Imagine investing thousands of dollars in advertising campaigns for your Magento store, and getting disappointing results. If you can relate, you are not alone. Many of our Magento clients are struggling with the same challenge.
Recently, one of our Magento clients shared this issue with us. Despite paying attention to each advertising aspect, i.e. whether bidding on the most effective keywords, working with a big budget, or using highly engaging marketing copy, he could not achieve his expected advertising goals.
We looked into it to figure out various factors that might be affecting ad performance. Surprisingly, we found that “Slow Magento Website Speed” could be the culprit behind not so performing ads.
The question is obvious, how a technical aspect like Magento website speed can impact advertising performance and cost? In this blog, we’ll uncover the connection between Magento website speed and advertising performance, and understand how your slow eCommerce website can cost you extra advertising dollars.
Let’s get started with it.
Connection Between Magento Website Speed and Ad Performance
Imagine users visiting your website after seeing your advertisement, and getting greeted by a slow-loading website. Do you think they’ll wait patiently for your website to load slowly?
No, people enjoy slow motion in movies and TikTok, not on a website. They’ll likely hit the back button and leave. As a result, your bounce rate increases instead of your revenue.
When it comes to advertising, your primary objective is to grab the attention of your target audience by achieving a high ad rank with the lowest possible CPC (cost-per-click). To achieve this, you need a good quality score (learn more).
So, even when you have a beautifully designed ad landing page but your Magento website loads slowly like a tortoise, your advertising efforts, and budget will be wasted. And due to the high bounce rate of your site, your Ads will get low-quality scores, leading to an increase in your CPC amount.
Let me say this with more clarity.
The bounce rate is not the only thing that your slow-loading Magento website will give you, it will also harm the user experience and question your brand’s reputation. And a poor user experience can affect your advertising campaigns in many ways.
Let’s check how a low-quality score leads to a higher CPC in the below image.
For slow-loading websites, advertisers may need to bid higher to ensure their ads remain visible, resulting in an increased cost of advertising budget.
Now, this is the decision time.
Do you still want to spend extra dollars on your advertising campaigns or improve your website speed to lower your CPC?
Option 2, right? That’s why I’m adding some possible areas you can work on to improve your Magento website speed that helps you minimize your advertising cost.
How to Speed Up Your Magento Store
So, you’ve learned the importance of Magento website speed. Now to provide your users with the best shopping experience, you can try your hands on these ways to improve your Magento website speed.
Working on these areas will help you improve your Magento site speed to a good extent, and will help you perform well on Google PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse. But if you ask, is there any ultimate solution to let your Magento website load at its best?
I would say yes, that’s possible!! There is a theme that is specifically made to solve the website speed issues and guarantees you a “100/100 Google pagespeed score” for your Magento store.
So, are you ready to meet the ultimate solution to “Magento Speed Issues”?
Introducing “Hyvä Theme” for Accelerating Website Performance
As you’re working with Magento, you are possibly aware of Hyva Theme but let me also share a little information on what Hyva theme is and how it will help you improve Magento store speed.
The Hyvä Theme is the frontend theme for Magento that allows you to create lightweight and fast-loading eCommerce websites. It has the power to reduce your website load time dramatically. Where any basic Magento website takes at least 4-6 seconds to load, the Hyva theme can bring your Magento website load time to 1-2 seconds.
In short, the Hyva theme is “everything that your Magento store needs to load quickly“. And yes, the Hyva theme holds many more benefits that help you to improve your Ad quality score.
Let’s understand them.
How Hyva Theme Helps to Improve Your Ad Quality Score
One of the important parameters of Google Ad Quality Score is the “Landing Page Experience”—providing visitors with an excellent experience on your website.
And for an outstanding user experience, you can blindly trust the Hyva theme for your Magento website. Here’s how:
Speed—you can achieve a super fast website without compromising advanced functionality.
Responsive—you can focus on each and every user with different screen sizes.
Navigation—your visitors can roam easily throughout your website.
SEO—you can surprise Google with better website structure, speed, and performance.
Advancement—using custom extensions won’t affect the website’s performance.
These are not all benefits that you get with the Hyva theme, there are more. To know each of them, you can visit our blog on Hyvä Theme Benefits That Your Store Needs.
Conclusion
In the end, I would only remind you that no one likes slow websites. And when it comes to advertising, your slow website will definitely hinder the overall success of your ad campaign. This is because factors such as advertising performance, ad budget, quality score, and website speed, are all interconnected.
If you improve your speed, you will see an improvement in your quality score. An improvement in quality scores will ultimately lead to better ad rankings and lower CPC, which means fewer advertising dollars will bring you better ad rankings.
This makes it 100% clear that a slow-loading website costs extra advertising dollars and still does not provide desired results. Moreover, we have witnessed an ultimate solution to improve Magento website speed, which is the “Hyva theme”.
Now, the decision is yours. You can invest your precious time in tried and tested methods to improve your Magento website speed or you can go ahead with a highly recommended solution—the Hyva theme.
PS: We aureate labs, a Magento agency, are an official supplier of Hyva Theme, and we’ve 10+ years of experienced Magento developers, who can help you with fixing your Magento speed issues or any other. Feel free to get in touch for hassle-free Hyva implementation in your Magento store.
Before opting for the Hyva theme makeover, you must be curious about what would be the expected outcomes.
Let’s take a look at some case studies that show how useful the Hyva theme has turned out for Magento store owners.
Hyva Theme Case Studies
In this section, I’m adding some real-life success stories of Hyva Theme, which has helped Magento store owners in improving their website speed & performance to a great extent.
Imaginefires, the UK’s top Bioethanol Fireplaces Supplier, experienced a poor website performance impacting their conversion rate. We haveimplemented the Hyva theme for improved functionality and features.
Having such a number of lighthouse scores was nearly impossible for the Magento platform before the Hyva theme.
We implemented Hyva Theme for Grand Stores, one of our clients, who was facing several challenges due to low page speed. As a result, they were able to improve their page speed by 104% than what it was.
Federal Hospitality Equipment came to us with an issue of the heavy and cluttered design of their website, which led to slow website speed and poor user experience.
We simplified their website design and implemented Hyva Theme. This resulted in better user experience and improvement in engagement rate.
All these case studies definitely describe that the Hyva theme is the perfect match for improving Magento website speed and performance without making any extra hassles.
Are you one of those sad souls struggling with Magento Website Speed?
And unable to decide between Hyvä Theme and PWA, which one would be better to invest in?
Well, the feeling is kind of mutual.
I experienced the same feeling when I recently decided to build a house. And I had 2 different locations for that in mind, each one had unique benefits.
So I can relate to you that it’s like being in 2 tempting worlds, as each offering has its own irresistible charms.
And investing in the wrong one can turn your moment of absolute bliss into a regrettable experience. And I’ve no intention to scare you with this, my only purpose is to help you make the best choice for your Magento business.
So, slow down before you do something that you’ll regret. What I can suggest you do is to do some good research on “What’s Good” and “What’s Bad” depending upon your business requirements.
And if you’re lazy enough to not roam across various web pages to do research, I’ve brought all the information here in this blog for you. I’ve included almost every factor you may need to check before you choose between Hyvä Theme and PWA for your next Magento project.
For even lazier people we’ve added a Table of Content below to drive them directly to an answer to “Where to Invest? Hyvä or PWA?” 😉
Before I finalized my house location, I asked myself some basic questions, regarding what will be the impact of buying land in that specific locations.
And while choosing between Hyvä and PWA we should do the same and question ourselves;
What are they?
What are their capabilities?
Which is better suited for my business?
Which one of them is better for investment?
Let’s get started with…
What is Hyvä Theme?
Hyvä Theme is an open-source frontend for Magento 2 that allows you to build lightweight and fast-loading eCommerce websites.
If you want to give a new and refreshing face to your existing Magento store, then you can do that by implementing Hyvä Theme.
When you build a new eCommerce store or revamping your existing online store using Hyvä Theme, you can expect the best performance and user experience for your shoppers.
What is PWA?
A progressive web app (PWA) is a web-based application that utilizes service workers, manifests, and other web-platform features, along with progressive enhancement techniques, to provide users with an experience similar to that of using native apps.
It does not require installation like native mobile apps, yet it operates, feels, and provides users with experiences similar to native apps. It also works offline and provides a seamless experience on desktop and mobile devices.
So, now that we’ve understood Hyvä and PWA, we can start learning their capabilities.
Capabilities of Hyvä theme & PWA:
For your information, I would love to reveal that Hyvä and PWA are not like those old people who started life decades ago. They were recently introduced to everyone in 2020 and 2015 respectively. And even in this smaller period, they took no time in becoming the popular talks of the online town.
And now to choose the best for your business type I’m going to compare Hyvä and PWA on the basis of their functionalities, strengths, performance, time to market, pricing, and target businesses.
So, Sit back & hold your seat, as we’re ready to delve into their capabilities now!
Hyvä vs PWA: Unique Functionalities
For Hyvä, I’ve added the following as its unique functionality.
1. Enhanced Performance
Hyvä Theme has removed heavy-weighted Javascript libraries (RequireJS and KnockoutJS) and has included lightweight with a single JavaScript framework called Alpine.js. It has also eliminated all CSS frameworks and replaced them with Tailwind CSS, reducing CSS output.
In short, they require lesser code compared to the default Magento theme, the Luma theme, which eventually helped in boosting the performance.
2. Less Complex
Hyvä theme was built from scratch on a blank canvas to match the level of perfect speed. It has removed each source that took a long time to respond. And right above I told you that Hyvä requires lesser code, and lesser code means lesser complexity.
3. Better Experience for Developers
Hyvä themes provide a simplified development experience for developers. It uses the PHP templating system that’s already part of Magento, and it’s designed to make coding easier and faster than other Magento frontend themes. Hyvä themes allow Magento developers to quickly build beautiful and flexible frontend themes for Magento using frameworks like TailwindCSS and AlpineJS which is the only learning curve for the developers.
4. Lesser Dependencies
With Hyvä, you have to count on only 2 resources to load your website; which is TailwindCSS and Alpine.js. These technologies work together seamlessly to provide you with the ultimate loading experience.
5. SEO-friendly
Google’s Search Console has a Core Web Vitals report that measures loading, interactivity, and visual stability. Hyvä Themes passes all three tests, which can help you improve rankings, lower bounce rates, and increase conversions due to its faster loading speeds.
PWA has several functionalities to add here:
1. Native App-like experience
PWA provides a native app-like experience by utilizing modern web technologies to create an immersive user experience that closely resembles that of a native app. This includes features such as offline functionality, push notifications, and smooth animations, resulting in a seamless experience that feels like a native app without the need for a separate download or installation.
