Magento 2 Upgrade Service: IronPlane’s Method & Results

Upgrading your Magento store requires careful planning and an in-depth understanding of both your site code and the Magento platform. Without that, upgrades often take much longer than expected (or fail altogether).

For example, factors like custom code, integrations, and the compatibility of third-party modules have a massive effect on the upgrade process. When companies don’t pay enough consideration to them, upgrades can easily lead to bugs, data loss, and long downtime.

At IronPlane, we have 12+ years of experience in successful Magento development and upgrades. Specifically, we’ve helped dozens of B2B and B2C businesses:

• Upgrade from Magento 1 to Magento 2 (and migrate from other eCommerce platforms to Magento).
• Keep their sites up-to-date with Adobe’s new releases to ensure they’re getting the latest security patches, feature upgrades, and performance improvements.

Thanks to our proven workflow, each upgrade is tailored to the individual site, including the amount and quality of custom code, integrations, and third-party modules. This ensures our upgrades are done safely, without falling into common pitfalls.

In this post, we’re going to discuss our Magento 2 upgrade service in detail and show you three of our Magento upgrade projects and their results.

To see how our team of developers, user experience (UX) designers, and Solution Specialists can help with your Magento upgrade, contact us for a free site audit and consultation.

What is a Magento Upgrade Service?

A Magento Upgrade Service is a professional service provided by experts to help you migrate your online store from an older version of Magento to the latest one. Upgrading your store ensures that you have access to the latest features, improvements in security, bug fixes, and performance enhancements.

These services typically include a comprehensive analysis of your store's existing infrastructure, data migration, compatibility testing, and post-upgrade support.

Introducing Magento 2

Magento 2 is the latest iteration of the popular Magento e-commerce platform. It was built with the intention of enhancing user experience, streamlining performance, and providing advanced features to meet the evolving needs of online businesses. Magento 2 offers a range of benefits such as improved page load speed, enhanced security, responsive design, streamlined checkout process, and an intuitive admin panel. By upgrading to Magento 2, you unlock the potential to offer a seamless and engaging shopping experience to your customers.

What's New in Magento 2.4.6?

Magento 2.4.6 is the most recent version of the Magento 2 series. It comes packed with new features and improvements that further enhance the platform's capabilities. Some notable additions in Magento 2.4.6 include:

• Security Enhancements: Magento 2.4.6 addresses security vulnerabilities and implements patches to protect your online store from potential threats.
• Performance Optimization: The latest version incorporates performance enhancements, resulting in faster page load times and improved overall site performance.
• Platform Improvements: Magento 2.4.6 introduces several platform upgrades, including support for PHP 7.4 and Elasticsearch 7.x, ensuring compatibility with the latest technologies.
• Bug Fixes: This release addresses various bugs and issues identified in previous versions, providing a more stable and reliable platform for your business.

By upgrading to Magento 2.4.6, you gain access to these new features and improvements, enabling your online store to deliver an exceptional shopping experience to your customers.

How Magento Upgrade Services Typically Work

Magento Upgrade Services follow a structured approach to ensure a seamless migration process. Here is a step-by-step breakdown of how these services typically work:

Assessment 

The Magento upgrade service provider assesses your existing store, including extensions, customizations, and themes, to identify potential compatibility issues.

Planning

A detailed upgrade plan is created, outlining the necessary steps, timelines, and potential risks associated with the upgrade process.

Data Migration

The service provider assists in migrating your data, including products, customer information, orders, and other essential data, ensuring a smooth transition to the upgraded version.

Compatibility Testing

The upgraded store is thoroughly tested to ensure all functionalities, extensions, and themes work seamlessly in the new environment.

Post-Upgrade Support

The upgrade service provider offers ongoing support to address any issues that may arise after the upgrade. They provide guidance and assistance to resolve any compatibility issues or bugs, ensuring a stable and optimized online store.

Why Do You Need a Magento Upgrade Service?

