seamlessly ties in with Magento Commerce, enabling these next-level experiences without the cost of custom integrations.

4. DEVELOPER RESOURCES ARE EATING INTO ROI

Web content and presentation is critical to building an engaging and immersive shopping experience. With Magento Open Source, content is static and hard-coded, requiring technical resources to make changes to the site.

On the other hand, Magento Commerce’s modular content slots, preview and staging tools, enable business users to easily make changes and control the experience for multiple customer segments within the intuitive admin panel. Magento Open Source requires hard coding or 3^rd party extensions to enable these personalization functions.

Furthermore, Magento Commerce utilizes Admin Action logging, ensuring PCI compliance (PCI DSS) whereas maintaining compliance with Magento Open Source requires additional coding and developer hours.

---

All in all, Magento Open Source is a phenomenal platform for small, growing digital businesses. There comes a point, though, where that growth outstrips the capabilities of the platform. The four situations we mentioned here are clear indicators that your platform may be holding you back – and that it might be time to upgrade to Magento Commerce.

LYONSCG is a Magento Enterprise Partner that has launched more than 200 sites over a 10-year partnership. With more than 50 certified Magento experts, LYONSCG offers a comprehensive suite of Magento services. From implementing the Magento Commerce platform, migrating Magento 1 users to Magento 2, or even managing hosting servers for current Magento stores, LYONSCG is here to help you realize your digital goals.