2. Device Agnostic
PWAs are web-based applications that are highly connected, hosted online, and can be accessed on any device, regardless of the operating system. This ensures a consistent user experience, whether the user is accessing the application on an iOS or Android device. Additionally, developing PWAs eliminates the need for developers to create multiple apps for different mobile platforms, resulting in significant savings in time and effort.
4. Push Notifications
PWAs allow users to receive real-time updates and alerts, even when the website is not open in their browser or device. This feature provides a seamless and convenient user experience, while also enabling businesses to engage with their audience in a timely and relevant manner.
5. Splendid Security
PWA provides enhanced security features such as HTTPS encryption, service workers, and manifest files, ensuring that data is transmitted securely and reducing the risk of security breaches. These features also enable PWAs to work offline and keep user data safe even when there is no internet connection.
6. Reliable & Speedy Webpage Loading
PWA offers a seamless browsing experience by utilizing caching, background data fetching, and smart resource allocation. This means that users can access your website quickly, even with poor connectivity or on low-end devices, without compromising on the user experience.
7. Search Engine Indexing
There is no direct effect of PWA on SEO; but PWA enhances page load speed, facilitates user engagement, improves security that contributes to improving overall SEO rankings. As a Magento PWA owner, you don’t need to follow any different set of rules to improve SEO, it is more or less the same as a traditional Magento eCommerce store.
And as we’re discussing Hyvä vs PWA; which are hyped for their speed, Performance is crucial to look after.
Performance of Hyvä Theme:
We have already discussed above that Hyvä Theme has become hyped for its lightning-fast load speed across all devices, and its commitment to loading within 2 seconds.
So how is that possible? How did Hyvä bring 2 seconds page load speed on Magento? Let me answer that.
Hyvä relies entirely on TailwindCSS and Alpine.JS instead of heavy-weighted javascript libraries.
Tailwind CSS gives you a smaller CSS file size, which makes it a better alternative to pure CSS. And on the other hand, AlpineJS has done the same with JavaScript.
However these frameworks operate at a low level, they are elegantly flexible with improved performance and minimal file size. With them, you can explore endless creative possibilities with great performance.
Our clients saw a massive improvement in load speed after we implemented the Hyvä theme for them, the below numbers describe it all.
Imaginfires, UK’s leading Bioethanol Fireplaces Suppliers aka our client saw a 296% increase in site speed after we implemented the Hyvä theme for them.
Top Jordian Cellular Network Provider Umniah, also our client, Increases site speed by 224% with help of the Hyvä theme.
Performance of PWA:
Along with providing a Native-app experience, PWAs are also known for their speedy browsing transitions, and most technical people would agree with that.
This is achieved through a combination of techniques. For example, PWAs use cache data to store content from frequently accessed pages, such as images, so that they can be loaded quickly without having to fetch them from the server every time. This improves the page load time and makes the browsing experience smoother.
The implementation of PWA resulted in a significant increase in load speed for our clients, as evident from the numbers below.
Jollyes, the largest pet superstore in the UK saw a 104% increase in site speed after the implementation of PWA on their website.
Hyvä vs PWA: Time to Market:
Everybody says “Web Development Takes Time”!
Even when I decided to build my house, the builder had the same answer.
But you chill! I’ve done my research to answer how much time the Hyvä and PWA projects require to get fully developed. Let’s have a closer look.
Hyvä: Time to Market
Hyvä themes are designed to be simple and easy to modify, which helps developers save time when creating and customizing website designs. By using a minimalistic approach, Hyvä allows developers to focus on each part of the UI and make changes quickly and easily.
This means that the development team can create and customize themes faster. The easier the theme is to develop and modify, the less time the development team needs to spend on it, and the faster the website can be launched.
PWA: Time to Market
Developing a Progressive Web App (PWA) in general is faster than creating a native app because you only need to create one version of the code that works on all devices and operating systems. This saves time and effort compared to building multiple versions for various devices.
However, the time it takes to develop a website with a PWA or a Hyvä theme depends on:
the agency’s experience with the technology,
the number of functionalities required, and
the complexity of the project.
But when we compare Magento store development time with Hyvä and the same with PWA, Hyvä can offer fast development than PWA.
For example, if you build two stores with the same features, one with a Hyvä theme and the other with a PWA, it will take twice as long to develop the PWA Magento store as it would to build the Hyvä Magento store.
We have over ten years of experience in Magento development and can confidently say that a website with a Hyvä theme can be developed in just 8 weeks, while a PWA may take around 13 weeks.
Hyvä vs PWA: Pricing
We, humans tend to never buy a single thing without checking the price for it, or the cost following it.
Whether it’s about deciding between a perfect land for your house or Hyvä and PWA for your eCommerce store development; checking after the price is necessary. As we can’t randomly invest in anything.
Hyvä: Pricing
Hyvä Theme comes with a price tag of €1000 as a lifetime license.
By taking this package, you gain entry into a comprehensive Magento ecosystem that comprises an array of resources, such as exclusive access to Slack space, comprehensive documentation, Hyvä Github sources, compatible extensions, and community support.
The additional development cost with the Hyvä theme may be around $15,000 to $25,000, for the basic store with no complex functionalities. As the complexity of a project increases, it is common for its associated cost to escalate as well.
PWA: Pricing
On the other hand, PWA doesn’t have a specific license cost to showcase. Progressive Web apps can be developed in many ways such as using Magento PWA studio, Vue Storefront, and other solutions.
However, the development cost to build PWA with no complex functionalities may range from $30,000 to $45,000 depending on the need of your project.
Hyvä vs PWA: Target Businesses
What if you invest in the wrong area for your house?
The daily hassle will be enough to make you cry your eyes out.
And to not let that happen while choosing between Hyvä and PWA, I’ve shared my knowledge on business types and sizes targeted by them.
Hyvä: Target Business
Hyvä themes is a perfect match for Small to Medium businesses, and even larger entities can reap its benefits to some extent. It is faster and easier to implement, and even developers can easily work with it. This also helps to keep the cost of building the website lower.
On the other hand, PWAs are perfect for medium to larger enterprises. They are designed in such a way that they work well even with slow internet speeds. This makes them a great option for large enterprises with lots of products and customers who use mobile devices.
Since PWAs work well with slow internet speeds, they are also suitable for businesses with customers living in rural areas or places with poor internet connectivity.
That being said, there are many cases where a PWA can be beneficial for small businesses as well. For example, a small business with a mobile-first strategy can benefit from a PWA that provides a seamless mobile experience to its users.
But a little reminder, PWAs don’t have a fixed budget as Hyvä theme so the circumstances can also stand where small businesses may not have sufficient funds to implement PWA solutions.
Where to Invest? Hyvä or PWA?
Finally, the time has come for me to reveal that, where you need to invest between Hyvä and PWA.
Okay, so, we’ve checked most of the areas and we also know that both the Hyvä theme and PWA are able to build decent Magento websites, better load speed, and improved user experience.
But as we can’t consider both at once, so we’ll help you pick the best option for your Magento store development based on various factors including your business needs.
You may find us biased for Hyvä, but we still want to say that Hyvä Theme is the most speedy solution for Magento eCommerce businesses and has a faster time to market. So if you’re a small to medium-sized business owner who is looking to enter the market quickly, with a limited budget but with a blazing-fast website speed, look no further than Hyvä theme. It’s definitely a match!
But…But…But…
In another case, if you’re a medium to large-sized business, looking to avail better performance, speed, and other benefits of PWA, also budget is not the concern, then, you can get yourself a PWA.
This means that your decision will completely depend on your unique business requirements. That is what is necessary for your business and what your users require.
So now, Tell me what you’re looking to invest in. Hyvä? or PWA?
I’m waiting in the comment section for your reply 🙂
Hyva theme may have been new, but it’s getting popular among developers and merchants for its eCommerce performance enhancement features, all at a lower cost than headless PWA.
But since it’s just the beginning, many Magento extensions are incompatible with Hyva. Businesses are still figuring out ways to develop compatibility between the Hyva theme and Magento extensions.
To address the Hyva compatibility issue, many third-party extension providers are working in tandem with Hyva. They are working towards a seamless integration experience for customers & developers. This article will cover 10 of these Hyva compatibility extension providers.
Top 10 Best Hyva Compatibility Extensions Providers
Amasty, founded in 2009, is an official partner of Adobe and is one of the best companies in offering Hyva compatibility extensions. It offers more than 300+ extensions of Magento and provides a wide range of Magento solutions and services to 100,000+ customers and partners worldwide.
Amasty is also an official partner of Hyva and has almost 25 Hyva-compatible extensions published. They are working on 10+ extensions to make it compatible with Hyva. Here are some top extensions:
Located in the USA, Mageworx has been a well-known Magento extensions provider since 2008; it is pioneered in developing SEO extensions and provides affordable extensions for businesses of any size. Their team of 30 people is certified, professional and experts in providing quality extensions and solutions that help merchants succeed.
As a Magento extension developer, Mageworx believes it is extremely important that their extensions are compatible with the Hyva theme. Therefore they have made their best extensions compatible with Hyva. Here is the list of extensions.
BSS Commerce has one of its offerings in Hyva compatibility extension services. Even with more than 40 compatible extensions, the company is continuously working to make each of its modules Hyva-compatible.
It has been Adobe Bronze Solution as well as Hyva Partner since 2021. With more than 9+ years of experience in building Magento extensions and providing services to small, medium and Enterprise level businesses, it is the most reliable and efficient Magento solutions provider.
This company is most active on the Hyva board and creates maximum issues on the board; here are some of their most popular Hyva-compatible extensions:
AheadWorks is the child company of Rave Digital, a pioneer in Magento Development and a Magento Professional Solutions Partner. Rave Digital has headquarters in the USA, roofing over 50+ Certified Magento Developers and excellence in providing end-to-end eCommerce solutions for leading B2C brands and global merchants.
They have created very few Hyva-compatible extensions, which are very useful and effective in running the eCommerce business. Here are some of them:
Magecomp was established in 2014 and is now one of the leading Magento extensions and services providers. Their team strength has certified Magento developers who provide traditional and customised Magento solutions and deliver the projects on time per the client’s business requirements. The best part of this company is they provide one year of free upgrades and free support for all their extensions and projects.
They have the highest number of open issues listed on the Hyva board, which means they are making most of their extensions Hyva compatible and few of them are made compatible with Hyva.
In addition, they have almost 45+ extensions that are Hyva-compatible out of the box.
Mirasvit is considered one the top Magento extension providers, with 14 years of professional experience in building ready-to-use modules for the Magento platform.
They provide quality products and can come up with the best solutions for the challenges faced by the merchants, which are also cost-effective.
Mirasvit has around 15 Hyva-compatible extensions, and that few of them are listed below.