There are many reasons why you might need to employ a Magento upgrade service, but here are some of the most common ones:

• Security: Upgrading to the latest version of Magento ensures that your online store is equipped with the latest security patches and fixes. This is crucial in protecting your store and customer data from potential vulnerabilities and cyber threats.
• Performance: With each new Magento release, performance improvements are made, resulting in faster page load times and enhanced overall site performance. Upgrading to the latest version allows you to leverage these optimizations, providing a seamless shopping experience for your customers.
• New Features and Functionality: Magento upgrades introduce new features and functionality that can enhance your store's capabilities. These may include improved search functionality, advanced reporting options, integrated checkout processes, and more. By availing of a Magento Upgrade Service, you ensure that your store remains competitive and up to date with the latest industry trends.
• Bug Fixes and Stability: Upgrading to the latest Magento version addresses known issues and bugs present in older versions. This enhances the stability and reliability of your online store, reducing the likelihood of downtime or unexpected errors.
• Extension and Theme Compatibility: As Magento evolves, older extensions and themes may become incompatible with newer versions. A Magento Upgrade Service ensures that all extensions and themes are compatible with the upgraded version, preventing any functionality gaps or conflicts.

How Often to Perform Upgrades

The frequency of Magento upgrades depends on several factors, including the specific needs of your business, the complexity of your online store, and the availability of new releases. As a general guideline, it is recommended to perform upgrades at least once a year to stay up to date with the latest security patches, features, and performance improvements.

However, certain situations may necessitate more frequent upgrades. For example, if a critical security vulnerability is identified, it is imperative to upgrade your store immediately to mitigate any potential risks. Additionally, if you rely heavily on third-party extensions or customizations, regular upgrades become crucial to ensure compatibility and prevent any disruptions in functionality.

IronPlane’s Proven Magento 2 Upgrade Process (In-Depth Look)

At IronPlane, we offer various development services for the Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source platforms, including:

• Magento site audits.
• UX and conversion rate audits.
• Migrations from Magento 1 to Magento 2.
• Regular updates to the latest version of Magento.
• Security, monitoring, and Magento-optimized hosting.
• Custom development of entire sites, Magento extensions, modules, integrations, catalogs, and much more. 

Read more: Adobe Commerce Agency: Our Process, Projects, and Results 

Our projects are based on a highly-individualized approach to each client’s needs.  

This means we take the time to study how your business works, what technical challenges you’re facing, what business goals you have, and what role your online store plays in them. As a result, we can offer the best possible solutions from both a technical and financial standpoint.

For Magento upgrades, our process includes five steps, starting with a free consultation call and site audit.

Step 1: Free Consultation & Site Audit 

All IronPlane projects are preceded by a free consultation call where we discuss your goals and website problems. This could include an outdated Magento version, slow site speed, security concerns, lack of integrations, and so on.

We then conduct a free site audit. The free audit is the first step in finding your Magento site's challenges, opportunities, and risks. It gives you a quick snapshot of your current Magento implementation, with improvement ideas based on your Magento version, theme, third-party extensions, and custom modules. 

Note: You can set up a free consultation and site audit with our team here. 

Step 2: Business Discovery & Code Audits

Beyond the free audit, we also do a more comprehensive business and site discovery.

This lays the foundation for the rest of the project because it helps us understand your business goals and how your site should support them. As a result, your business priorities drive our technological decisions, not the other way around.

We actually offer two different types of audits at this stage:

• Code Audit, which dives deep into your site’s backend and frontend code, including your core files, theming structure, installed modules, 3rd-party extensions, customizations, security, and more.
• Comprehensive Site Audit (our recommended option), which covers everything from the Code Audit and goes over other areas like UX, site speed, accessibility, and SEO. Additionally, we also analyze your business goals, analytics, and key performance indicators (KPIs).

Click here to learn more about our Magento Site Audit services

Step 3: Project Scoping & Estimation

Once the code audit and business discovery are done, we start estimating the effort, timing, and costs of the upgrade. During this phase, you’re assigned a dedicated Solution Specialist from our team who will:

• Clarify and prioritize the steps that must be completed to upgrade your Magento site (like custom design work, development tasks, and QA testing).
• Answer any questions you may have about the project.
• Provide regular updates on our progress once the work starts. Note: You’ll also get access to our project management tools, so you can monitor what we’re working on without having to contact our team.