Webkul is a 2010-based diversified company that provides extensions for many open-source eCommerce platforms such as Magento, Shopify, Woo commerce, Opencart, etc.
It has developed the highest number of extensions in Magento, and they are hunting to create more. Most popular amongst customers across the globe, WebKul takes pride in offering end-to-end solutions and excellent customer service.
Regarding Hyva-compatible extensions, Webkul has very few compatible extensions compared to the number of extensions they have. Though, what they have as their compatible extensions are very effective. Here is the list of them:
Mageplaza offers a wide range of feature-rich and high-quality Magento 2 extensions for merchants and developers. They have over 220+ extensions for the latest Magento 2 version.
They strongly emphasise providing the best and most innovative product features and outstanding technical support. Hence they are recognised as the most popular extension provider amongst merchants of all sizes of businesses.
As they wanted to keep up with the latest themes, they have built some Hyva-compatible extensions, as mentioned below:
RedChamps is known for providing innovative and scalable solutions for Magento store merchants. They have developed several Magento extensions and provide the best services to merchants to help them achieve their eCommerce business goals and requirements.
This company has 25 Hyva-compatible extensions published on the Hyva board, and they don’t stop here. They are continuously working on creating more feature-ladened extensions. Below are the top extensions they provide:
An eCommerce agency from Ukraine that started developing Magento 2 extensions in 2015 and has provided many cost-effective and feature-rich solutions.
Their Magento extensions have been used and downloaded by more than 100K customers since the beginning till now. They strive to provide the best extensions to their customers despite the challenges they have faced in the last few years.
As we mentioned. One way to go about compatibility is to wait for your extension providers to create compatible extensions for your store. But that would lead to uncertainty and may make you wait until they deliver.
The second way is to hire an agency that can help you with custom hyva theme extension compatibility. Don’t worry if the extension of your Magento store is not listed in the above list. You don’t need to remove incompatible plugins with Hyvä. We are one of those agencies that make extensions compatible for your Hyva store.
You will get Hyva development, integration & maintenance support, all under one roof, Hyva theme service. Feel free to contact our experts to get started today.
FAQs
Here are some Hyva compatibility extensions questions & answers:
What are Hyva compatibility extensions?
Hyva compatibility extensions are the Magento extensions that are made keeping Hyva themes in mind, or if they’re not compatible, they are turned compatible to work with Hyva themes.
What are Hyva compatibility extension providers?
Hyva compatibility extension providers are the companies that offer Hyva-compatible extension solutions for Hyva-based stores to take advantage of Magento extensions on Magento 2.
Why do you need Hyva compatibility extensions?
As more and more merchants look forward to having a Hyva frontend theme, there’s a desperate need to have all the extension support as they did on Luma or Blank theme. But since the technology stack is new for Hyva, not all extensions are compatible with the theme.
wait for Hyva-compatible extensions developed by extension providers, or
hire agencies that can bring incompatible Luma code into Hyva-compatible code as and when you need
All the incompatibility is at the frontend level, where the Hyva theme replaces Luma. The backend-related modules are compatible with Hyva as they are built on the Magento Open Source platform.
Generally, Magento Stores uses/installs more or less similar kinds of extensions; it makes sense to share compatibility extensions than spending time over and again to make them compatible.
How to check whether the extension is compatible with the Hyva theme?
A Compatibility Module Tracker board is available to check whether the extension is compatible with the Hyva theme. Board is divided into six labels, each representing the status of the extension. Labels are as below:
Open: Extensions in open status means it is yet to be made compatible.
Accepted: This means extensions are accepted to make it compatible.
In Progress: Extensions on which developers are working to make it compatible.
Published: Extensions that are made available to use.
Compatible: Extensions that are fully compatible with Hyva and can be used.
Closed: Some extensions might be duplicates, or there is an alternative solution for that extension.
Based on the statuses above, one can find compatible extensions per their requirements.
Guess what’s common between Nike, United Airlines, and Target? They use headless commerce platforms to create faster and more customized websites.
But what makes them switch to headless commerce or progressive web app development from traditional eCommerce development?
Is it the customization flexibility? Is it more control over the front and the back end? Or is it a faster development process? Well, what if I told you— all of them?
In the given article, I will give you some reasons to follow the headless route of these huge companies. In fact, I have a list of many successful industries that have implemented headless PWA.
I will also hand you the list of platforms with their features and benefits. The list will make it easier for you to choose one and achieve your commerce endeavors.
So without further ado, let’s jump onto headless commerce platforms.
What Is A Headless Commerce Platform?
A headless commerce platform is a platform that separates content management applications from the content delivery application environment.
If
you’re good with your existing front-end solution, and
want a bit more from your backend system,
a headless commerce platform will convert your objective into reality.
In simple terms, the headless commerce platforms accomplish your headless commerce dreams.
Things you can do with the headless commerce platforms:
Connect backends with multiple frontends
Deliver faster content to all the digital touchpoints
Traditional eCommerce platforms force their architecture on you. You can only choose from the templates they provide.
What Are The Benefits Of Headless Commerce Platforms?
Decoupling is good, but headless commerce platforms can benefit you more than one way. It affects your eCommerce in ways you’re not even aware of.
A lot of people think headless commerce platforms are expensive.
It makes sense if you are not counting the cost of inefficiencies. But headless platforms have removed unmeasured redundancies time and again.
If you don’t measure them— you don’t know how much you’re saving in the long term. Let’s keep it this way. You can dismiss the claims if you can measure these elements. Ask yourself:
How many redundancies do headless platforms reduce?
What is the cost of seamless integration between both ends?
What’s the cost of time-consuming and expensive workarounds of creating an omnichannel experience on mobile and web?
What’s the hidden cost of sticking to the traditional platform?
How much time do you save with customization control?
Are you getting the point? The implementation cost with headless commerce is not fixed at all. So you can’t really claim if it’s truly more expensive than traditional commerce.
Headless platform benefit #2: Flexibility, efficiency, and adaptability
Your consumers are not buying on websites alone.
250 million are shopping on the Facebook marketplace. (1)
Instagram is not far behind. 44% of surveyed people shop on Instagram. (2)
And then there’s this crazy number. 33.2 million Americans are looking to shop using smart speakers in 2022. (3)
The number of buying channels keeps increasing.
You have two approaches to it.
Either you pick up the traditional method and repurpose digital content on all the channels.
Or you pick a headless commerce platform approach to create flexible content on all the channels.
Headless eCommerce platforms let you make changes to the content layer. And guess what? You don’t even need to disrupt the back-end. Your team can launch content campaigns and promotions without touching the system.
So headless platforms separate the interdependency between the marketing and IT department.
Headless platform benefit #3: Better security and protected data
But they also have downsides. You drop in a chink on the website every time you install such solutions.
Your business becomes insecure.
Malware and unauthorized access may affect your data.
Headless commerce platforms are designed to fill in these security chinks. What makes them more secure? Headless platforms
are built on open-source software
run within an isolated environment
prevent backend code from accessing disk space
You may say staying up to date on the security vulnerabilities will do the job for you. But it’s nearly impossible. To keep up to date with all the security updates is a nut nobody wants to crack. You know they keep getting released every day..
The headless commerce platform lets you get over all these hassles. You don’t have to worry about regular updates because headless commerce already saves you from boatloads of cyber threats.
Headless platform benefit #4: You have a head start in the market
You don’t go about reinventing the light bulb. Do you? Then why would you write a codebase that’s been written and tested over and over the years? Headless commerce platforms apply the same principle to your eCommerce endeavors.
You can launch and relaunch your website at speed you can never imagine.
You don’t need Shopify or Magento web developers to start coding for your website from scratch. How do headless platforms let you early in the market? Well, that’s how you reduce the need for developers, if not eliminate it. In the process, you save
time and reduce the total turnaround time to launch a website
Plus, there are no licensing and vendor-related issues. So you save more time from the unnecessary delays.
Speeding up the development process = faster penetration into the market = first-movers advantages
Headless platform benefit #5: You have better control over marketing campaigns
Any business is about speaking to your customers the way you want. But traditional eCommerce platforms limit the way you deliver marketing materials to them.
But in our case, headless commerce platforms divorce the front end from the backend. You know how the two ends are not tightly coupled. This way you can innovate your marketing campaigns without getting disturbed at the back-end.
Let’s see how you can improve your marketing initiatives.
You can roll out new initiatives. Headless commerce platforms use API to pull data from the central repository.
The platform lets you launch microsites, blogs, storefronts, and an ‘n’ number of online store experiences without having you go through the hassle of multiple platforms. Yes, you can connect with all these touchpoints to a single platform.
You can create consistency between channels. Web to mobile! Headless implementation is just flexible enough to bring consistency to your marketing efforts.
If you’re accustomed to any particular CMS, you can use the design options it offers.
15 Best Headless Ecommerce Platforms
I have created a list of the ten best headless commerce platforms for you. It was difficult for me to rate one above the other. So I decided to skip it and planned to discuss the pros and cons of all these commerce
You can be the best judge and choose the most suitable one.
Top headless commerce platform list.
#1: Adobe Commerce
#2: The.com
#3: OroCommerce
#4 Shopify Plus
#5: BigCommerce
#6: Commerce Layer
#7: Contentful
#8: Kontent
#9: Shogun
#10: Vue StoreFront
#11: commercetools
#12: Elastic Path Commerce
#13: Nacelle
#14: Fabric
#15: Bloomreach
Best headless commerce platform #1: Adobe Commerce
My first pick would be Adobe Commerce.
What is Adobe Commerce?
Adobe commerce… or some call it Magento commerce, is an open-source headless platform solution. You may want to develop a headless Magento store if you’re hoping to add a dynamic shopping cart system to your store.
Adobe commerce also gives infinite flexibility at a meager price. Magento is headless starting from version 2.3. Probably the reason why stores with
Read More:Magento PWA– Everything you need to know
What are the features of Adobe Commerce?
API
Cataloging/Categorization
SEO Management
Communication Management
CRM
Content Management
Payment Options
Mobile Access
Loyalty Program
Inventory Control
Shopping Cart
Order Management
Reporting/Analytics
Customer Touch Points
Returns Management
Promotions Management
Channel Management
Customer Accounts
Shipping Management
Web/Mobile App Development
eCommerce Management
What are the pros of Adobe Commerce?
greater flexibility
enhanced performance
ability to create custom-tailored content
fantastic user experience to customers
a good platform to start immediately
a strong Magento dev community
What are the cons of Adobe Commerce?
expensive customization
needs regular security updates
vulnerable to attacks
not-so-attractive interface
What is the price of Adobe Commerce?
Starts at 1988$ per month. It also has a free trial!
Who is Adobe Commerce best suited for?
Adobe Commerce is designed for small to large businesses.
Best suitable for the retail industry.
Best headless commerce platform #2: The.com
The.com homepage
The next on the list is The.com
What is The.com?
The.Com breaks all the barriers for you as a headless commerce platform. If designing has been one of the challenges for you, the.com it is. It has a low-code editor which gives you massive front-end freedom.
The.Com claims the pages made on it are the fastest on the internet. As you’d expect from the headless software, The.Com uses serverless architecture.
What are the features of The.Com?
The.com headless services and features
SEO Management
Pre-built Templates
Auto Update
Real-Time Editing
Reporting/Analytics
Landing Pages/Web Forms
What are the pros of The.Com?
duplicate the templates easily
interface is intuitive
integrates with Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics
helpful team
auto-generated sitemaps for search page indexing
speedy and responsive
What are the cons of The.Com?
the learning curve is steep
few expert developers in the market
still need some changes to features
What is the price of The.Com?
The pricing structure for the.com
The.com lets you draft up to 6 websites. You can upgrade to one of these three plans once you’re ready to publish.
Starter: $36/Month
Member: $199/Month
High Volume: $1499+/Month
The.Com doesn’t have any free version. However, you can use the free drafting period.
Who is The.Com best suited for?
Best for professional, semi-professional, and freelance web developers
SaaS platforms and marketing, branding, and social digital agencies
Best headless commerce platform #3: OroCommerce
OroCommerce homepage
OroCommerce is next on my list.
What is OroCommerce?
OroCommerce is an open-source headless commerce platform. It is built to serve B2B platforms. But you can use its set of multiple features to meet your eCommerce requirements.
B2B,
B2B2B,
B2B2C,
B2C
You can also enjoy SaaS/cloud environment solutions for your headless commerce objectives.
What are the features of OroCommerce?
Reordering
Channel Management
Web/Mobile App Development
Order Management
Returns Management
Cataloging/Categorization
Promotions Management
Templates
Multi-Store
Multi-Channel Marketing
Marketplace Integration
API
Inventory Management
Inventory Control
Email Marketing
Reporting/Analytics
Data Security
CRM
Communication Management
SEO Management
Shipping Management
Kitting
Shopping Cart
Mobile Access
What are the pros of OroCommerce?
speeds up the development process of complex businesses
systematic built
functional implementation is amazing
has a powerful data grid tool
web catalog is powerful
agile CRM
huge feature list
powerful structure focused on B2B
What are the cons of OroCommerce?
the learning curve for development is huge
development is complex
extensions are limited
clumsy on windows environment
needs more updates in debugging tool
What is the price of OroCommerce?
Orocommerce feature list and contact us CTA
OroCommerce hasn’t provided the price for their software. But I know they have free trials and free versions as well.
Who is OroCommerce best suited for?
OroCommerce is a perfect fit for midsize and large enterprises
Businesses looking to manage multiple pricing lists and catalogs may look into OroCommerce headless solution
Shopify Plus is for you if you want high growth for your enterprise eCommerce. It is a multi-channel headless commerce software that handles high traffic volumes. You can credit such high growth to Shopify PWA capabilities.
If you make over $1 million in revenue, Shopify Plus is a headless platform to optimize marketing and revenue. You can sell online and across other digital channels like Facebook and Instagram. Plus also expands the possibilities in other marketplaces like Amazon and eBay.
What are the features of Shopify Plus?
Cataloging/Categorization
Returns Management
Channel Management
Promotions Management
Multi-Store
CRM
Kitting
Email Marketing
Data Security
Shopping Cart
API
Marketplace Integration
Inventory Management
Mobile Access
Content Management
eCommerce Management
Multi-Channel Marketing
Conversion Tracking
Order Management
Reviews Management
SEO Management
Templates
Inventory Tracking
What are the pros of Shopify Plus?
great for multiple site holders
easy to learn and get started
efficient customization
thousands of app support
quick and easy to set up
default templates for headless websites
detailed analytics
manage POS and online sales store
sections for customized solutions
What are the cons of Shopify Plus?
expensive pricing
limited in terms of in-built design themes
may have server issues at times
What is the price of Shopify Plus?
Shopify pricing page
You’ll need to connect with the Shopify team to figure out the price. But most people I know feel it’s a bit of an expensive solution for headless commerce.
Shopify says their plan starts at USD 2000/month. But don’t take it at face value. The figures may change depending on your needs. However, you can enjoy a free trial for exploration. There’s no free version.
Who is Shopify Plus best suited for?
High-volume enterprise businesses
Large-sized businesses
Best headless commerce platform #5: BigCommerce
BigCommerce homepage
BigCommerce will always make the list of best headless commerce platforms.
What is BigCommerce?
BigCommerce is one of the most popular headless eCommerce platforms. Like other platforms, it’s an open-source solution that focuses especially on cloud-based SaaS.
BigCommerce lets you choose your tech stack. Its headless APIs help you build a separate system for your website. You also can’t discount the partnership with front-end frameworks and content management systems like WordPress, Drupal, etc.
What are the features of BigCommerce?
Cataloging/Categorization
Email Marketing
Bulk Ordering
Marketplace Integration
Customer Touch Points
Channel Management
Inventory Control
Shipping Management
Content Management
Returns Management
Order Management
Promotions Management
SEO Management
Shopping Cart
Inventory Optimization
eCommerce Management
Multi-Channel Marketing
API
Reordering
Reporting/Analytics
Payment Options
What are the pros of BigCommerce?
has many templates to explore
easily scalable and expandable
designing freedom
offers inclusive features at entry-level product options
helpful customer support
availability of many third-party apps
easy to figure out
the platforms get regular updates and are set up perfectly
comprehensive product manager feature
a facelifted interface
customization and reliability
simple and accurate integration
strong order management
What are the cons of BigCommerce?
asks to change password every quarter (annoying experience)
difficult to work with if you’re trying more than basics
theme editor may require a tricky setup
the in-browser theme editor may turn out buggy and unreliable
difficult for merchants to design their stores without developers
What is the price of BigCommerce?
BigCommerce pricing plan
Starts at $29.95
Plus @ $79.95/month
Pro @$299.95/month
Enterprise: You’ll need to contact BigCommerce.
BigCommerce free trial offer
You can see if it works for you with the free trial version. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have a free version.
Who is BigCommerce best suited for?
BigCommerce is for retail businesses of all sizes,
A good pick if you need a customizable website with a centralized dashboard
Best headless commerce platform #6: Commerce Layer
CommerceLayer homepage
Commerce Layer cuts to the list because it lets you go the headless way easily.
What is a Commerce Layer?
Commerce Layer allows modern developers to build enterprise headless commerce. You need a Commerce Layer if your brand is fast-growing.
The headless solution is powerful yet simple to implement. Commerce Layer has an effective API for blistering websites. You can use it on any breed of the technology stack to scale a shoppable website.
What are the features of the Commerce Layer?
API
Customer Touchpoints
Inventory Optimization
What are the pros of the Commerce Layer?
very comfortable to use
multi-purpose benefits
simple structure
integrate POS software and sell in-store
flexible with wearable and voice devises
What are the cons of the Commerce Layer?
not a self-explanatory interface
What is the price of the Commerce Layer?
Commercelayer pricing plan
Commerce Layer lets you start free of cost but with limited features. Businesses with comprehensive requirements will have to connect with the Layer’s team.
Commerce Layer gives a free trial for you to explore.
Who is Commerce Layer best suited for?
Commerce Layer is for you if you have a fast-growing brand
Best for digital-first brands looking to go headless
Businesses looking to scale internationally
Merchants looking for reliable and future-proof solutions
Best headless commerce platform #7: Contentful
Contentful homepage
No headless eCommerce platform list is complete without contentful.
What is Contentful?
The entire point of having a headless eCommerce is to market your materials on different platforms without being caught in the hassle. Contentful lets you break the non-omnichannel experience and powers digital experiences’ speed, reliability, and performance.
Contentful integrates many tools using APIs and unites content in one repository. Quick turnaround time for marketing materials and content from one repository makes it a must-have headless CMS for eCommerce.
What are the features of Contentful?
Data Synchronization
Access Controls/Permissions
Digital Asset Management
Collaboration Tools
Offline Access
Content Management
Archiving & Retention
Document Management
Information Governance
File Sharing
Mobile Access
Search/Filter
Workflow Management
Version Control
What are the pros of Contentful?
effective for writing and managing content
safe and well-designed CMS
positive experience
friendly configuration
stable CMS
clear data structure
auto configurable APIs
ease of use and scalability
manage a large amount of data
loads quicker than many CMS
What are the cons of Contentful?
you may feel lost if you’re not aware of what you’re up to (tricky navigation)
content preview right before publishing is limited
offer only mail support
lack of secure log to record all the events
expensive
the learning curve is big
What is the price of Contentful?
Contentful pricing structure
Contentful starts at 489$ per month. It has a free trial and a free version too.
Who is Contentful best suited for?
Contentful is best if you want to quickly deliver digital experiences across multiple channels.
Best headless commerce platform #8: Kentico Kontent
Kentico Kontent homepage
I couldn’t resist adding Kontent with a “K.”
What is Kentico Kontent?
Kontent, the name is self-explanatory. It has something to do with the headless CMS platform. It has easy-to-use content management tools for content marketers.
Developers no longer have to rely on it, and they can engage themselves in building interactive and seamless shopping experiences. Kontent allows marketers to focus on creating content without needing developers involved.
What are the features of Kentico Kontent?
Text Editing
Mobile Access
SEO Management
SDKs
Content Publishing Options
API
Full-Text Search
For Marketers
Access Controls/Permissions
Document Classification
Multi-Channel Marketing
Video Support
Reporting/Analytics
For Developers
Customizable Templates
Version Control
Website Management
What are the pros of Kentico Kontent?
effective customer support
allows good customization
simple and easy to use
flexibility in content taxonomy
easy implementation
powerful user interface
flat learning curve
flexible and adaptable from the user’s point of view
seamless integration with the modern tech stack
What are the cons of Kentico Kontent?
may need upfront knowledge to reap the best out of the platform
requires developers to make basic changes
the price tag is high, and there’s no cheaper plan for small businesses
What is the price of Kentico Kontent?
Kontent pricing structure
Business plan: $1249.00 /month
Premium plan: $2,499/month
Enterprise plan: Connect with Kentico
Kontent has a free trial version for 30 days. You also get a free version to use.
Kontent 30-day free trial form
Who is Kentico Kontent best suited for?
Kontent is good for medium and large enterprises.
Digital agency clients looking to streamline amazing shopping experiences
My team has worked with them directly and has created some of the best headless eCommerce in the industry.
What is Shogun?
The Shogun Frontend platform lets you build phenomenal headless shopping experiences. Businesses looking to gain control over design customization and wishing to deliver blazing-fast websites can use Shogun as a handy platform.