Step 4: Project Deployment & Website Launch

For Magento upgrades, we start by outlining the necessary development and design tasks. Once we complete those, we can push the upgraded site to a staging environment and perform QA testing. This is crucial, as it lets us detect and resolve technical issues before the site goes live.

After we wrap up QA testing, we push the upgraded site to the live environment in a way that ensures near-zero downtime. A final round of user testing also accompanies the live launch to guarantee everything’s working as expected.

Step 5: Magento Maintenance & Updates 

Our goal at IronPlane is to become a long-term, reliable agency partner for all things Magento. We can work with you over the long haul to:

• Keep your site updated as new releases come out.
• Monitor site security and detect potential risks.
• Continuously find new ways to improve site conversions, speed, and UX.

Thanks to this long-term approach, many clients have been with us for years.

Read more: IronPlane Magento 2 Development Services Guide

3 Real-Life Examples of Magento Upgrade Projects & Results

In this final section, we’ll explore three Magento upgrade projects to give you a better idea of what to expect when working with our team.

High Point Scientific: Migrating from Magento 1 to Magento 2

High Point Scientific (HPS) is a global brand that sells high-precision telescopes and telescope accessories through its online storefront. The company’s Magento website has a variety of resources (e.g., helpful product descriptions, video tutorials, warranty information, and financing options) that help visitors learn about the available products and make the right purchasing decisions.

While useful, HPS’ original site was built on Magento 1, and since Adobe would be discontinuing its support for this older version, HPS had to upgrade to Magento 2. Our experience with Magento migrations made us a natural choice for their team.

During our code audit and discussions with the HPS team, we also discovered many other opportunities for improvement.

For example, we found visitors were often confused by the site’s navigational flow, and many of them had trouble finding specific telescopes and accessories — as a result, customers were bouncing off the site before making a purchase.

After completing the research and discovery process, this project became much more complex than just the initial Magento update.

First, we worked with UX specialty firm Baymard to run a comprehensive UX audit, and we leveraged those findings to inform our design decisions. Then, we implemented integrations with tools like Search Spring, ShipperHQ, Extend, Bread, and NetSuite to streamline backend operations. Finally, we migrated the old Magento 1 site to the newly-designed Magento 2 platform.

Thanks to our work, HPS now has an upgraded site with a better UX, higher conversions, and faster load times. We also worked with them after the initial project by providing ongoing support for site optimization, bug fixes, and further customizations.

As a result, HPS had a:

• 25.6% increase in revenue.
• 10% uptick in overall transactions.
• 17.4% increase in user sessions.
• 20.5% increase in site visitors.

Bosca: Upgrading to Magento 2 on a Tight Deadline

Bosca manufactures and sells high-quality leather goods both online and through retailers. The company already had a working eCommerce store that was built on Magento 1, but they wanted to migrate to Magento 2, so they asked us to help with the version upgrade. There was just one restriction — the project had to be done within six weeks.

This tight deadline required a detailed plan to break down the necessary tasks and ensure they could be completed on time. Our Solution Specialists quickly created such a plan based on Bosca’s goals and technical challenges.

We started by implementing the Colibri foundation, which allowed us to hit the ground running. This foundation’s out-of-the-box features — like Elasticsearch and Matrixrate shipping — give us a solid starting point to build out, customize, and deploy Magento sites (which significantly reduces development time). 

As a result, we were able to successfully migrate the site within the six-week timeframe and make key improvements to it, including:

• Custom RMA forms.
• Configurable product swatches.
• A customized home page layout.
• A Google Tag Manager integration.
• Syncing their ERP with the upgraded Magento site, and more.

Following the launch, we continued working with Bosca to make additional improvements to the site. As a result, five months after its launch, the newly upgraded site had a:

• 7.8% increase in revenue.
• 45% boost in organic conversions.
• 10.8% uptick in overall transactions.
• 36% improvement in page load times.

Omni International: Upgrading a Magento Site and Making Various UI, UX, & Technical Improvements

Omni International is a premier manufacturer and distributor of laboratory homogenizers, consumables, and accessories, and they sell to customers all around the globe (both individual labs and enterprise organizations).