You can push your eCommerce team to create custom elements in almost no time without putting on much time into coding. Shogun does the everyday tasks for you much better.
What are the features of Shogun?
Content Management
Customizable Templates
AB Testing
API
Access Controls/Permissions
Integrated Development Environment
Inventory Optimization
SEO Management
Web/Mobile App Development
Drag & Drop
Reporting/Analytics
What are the pros of Shogun?
easy to learn
anyone can use it
reduces loading time for desktop and mobile
limitless customization potential
less code, more control
simplified content management
codeless store update
What are the cons of Shogun?
no free plan is available
the prices are low
not many templates
What is the price of Shogun?3
Shogun pricing differs across multiple pricing platforms.
Shogun price for Shopify
Build: $39/month
Measure: $99/month
Team: $299/month
Enterprise: Custom plan
Shogun pricing for Shopify
The shogun pricing for BigCommerce
Shogun pricing for BigCommerce
Build: $49/month
Measure: $149/month
Optimize: $349/month
Shogun also offers a 7-days free trial.
Who is Shogun best suited for?
If you want more from Shopify Plus and BigCommerce, Shogun’s headless frontend is the way.
Small to enterprise-scaled businesses
Best headless commerce platform #10: Vue StoreFront
Vue Storefront homepage
It often doesn’t happen when you talk about headless commerce platforms, and Vue Storefront is not on the list. 🙂
What is Vue StoreFront?
Vue Storefront is a headless eCommerce frontend that can be connected with any eCommerce platform like Magento, Shopify, or BigCommerce.
You can improve your front-end without making a single change at the backend. It ends the interdependency between the two. Vue Storefront lets you create Progressive Web Apps for any eCommerce platform. Many long-time Magento merchants look at Vue Storefront as an Adobe commerce alternative.
Best headless commerce platform #11: Commercetools
Commerce Tools homepage
commercetools makes it to the list because it’s one of the leading headless platforms.
What are Commercetools?
Commercetools are used to build next-generation B2B and B2C eCommerce. So far now, the legacy suits have restricted eCommerce websites from customization and scalability. Commercetools breaks the need for legacy tools with its headless and API-first approach.
You can use this headless platform to make a multi-tenant SaaS commerce platform for two reasons:
Commercetools is cloud-native
Commercetools deploys flexible microservices
Global 500 SaaS enterprises use a headless commerce approach with Commerce Tools to produce seamless experiences at different touchpoints.
What are the features of Commercetools?
Web/Mobile App Development
Content Management
CRM
SEO Management
Returns Management
Email Marketing
Promotions Management
Conversion Tracking
Reviews Management
Kitting
Multi-Store
Multi-Channel Marketing
Templates
Customer Touch Points
Data Security
Mobile Access
Inventory Management
API
What are the pros of Commercetools?
informative documentation
microservice-architecture is scalable
supports cloud-native platform
no need to use SQL
APIs are easy to extend
requires less maintenance
ever-expanding eCommerce solution
What are the cons of Commercetools?
there are no modern frontend SDKs
complex integration with 3rd party platforms
The pricing slab is not very customizable
data mapping limitations
What is the price of the Commercetools?
Commercetools hasn’t disclosed their prices yet. You can contact the vendor for the price. However, you can learn the ins and outs during your free trial version.
Best headless commerce platform #12: Elastic path Commerce
Elastic path homepage
If you’re talking about headless platforms and flexibility in the same place, you will have to talk about elastic path commerce.
What is Elastic path Commerce?
Elastic Path Commerce is a platform that puts business on the agility pedestal. Flexibility has been a long-talked issue in traditional commerce. Elastic path applies a headless approach with the patented eCommerce technologies.
Its flexible enterprise commerce solution helps you create an omnichannel experience throughout the sales funnel in the customer journey. You can expect your business to have higher engagement and revenue with the Elastic path.
What are the features of Elastic path Commerce?
Inventory Tracking
Shipping Management
Shopping Cart
Categorization/Grouping
Promotions Management
Order Management
Communication Management
Templates
Multi-Store
API
Integrated Development Environment
Inventory Control
Inventory Management
Data Security
Reordering
Reporting/Analytics
Content Management
Web/Mobile App Development
Conversion Tracking
Mobile Access
eCommerce Management
Returns Management
Bulk Ordering
Payment Processing
Inventory Optimization
Reviews Management
Marketplace Integration
Cataloging/Categorization
Customer Touchpoints
Payment Options
What are the pros of Elastic path Commerce?
Has a smooth and reliable API.
easy access to the web tools
easy to use
flexible business solution module
API is high-speed
has plenty of advanced features
a better developer experience
amazing billing options
What are the cons of Elastic path Commerce?
need bug fixes at some points
may not feel user-friendly to everyone
learning-curve is huge
needs improvement in the CloudOps
the upgrade system takes a lot of time
What is the price of Elastic path Commerce
Elastic path contact us form
The pricing for Elastic Path is divided into two parts. It starts with the upfront pricing (licensing fee). Then the pricing model switches to the transaction model. You’ll be billed over the transaction volumes. There’s no free trial or free version.
You’ll have to get in touch with its executive to learn about its pricing. The pricing may start at $50000.00 based on your usage every month.
Who is Elastic path Commerce best suited for?
Elastic Path is one platform with many business models.
Power up your B2B, B2C, and B2B2C business with EPC
Best headless commerce platform #13: Nacelle
Nacelle homepage
The nacelle is new. But it still manages to get past much headless commerce. Why? You’ll know the reasons.
What is Nacelle?
The nacelle is a headless platform for eCommerce merchants sick of slow websites and terrible mobile conversion rates. Your website needs a flexible and scalable solution to go big in the future. Nacelle does everything traditional platforms do, but everything at a 3X pace.
Nacelle bills you $5000.00 per month for every user. Unfortunately, there’s no free version or free trial.
Who is Nacelle best suited for?
The nacelle is for you if you’re concerned with scaling and boosting conversions.
You’d also love it if an eCommerce team looking for high mobile performance and a great tech stack arrangement.
Best headless commerce platform #14: Fabric
Fabric Homepage
Though Fabric copy says “The Future Of Commerce,” I feel it’s already the present of headless commerce.
What is Fabric?
Fabric is the headless platform designed to increase the growth of your eCommerce. The platform has an open and modular design that lets you control the web elements at the modular level.
Ecommerce retailers can use fabric to grow their revenues by 3X numbers.
What are the features of Fabric?
Cataloging/Categorization
Inventory Optimization
Bulk Ordering
Search/Filter
Promotions Management
Reporting/Analytics
Order Tracking
Web/Mobile App Development
Integrated Development Environment
Marketplace Integration
Order Management
Inventory Control
Shopping Cart
Inventory Management
Payment Options
Reordering
Content Management
Returns Management
Shipping Management
API
eCommerce Management
SEO Management
Mobile Access
What are the pros of Fabric?
an “API-centric” approach
omnichannel architecture methodology
accelerated roadmaps with modular architecture
faster time-to-market
ease of deployment
the ultimate level of support
smooth transition of websites without re-platforming
flexible and scalable commerce tool
easy to use
deals with complex custom pricing very well
What are the cons of Fabric?
no noticeable issue with fabric so far
steeper learning curve
What is the price of Fabric?
Fabric charges $6000.00 every month per user. You can’t learn it for free as it doesn’t have a free version or free trial.
Who is Fabric best suited for?
Fabric best suits brands and eCommerce merchants looking for scalable and functional tools.
You’ll also love Fabric if you need microservices and APIs to generate an omnichannel experience.
Best headless commerce platform #15: Bloomreach
Bloomreach homepage
I wanted to end the list with a bang. What’s better than Bloomreach for this?
What is Bloomreach?
Bloomreach is a headless commerce platform that creates amazing cloud experiences. It’s a #1 platform if you want to deliver a personalized experience to your customers. The platform allows you to build a super-customizable journey for the shoppers.
You can also manage the storefront with Bloomreach’s API. For decades, adding products to any page has been a hassle. Bloomreach’s headless solution is designed to solve the problem.
What are the features of Bloomreach?
User Interaction Tracking
Digital Asset Management
Workflow Management
Data Integration
Document Management
Website Visitor Tracking
Customizable Templates
Campaign Management
Full-Text Search
Customer Profiles
Content Publishing Options
Access Controls/Permissions
Pageview Tracking
Segmentation
Customizable CTAs
Drip Campaigns
Search/Filter
Text Editing
Approval Process Control
Data Visualization
Indexing
Activity Dashboard
Dynamic Content
Functions/Calculations
Conversion Tracking
Rich Text Editor
Referral Tracking
Configurable Workflow
AB Testing
Version Control
Goal Setting / Tracking
Third-Party Integration
Customer Segmentation
Alerts/Notifications
Lead Qualification
Analytics
Rule-Based Publishing
GDPR Compliance
Template Management
Predictive Modeling
API
Collaboration Tools
ROI Tracking
Data Connectors
Lead Management
Personalization
Campaign Analytics
Content Management
Brand Management
SEO Management
Marketing Automation
Private Dashboards
Multi-Channel Marketing
Public Dashboards
Image Editing
KPI Monitoring
Time on Site Tracking
Website Management
Mobile Access
What are the pros of Bloomreach?
useful data insights
versatile software
easy to understand
logical upgrades
helpful and insightful support staff
feature-rich software
well-designed software
responsive and knowledgeable support team
easy integration
What are the cons of Bloomreach?
may feel complex to implement
difficult than ordinary CMS
CMS freezing issue is quite common
some chinks in the feature need to be worked out
lots of features make it a bit complex suite to use
expensive
The mobile version still needs a UI overhaul
What is the price of Bloomreach?
Bloomreach contact us form
Bloomreach has not provided pricing details, but you don’t have any free version or free trial to get your hands dirty.
Who is Bloomreach best suited for?
Bloomreach is a powerful platform for all the businesses
Best for you if you need a multi-channel content delivery solution
Suited for
retail,
distribution,
manufacturing,
transportation,
hospitality
How To Choose Headless Commerce Platforms For Your Business?
I know the list doesn’t solve the problem for you. Then how do you pick the best headless platform for your organization?
Trust me; if you can answer what you need headless commerce for, you can answer what platform you need.
So ask yourself if you need more control over the
front-end customization?
Back-end system?
CMS?
Here’s a step-by-step process to identify the top headless commerce platform for business.
Step #1: Understand your business case more closely
Are you looking for agility?
Do you want to use modern technology to give a competitive digital experience?
What are your thoughts on a personalized multichannel experience?
Do you want to provide the best retail experience?
If you can answer these questions, you can say you understand your business case clearly.
Step #2: Know more about the headless approach
While shopping for new things may be tempting, you shouldn’t take headless commerce as grocery shopping.
The self-hosted model managed to host PaaS vs. SaaS
Step #3: Check the suitable pricing
All the headless commerce platforms have differing prices.
figure out the most important features you need,
map their availability with the headless platform, and
check the best pricing rate.
Step #4: Check how powerful the support is
You may feel attracted to the cheaper headless solutions. But the price is not the only factor determining a good headless platform. You would want to consider the quality of customer support.
Look! Most headless tools are complex. They continuously need support from the community and dedicated helpline executives. It’s all the more reason why you can’t ignore 24*7 support.
Step #5: Evaluate the headless tool
I think this should come up a bit in the list. Nevertheless, it’s the most important learning process about headless platforms.
Things you should watch out for:
Do they have flexible APIs?
Do they have developer training modules?
How good is the learning documentation?
How fast do you hear from the headless vendor?
Do solutions match your business case?
Can the headless solution integrate with your existing commerce?
How easy is it for you to start using the headless platform?
Once you have evaluated the platform, it’s time to evaluate its makers.
Step #6: Evaluate the vendors and their proposals
You’re getting a better sense of the vendor at this stage.
Learn what you’re paying for. Get the list ready by them!
Do they listen to your ideas?
What are their consulting services?
What does their company’s culture look like?
Summary of headless commerce platforms
I gave you the reasons to go headless. And then the list of top 10 headless platforms that I feel can make a difference in the eCommerce industry.
The essential part of running an eCommerce business is maintaining a competitive edge over your rivals. Headless at the moment is one way to deliver an amazing digital experience.
Let me know what’s your preferred headless commerce in the comments. Also, color me wrong if I haven’t mentioned any headless platform that I should have. 🙂
Magento 2.4.4 is here! With this release, Magento has introduced several new features to improve your eCommerce store’s performance and security. Now you can get a website that runs on the latest version with 100% compliance.
This release includes all changes included in the 2.4.3 release and also contains multiple performance enhancements, especially in terms of checkout, cart, and catalog page load speed improvements. Therefore, it’s important for you to keep your Magento store up-to-date with the latest version available.
In this post, we are going to highlight the features and benefits of the latest version of Magento. Also, you can find the best way to upgrade your Magento Store to Magento 2.4.4.
Let’s get started!
Magento 2.4.4 Highlights
Magento has released the latest version of Magento Commerce and Open Source 2.4.4 with various functional fixes and enhancements. This release includes significant performance and security improvements, bug fixes, and Release Notes updates.
Following are some of the highlights of this Magento 2.4.4 release:
Supports PHP 8.1 to accelerate your site performance by 15-20%
Added support for Elasticsearch 7.16 and MySQL 8
Introduced GraphQL coverage for e-commerce operations with B2B enhancements
Enhanced security with 2FA (Two Factor Authentication) for admins and Google reCAPTCHA for storefronts
Upgraded PayPal JavaScript SDK with support for checkout and payment authorization on mobile
Improved page rendering speed up to 50% with optimized use of JavaScript libraries in Magento UI library components
Enhanced product security with support for Composer 2 and removal of deprecated core integration mechanism
Why Upgrade to Magento 2.4.4
With every new release, Magento brings a bunch of new features and functionalities that not only make the upgrade process easier but also help to bring your store to the latest technologies.
Let’s check what you can miss if you do not upgrade to Magento 2.4.4 version.
What’s new in Magento 2.4.4 for Merchants
Shopping with the help of the Seller
Adobe Sensei-powered Live Search
Asset Management and a Better Media Gallery
Purchase online and pick up in-store (BOPIS)
Workflows for B2B Order Approval
Tool for Site-Wide Analysis
Composer Update Plugin
Upgrade Compatibility Tool
In-Product Guidance
Latest PHP version 7.4
Magento users are now able to migrate their stores to the Magento 2.4.4 version to avail of all the above features. Let’s see the step-by-step instructions to upgrade Magento 2.4.4.
How to Upgrade Your Magento Store to version 2.4.4
Migrating an eCommerce store is not an easy task and you have to undergo a lot of trouble just for upgrading your store to the latest version. But when it comes to such a powerful platform like Magento, you can rest assured as the brand has been continually improving its core functionality through several upgrades.
What is Magento Setup Upgrade?
Magento 2 is a powerful eCommerce platform that comes with a lot of flexibility and customization options. Although these features are what make it so popular, they also make it vulnerable to security issues and bugs. That’s why upgrades are crucial for keeping your website safe and in tip-top shape.
Before we start with the upgrade process, here are the things you should check before upgrading your store:
Note: To upgrade from any previous version of Magento, you must use Composer
To upgrade your Magento store to Magento 2.4.4 from a previous version, complete the following steps:
Step 1: Review prerequisites for upgrading to Magento 2.4
Step 2: Set up your environment for upgrades
Step 3: Backup your store
Step 4: Install upgrades using Composer
Step 5: Update the database schema and data
Step 6: Deploy static view files
Step 7: Disable Maintenance Mode
Step 8: Clear Static Files
Step 9: Recompile Your Store If Needed
There could be some possible issues you might face while performing the Magento upgrade. To fix those issues you can hire the best Adobe Certified Magento Developers.
Your business needs a reliable Magento development partner like Aureate Labs to give the best revisions and upgrades to your Magento Store. Let our certified Magento developers help you upgrade your store with the latest release of Magento.
So, if you’re still running a prior version of Magento 2.4.4 or an older version of Magento, it’s time to upgrade your store to get these latest improvements and enhancements that come with Magento 2.4.4. Get started with the best Magento 2 Upgrade Service.
Wrap Up!
The latest release of Magento Open Source 2.4.4 and Commerce 2.4.4 is out now with new features, security enhancements, and performance improvements for both merchants and developers.
As we all know, Magento is an open-source platform that requires periodic upgrades to improve its efficiency and enhance its performance for a better user experience. Therefore, it’s time for you to upgrade your store with the latest release of Magento i.e., Magento 2.4.4 if you haven’t already done so by now!
Additional Notes
If you think you need a better alternative to boost your Magento store speed, you can go for the Hyva theme. Hyva theme has far more performance benefits than the traditional Luma theme.. Aureate Labs has a decade of experience in upgrading the user experience for the eCommerce businesses with its exceptional services. Want to know more about it? Check out our Hyva Theme Development service or contact us now!
I’m surprised most websites don’t understand the pain points of hiring a Magento developer (or agency). Ask them how to hire a Magento developer and hear them repeat the same chorus over and over again.
Talk with the company
See the portfolio
Get the price card… yawn!
Well, everything is fine. But how? How do I talk with the company? How do I get the price card?
in-person research stage (doing the fieldwork right)
You can follow these two stages to hire an experienced Magento developer for your eCommerce journey.
Stage 1: Self-research stage
The self-research stage demands you to put your online research wizardry into use. You’re not talking with the company at this stage. You’re simply filtering a few options based on your intuition and data.
This stage starts with the most common method— researching on Google.
Step #1: Let Google narrow down your search
Lots of review websites help pull out top Magento companies. But I prefer either Clutch or GoodFirms.
Search long-tail keywords like
Top Magento companies + Clutch
Hire Magento companies + Clutch
Best Magento companies + Clutch
Google search result on top Magento company
Click on one of the search engine results. You’ll find the list of the Magento companies.
List of Magento companies in Clutch
The good part is— you can filter these companies based on
Location
Services
Budget
Hourly rate
Industry
Reviews
So I tried location and hourly rate filters.
Clutch’s Top Magento companies from Surat
You can try it for any other location on earth.
Clutch’s Top Magento companies from Florida
Filter any five companies based on your preference.
For the sake of your simplicity, I have created a spreadsheet template.
Template to hire Magento developer
Put any five companies in the template that you think can meet your requirements. Again, this is just a vague calculation.
I’ve put my five favorite prospects from Clutch and rated them 5 because they have listings in Clutch (which is obvious).
Step #2: Check their local presence
Again, Google will tell you how visible the Magento services are in their local markets. And it’s really helpful if you want to work with Magento developers in the same city.
If they are visible on local searches, you can attest to the fact they’re also working on their SEO marketing. Their expertise can come in handy during your eCommerce marketing process. Make local searches like:
Magento company near me
Best Magento company + “city”
Top Magento company + “city”
Local search for top Magento company in Surat
Click on “More places” at the bottom of the page.
Try all the local keywords. If you don’t find the company on top 10 of any local terms, give them 0. Give them 3 or 4 and you can find them in one or two terms. And a perfect 5 if they’re visible for all the local search terms.
Local presence of Magento companies in Google search
Here’s what my score looks like.
Step #3: Take a deeper look at their portfolios
You want to get into the kind of projects they’ve been handling. This requires both intuition and data to understand if they’re truly delivering the results. Please note, you haven’t gotten in touch with them yet.
So you have to apply your senses to understand the caliber of Magento 2 developer.
The intuition part requires you to feel the experience of the projects they’ve worked on. Go to the client’s website. Give yourself some time. Feel it like a user.
Give them more scores if they’ve worked on your niche.
For example, Aureate has worked on multiple beauty brands. It’s a green signal for you if you also specialize in the same industry.
Dig in their portfolios. Check all the niches and find the percentage of their preferences.
In my case, I wanted to start a website on anti-aging biohacking products. So Aureate fits perfectly with my requirements. They had 40% of their clientele from skincare brands.
Here’s the scoreline so far!
I have divided the portfolio analysis into three parts:
The numbers game
You’ll go through the numbers they tell you on their websites. They need not necessarily be true. Don’t take them at face value, but keep them in your mind.
Would be an added advantage if they’ve expertise in your niche and have numbers to show in the same domain.
The second sub-part of the portfolio is to check the traffic yourself.
The traffic
Before you check the traffic of any project, you should know most Magento agencies work on other eCommerce platforms as well. So make sure you pick the projects built on Magento and not Shopify or BigCommerce.
Now the question is, how do you know this? Well, here’s how you can check the eCommerce CMS for any client project.
Open the BuiltWith tool.
Built With tool homepage
Plugin the client’s website you want to check
Search the website with Built With
Confirm the eCommerce platform
Identifying eCommerce builder for one of the brands
Now that you know the project is built on Magento, use SEMrush to find the organic traffic for the website.
Identifying traffic numbers for one of the Magento commerce with SEMrush
You can see the crazy roller-coasters in their organic traffic for the past year.
Similarly, I checked all the clients’ projects. Few were very disappointed not because they had low traffic. But they didn’t use a secure channel for their websites.
Do I blame the Magento agency? Absolutely! Even if they didn’t make the store from scratch— the onus was on them to ask their clients for the secure network.
And if somehow the store owners were stubborn, the Magento agency had no business putting such insecure projects on their portfolios!