Their original Magento 1 site was operable but in need of an upgrade to the new version, Magento 2. In addition to upgrading, Omni also wanted to: 

• Enhance site UI, UX, and scalability.  
• Improve site navigation by displaying resources and accessories for each product in a digestible way. 
• Offer multiple checkout options (both cart and quoting options) for different end-user groups.
• Implement a customer tracking tool to gather detailed insights about the user experience.

Our team analyzed Omni’s site and challenges and got to work right away.

First, we designed a sleek, custom look for their new Magento 2 site. We then implemented Magento’s B2B Commerce edition to enable add-to-cart and add-to-quote functions. The revamped website design enables customers to easily find products, accessories, and bundles; reference product resources as they shop; request quotes with Omni’s team.

We also implemented Pardot — an automation and lead generation tool — to help reps provide (quick) accurate quotes, upsell products, analyze customer data, and discover valuable leads.

Finally, we focused on creating a way for shoppers to track their shipments and find out when they would arrive. This was done through a new feature for locating distributors and an integration with ShipperHQ.

Omni now has an upgraded Magento 2 site, with a better checkout flow, streamlined quoting system, automatic distributor assignment, and comprehensive documentation for every product.

This resulted in a:

• 107.4% increase in revenue
• 67.5% increase in transactions
• 48.8% increase in average order value

Schedule a Free Consultation & Code Audit with IronPlane 

Our team of certified Magento developers, UX designers, and Solution Specialists can help with all your Magento upgrade tasks, whether that’s migrating from Magento 1 to Magento 2 or keeping your site up to date with the latest version. You can learn more about our Magento upgrade service here.

We can also make many other improvements to boost your store’s performance — from speed and conversion rate optimization to UX redesigns, security enhancements and monitoring, custom pricing pages, and much more. 

Click here to schedule a free consultation and site audit today.

FAQs: Magento Upgrade Service

Q: How do I upgrade to the latest version of Magento?

A: To upgrade to the latest version of Magento, follow these general steps:

1. Backup Your Store: Before proceeding with any upgrade, it is essential to back up your store's files and database to ensure you have a copy of your existing data.
2. Review System Requirements: Check the system requirements for the latest version of Magento to ensure your server environment meets the necessary criteria.
3. Disable Caches and Compilation: Disable all caches and compilation processes in your Magento admin panel to prevent any conflicts during the upgrade process.
4. Download the Latest Version: Visit the official Magento website and download the latest version of Magento that you wish to upgrade to.
5. Upload and Extract Files: Upload the downloaded files to your server and extract them into your Magento installation directory, overwriting the existing files.
6. Run Upgrade Commands: Access your server via SSH and navigate to your Magento root directory. Run the necessary upgrade commands provided by Magento to upgrade the database schema and execute any required data migrations.
7. Test and Verify: After the upgrade process is complete, thoroughly test your store's functionality, extensions, and themes to ensure everything is working correctly.

Q: How do I upgrade Magento 2.4 1 to 2.4 3, 2.4 1 to 2.4 4, or 2.4 1 to 2.4 5?

A: To upgrade from Magento 2.4.1 to 2.4.3:

1. Backup Your Store: Back up your current Magento files and database as a precautionary measure.
2. Review Release Notes: Read the release notes of the newest Magento upgrade to understand the changes and specific requirements for the upgrade.
3. Update Composer.json: In your Magento root directory, edit the composer.json file and update the version number for Magento from 2.4.1 to 2.4.3, 2.4.4, or 2.4.5.
4. Update Dependencies: Run the Composer update command to update the dependencies and download the necessary files for your Magento upgrade.
5. Upgrade Database and Clear Cache: Run the necessary upgrade commands to update the database schema and clear the cache. 
6. Test and Verify: Test your store thoroughly to ensure all functionalities, extensions, and themes are working as expected after the upgrade.

Related reads:

• How to Choose a Dedicated Magento Developer | Best Practices
• Magento Enterprise Developers: IronPlane + 5 Alternatives
• B2B Magento Developer: IronPlane’s Approach