Insecure Magento store
You can also use free SEO analysis tools like RankWatch as well to get insights on many other metrics. Of course, they aren’t as accurate as Google analytics. But you still get the traffic numbers for benchmarking.
RankWatch traffic estimator
Here’s the fresh score now.
PageSpeed insight
Magento developers’ portfolios are incomplete without testing the speed of the stores they’ve worked with.
The process is very similar to measuring their traffic. But this time, we’ll use Google’s PageSpeed insight tool. It’s free of cost!
Select the list of projects that match your niche.
Like numbers, you have to pay close attention to their web testimonials. Again, you don’t have to take them to their face value, especially the one with the customer jacking approach.
“Customer Jacking: I was struggling with my Magento eCommerce website. My web traffic was low. I wasn’t getting enough conversion. Then all of a sudden, someone opened the doors to heaven when I met X Magento agency. Now I’m a rich braggart who owns a 20 million dollars company.” 😀
To be honest, it’s much easier to create fake testimonials than you think. I will show you the example with the fake testimonial generator. You put in the main keyword. Click on generate.
Fake testimonial generation tool
And Tadah!! :/
Fake testimonial generated
Did you see it? It’s that easy! Now I’m not saying all the testimonials are fake.
But you can do emotion analysis on text data and ensure if the testimonials are true or not.
For example, this testimonial has a venture date: 2015!
A client reviews Magento company
The client is quite vocal about the year they started working together.
You can simply check the traffic since the client started working with the Magento development agency.
Semrush traffic analysis prove the testimonial correct
You can see how the traffic of Lancer SkinCare shot up since 2015. So the stat concludes that testimony is honest.
The other way to recognize the emotions of texts is by putting the texts inside the emotion-recognition tool. Unfortunately, I don’t have the tools to demonstrate it.
I looked at 4 testimonials per Magento agency. Also looked up their LinkedIn profiles to cross-verify the testimonials. Here’s the score after all the hard work from my end. 🙂
Step #5: Check online reviews
Unlike website testimonials, you’re checking reviews on either Google or Clutch this time. You can apply the sample principle to determine if the reviews are genuine or not.
Another cool metric is to check the average number of reviews each Magento developer has got.
Search the “name of the company” on Google first.
Google reviews on Google search for the Magento development company
Note down the number of reviews they have got and the average rating.
Repeat the process on Clutch, Yelp, Glassdoor, etc.
Review for the Magento development company on Clutch
Do it for all the companies and note down the average rating score. Add them up and put the scores accordingly on the sheet. More or less, all the companies had a good rating.
The score so far is pretty tight.
Step #6: Find out more about their work culture
You’re not hiring a Magento agency. You’re hiring a Magento partner. They’re going to be with you for a long time. Both of your work cultures should match. Now I’m not asking to go radical about matching every detail.
But the idea is to fall on the same page. Find out more about the team you’re going to work with (at least through LinkedIn profiles).
The list of Magento workforce
Learn more about the company’s working atmosphere. Find out how it treats the team members because what you see the output is directly proportional to the mental states of the members.
Surreal work culture in Magento company
Try to find out the happy faces. You’re trying to understand how happy everyone is working with the Magento company. Not just clients!
I usually look up Linkedin and Twitter profiles to follow their nitty-gritty. Again, most companies looked like they worked in synergy. So I gave all of them the same score.
I cut one point because there’s always room for improvement.
Step #7: Observe how they interact with customers
The best part about online customer interaction is— everything is right in front of your eyes. You have plenty of resources to observe how the Magento developers behave/interact with customers, clients, etc.
Go through the blog post comments and see how they respond
You can check their social media handles and uncover how they interact
Check their contribution to Magento communities and their value addition
Find out how quickly they respond to the user-generated content
Deduct scores for companies that don’t respond at all
Again, I’m not asking you to morally school them. But it’s just an extra cushion to give yourself a good chance to interact with them should there be any issue. Take a look at this crazy score.
Step #8: Figure out the additional services they offer
Whether you’re getting worked on Front-end or back-end, you’ll need Magento maintenance and security services. Similarly, your eCommerce store may need digital marketing services as well.
The point is— you can always choose multiple agencies to handle multiple operations. But I’d recommend you go with the one that offers 360-degree solutions.
Now, why do I say this? Well, you need compatibility between different solutions.
Hiring a Magento agency that also offers multiple solutions can reduce the siloing effect and increase efficiency.
You’d want to check out these multiple services and decide what’s most important for you. Finally, you can rate them based on the services you prefer. Here’s my rating.
Step #9: Dig into their certification “pasts”
To be honest, I don’t believe in hiring a Magento company based on certificates. The portfolio is on my priority list. This is why I’ve put certificates at the bottom of the steps.
But let’s consider the coincidence that 3 out of 5 companies have the same portfolio score. It’s then I use certificates as the key differentiators.
The best way to find the certification is on their websites. Unfortunately, I was surprised that all five companies claim themselves as certified experts. But I couldn’t find the certificates.
Not sure how deeply they are buried in the website schema, but I left disappointed at this point. And that’s why I gave zero to every entry in the list.
Step #10: Check online presence on maximum platforms
Well, this is one of my favorite strategies to separate the wheat from the chaff! So I look into the client’s online presence. Remember how we dug into the client’s testimonials? This follows pretty much the same route.
The first step is to finalize the list of clients you want to test.
The second step is to put the client’s website URL in the free listing management tool in SEMrush.
Local listing of the Magento company
The third and final step is to observe the number of websites they’ve been listed on.
The list of the local listings tapped by the Magento development agency
Now, why are we doing this? Well, we’re trying to understand how visible the brand is. The Lancer Skincare is listed on at least 18 platforms. That’s not bad! So you can use this metric for at least three client projects per developer.
Find out the average listing numbers. And give a score to their social media visibility. My score would be:
Step #11: Determine their experience
It’s one of the most crucial factors to determine the Magento agency you’re going to work with. I have added it to the last of the list because I wanted to end the self-research stage with a kind of remembrance.
You can find out their experience on Clutch.
Work experience on Magento development on Clutch
Give your scores based on years of experience. Here’s mine:
Uhh! That was pretty insane stuff. I have the total ready for the first round of research.
Please note we’re not counting any Magento developers out yet!! Wait for round 2 of research. This round will test the real waters and reveal if your observations truly match with the company.
Stage 2: In-person research
In the second stage of research, we’ll get in touch with all these companies and their clients in-person. We’re assuming you’ve called all these companies in person once.
Now here’s what you have to do.
Step #1: Analyze your meeting with Magento developer
Ask yourself:
How did the meeting go?
Did the dedicated Magento developer look dedicated?
What were their research questions?
You have to apply all your psychological awareness to that meeting. Notice the cues they’ve been dropping. Do they sound shady? Do they cut your ideas? What do they think of your niche?
Everything needs to be answered. You should go home feeling satisfied with every answer they give you.
You can also put forth questions regarding deadlines, pricing, and expertise. The key to good communication is transparency.
Note down scores for every question they answer. Here’s what I did:
I asked them four common questions:
How long will the project take?
What’s the best pricing model for the project?
Have you worked on my niche? If not, how do you research?
Will I be included in team meetings?
I weighed 5 marks each for all the questions and took the average score. Here’s the report card:
Step #2: How did they communicate
You want to be tracking how well they communicate with you. Are they hesitant in introducing you to their team members?
Top Magento agencies understand the importance of communication as much as they understand the importance of eCommerce development. A project is only as good as you and they communicate.
Keep asking them if they understand your project. Look! No one knows about your business more than you.
You’re the leader of your brand! If they don’t communicate the way you want— I wouldn’t say dump them, but try to get into the crux of the matter.
They might be spitting the truth. Who knows? When you talk with 5 Magento development companies and if everyone speaks the same thing, then maybe your idea needs a bit of refinement. But if a few of them approve of your idea— you better go with them.
Here’re my scores for them.
Step #3: Ask for a sample test
I ask for a sample test from every agency I work with. You may feel most companies won’t agree with it. That’s partly true. Many won’t! But for that reason, the least you can do is ask if they can work for a week or month.
My main concern with long commitments is you can’t get out of the contract despite the unwarranted performances. So treat short commitments as sample testing. You can notice your numbers pre and post-deal.
Deduct their scores if they push you to sign long-term contracts. I asked all these five companies and 4 of them were okay with short-term projects. Again, you shouldn’t involve baseless metrics to analyze their performance for such a short period.
Involve the most relevant ones. And never discount your intuitions. Here’s my score for sample testing.
Step #4: Post-development customer service
I guess this is another key factor for deciding if I want to work with the Magento company. When I say customer service— I don’t necessarily mean free services. It can be both— free and paid.
While you’re attending their meetings, ask what sort of additional services they offer. You also want to know about these services because that prepares your expectations with them. You want to match expectations with them and not hurdle jump!
I asked all of these companies and their customer service. Every one of them promised maintenance services apart from a few months of free tech support. So here’s my score to them:
Gosh! This is more important than page speed I suppose. Your eCommerce store will deal with plenty of transactions. So your Magento partners must create a safe and secure domain.
HTTPS and HTTP2 are musts. Ask them if they’re going to use secure channels for you. I checked one of the insecure client’s projects. I was stunned. They put me in doubt for these Magento eCommerce companies.
Needless to mention— I cut their scores. 🙂 If they don’t come clean, you can test the security scores of their clients yourself. I test HTTP2 scores on this website.
HTTP2 support tool
Put all the URLs of the agency’s clients. Analyze if they use proper security measures.
Ahh! The scorecard is getting populated here.
Step #6: Ask their clients, directly
You’ve done all the hard work. Congratulations! Finally, the last step to filter the best Magento development company is to reach out to their clients, directly! Might sound weird, but no one can give you a better explanation about their experiences than the ones standing on the portfolio.
You can make a list of the clients you want to talk with. Go to their websites and arrange their “contact us” details.
Contact us page info by the Magento development company
Now you can call them and have their insights. Don’t forget to incentivize them for their honest feedback. I usually give backlinks to them (provided they are in the same niche).
If you’re not a call person, email works as well. Write warm words like:
“Hey Lancer, I have been following your website for quite some time now. It looks amazing and the products are wonderful. I would love to have a similar-looking website. Of late I have been in touch with your Magento agency. How was your experience working with them and what do you think of them? Your insights matter a lot. Feel free to claim a backlink to your website once my store is ready. :)”
This trick works 9 out of 10 times. I asked 3 clients per agency, 13 of them responded warmly. So I decided to score accordingly.
Phew!! We’re done now. Let’s calculate the total for the second research phase.
That’s tight! Now add stage 1 with stage 2.
Finalizing your Magento 2 company
That’s that! You can add as many metrics to your template and calculate scores for all the companies based on your research, intuition, and data.
Don’t hurry into the process! You’re hiring a partner who’s responsible to make or break your business. So follow these steps diligently and make sure you don’t rush just because you want to start early.
Once you’ve put efforts early in filtering the right Magento company, you’ve won half the battle already.
For more interesting blogs— you may want to keep following us at AureateLabs.
What are the benefits of the Hyvä theme for merchants?
You’ll have “Hyvä theme Benefits” + “benefits of your current store” – “the downsides of your existing store.” Easy peasy?
#1: Need for speed… most wanted!
#A: Your users want speed! They love instant gratification. And their attention span is depleting in general (we’re not using the goldfish myth :D). So, it’s natural, speed is the most wanted thing from your store.
#B:Store speed is the first thing your users notice. Your older store gave one impression— “you didn’t care about your users.” You may feel you cared, but a dead-tired store flips your efforts upside down.
#C:70% of customers feel page speed impacts their buying decisions. Enough reason to have a fast-loading website? The biggest takeaway from Hyvä is… check out number 4.
#D:50% of users can give up videos and animations to have a fast surfing experience. But Hyvä themes make sure your users don’t have to give up on anything. Your users can achieve intergalactic glory without having to give up on visual content. 😀
#2: From dead conversion rates… to the daddy conversion rates…
e-Commerce site speed is one of the biggest fuels for conversion. You want your Magento store to be blazing quick because:
initial 5 seconds of Page Load Time influence conversion rates.
you also lose 4.42% of conversion rates with a 1-second page load delay (between seconds 0-5).
Now conversion rate correlates with e-Commerce performance. That’s sole reason why businesses are traveling length for conversion rate optimization.. This is why you need the Hyvä theme benefits to tickmark all the needs for web performance. Which it does!
And with better page speed,
you spend less time optimizing your store and
invest more time in other key areas such as branding.
#3: Not free… but costs less in the long run!
Hyvä theme costs you 1,130 US Dollars… only 1,130 US Dollars more than your existing store! 😀 Now, what makes you buy such an expensive deal? Well, everything!
Let’s break it down for you…
You will spend money to fix site speed in Luma. Right?
You will tune your Luma store. Right?
You will overuse Luma functionalities because it’s free. Right?
Everything comes with an extra cost. Tuning and fixing other fronts will take you at least 50 more hours. Let’s say you pay 25 dollars to optimize your store. Where are you standing now?
The idea is clear: you don’t want the website to get clumsy. Otherwise, you pay again to optimize that… back to square one?
And for a matter of fact, we know merchants are somehow fed up with the slow Magento 2 storefront. The tweet sums it up:
#4: Early to market… and early to rise!
If Hyvä theme benefits implementation takes 100 hours, other technologies take thrice as much time.
So what it takes your store three months to get ready, let’s say, may take six months or even 9 months with existing technology. Of course, you don’t want it when time is a valuable commodity at the moment.
Your competitors are charging up with the latest themes and technology. You’re competing with 24 million e-Commerce businesses in the world. Don’t forget about businesses in the hybrid space.
But what keeps us talking about the Hyvä theme is— it might even beat its record.
Take a look at the tweet:
So they Hare-d their way one month earlier to their Hyvä schedule. Well done, Hyvä!
#5: A vaccinated developer… is a non-spreader!
Hyvä theme benefits give a lot of control to you, but you may still need developers for high-end personalization.
Your developers have had toxic relationships with old themes. You might not be aware of it. But as we said— Hyvä rolled out as a vaccine for them.
It would help if you had developers and designers in the best mental state. They’re more stressed than the industry thinks. Otherwise, they’ll spread their state to your website.
And your website state would be passed on to the users. And you already know what that would result in…
You need Hyvä if your customers demand performance. Hands down! Hyvä is an optimal solution if you’re
creating a new website from scratch… Have Hyvä deployed straight away!
migrating from Magento 1 to Magento 2... The fact you’re switching Magento versions, it’s best you migrate to Hyva at the same time. You avoid cost doubling.
Who’s hosting your store, and what do they charge you?
And many more. Many Magento businesses have dumped money into bad returns. So you must take wise steps to turn your Magento store into a success story. Let’s find out how.
Profitable eStore step #1: Choose Magento package based on your needs
Your first step to improve Magento store profit starts up by determining your needs.
Ask yourself— what’re your goals? What do you expect from your store in the next few years? How many SKUs will you run in your store?
Once you’ve identified them, pick your package.
You’d want to go with Magento free community edition/ Magento open source when:
you don’t wish to expand your online store shortly
your store deals orders from one country only
the store doesn’t need a 24/7 support team
Magento enterprise edition/Magento Commerce is a good choice if:
you want to exploit the progressive advertising
want features such as rewards, giveaways, promotions, etc.
you wish more store functionalities than Magento CE edition
the store needs customer support
you take international orders and deals in many currencies and languages
your store accepts different types of payment modes
you want a secure store.
Picking the right Magento edition will prevent you from burning money down. (When your business scales or de-scales).
Profitable eStore step #2: Use Hyva theme for a robust store
There’s a correlation between the lighter yet faster themes and conversion rate. This is the reason why businesses opt for faster themes as their conversion rate optimization technique these days. .
The Magento theme fails to get you the “green score.”
You may want to stick with the inbuilt theme to avoid development hassle. But since it’s not fast, it’s not profitable. Store speed is not a choice anymore.
So you need to put the best bet on faster themes like the Hyva theme. Hyva makes your website blazing fast. You can expect pages to load in as little as one second.
See how Hyva delivers the “green signals.”
Profitable eStore step #3: Make your website sit on a good web service host
Consider your current traffic and pay for the server depending on your use. Some servers accept “pay-as-you-use” models. You can adopt these models as well to optimize your spending.
Again, “shared server” is not the only answer to cost cut and push your store towards profitability. Sometimes, a dedicated server may cost you 70x to a shared server yet get more sales and revenue.
Website speed is truly a thing if you’re looking to generate profits in the long run.
Profitable eStore step #4: Decide if you want to start from scratch
The future of your Magento store profit depends on how you want to start. You either use tons of plugins through the community edition. Or use built-in features from Magento in the enterprise edition.
The community edition needs to use 65 plugins to act as an Enterprise solution if you didn’t know. So you’ll spend a lot of time and money to make the community edition mimic the enterprise features. Don’t forget plugins slow down your Magento store too.
We’re not giving the verdict. But if starting from scratch is not a pain in the neck for you, you can go with CE.
But please consider calculating the time valuation. Also, make a comparative analysis to measure the effect of plugins on conversion. Going with CE would be the same as starting from scratch.
Profitable eStore step #5: Let experts handle your Magento store
Either focus on the core issues or become the jack of all trades.
DIY Magento store is a happening idea. You may even nudge a few customers to your store. But it’s always best to leave complex tasks to the experts.
For example, you may not want to hire costly developers. Maybe you feel they are the roadblocks to your profitability. But it would be best if you plotted the trade-offs your store suffers by not hiring them.
You need developing, marketing, SEO experts, etc., to name a few, to manage the Magento store. They are the ones who push you through the break-even point. The most effective pricing strategy is not spending your time on the things you’re not an expert at.
Over to you
There are plenty of other ways to improve your Magento store’s profit and success. But if you set the foundation strong (the ones we mentioned ), the more you can work towards profitability.
13 Tricks To Speed Up Magento 2 Store Without Developer
Page speed decides if you’re traveling to the beautiful tropical of Hawaii or the overcrowded destinations. Sounds funny? Well, it’s not! :/
Slow Magento 2 stores may turn off 64% of your users. (1)
Bad user experience = low traffic = bad conversion rate = terrible sales. With poor sales— eh! We don’t want to keep bugging you with the vacation spots again. 🙂
Merchants can speed up Magento 2 online stores themselves.
Anyway, you can still speed up Magento 2 store despite being a store merchant. Here’s why you’ll love the Magento performance optimization process.
Second, the processes are easy to consume and execute.
First step to optimizing Magento speed— very important
Before you decide to take matters into your hands, make sure you know the Magento store’s current speed. Don’t worry! It’s not rocket science.
Paste your URL on free speed testing tools like GT Metrix.
Measure Magento store speed and performance.
Save the snapshot for future references.
Measure the numbers after having followed our Magento optimization steps.
Here’s what you can expect after page optimization.
Front-end comparison after Magento speed optimization…
Back-end comparison after Magento speed optimization…
13 quick ways to optimize Magento speed
Let’s quickly fix the speed of your Magento store.
Optimize Magento Step #1: Choose the server closest to your location
It may seem that you’re using the best Magento 2 web hosting services for your store. They all claim
high performance
secure network
optimized servers
But you also need to know not all Magento 2 hosting providers perform across countries. Some may be the best hosts for Magento 2 in the USA, but terrible in the UK.
So you’d like to go with the webserver
that’s located in your country,
also performs well in your location,
If your country doesn’t have web hosting partners, go for the closest country. You’ll also want to consider these factors while choosing Magento 2.0 hosting for speed:
Check for PCI compliant hosting service… Secure hosts are often speedy.
Make sure the hosting service tackles resource-hungry Magento.
Optimize Magento Step #2: Enable all caches in Magento 2 store
You’d want to enable all the caches in the Magento 2 store.
Think of caching as an already loaded catapult. You just have to release it and
save a few seconds
reach the target as early as possible
Akin to it, the Magento-cache-enable feature helps you pre-store data. This makes data retrieval and page loading a swift process.
Here’s how you can enable cache in Magento 2 store.
Using flat catalog categories in Magento 2 will help you speed up the product collection.
No matter what the size of your catalog is. Whether 500,000 or 400,000 SKUs— flat catalog products get updated every minute. Your users can expect two things out of it.
a speedy catalog browsing
a seamless buying experience
You can also expect great results from enabling Magento 2 flat catalog.
low bounce rate
better ranking signal
Optimize Magento Step #4: Minify CSS and JS in Magento 2
Combining all JS and CSS files can drastically improve page load time. You want to minify JavaScript and CSS in Magento 2 stores because that would mean
fewer files
compressed data
Now, what does this mean to your users? They
spend fewer data in a cumbersome store
download only relevant data for interaction
experience faster and responsive browsing
Your web server host also gets to handle fewer requests.
Disabling JavaScript Bundling is one of our favorite optimization techniques. Why? Because it goes against the built intent. 😀
Magento 2 released the feature to reduce the server request for JavaScript files.
But guess what? It gave everything, but good performance. JS bundling, in reality, creates huge 5-10Mb files with all the Javascript code. You can imagine the file that size would only affect the website performance.
Here’s how you disable JS Bundling
Optimize Magento Step #6: Upgrade Magento version/ don’t miss on magento 2 updates
It has to be the most basic to-do’s of optimizing the Magento store. Soak up all the latest Magento updates and make sure your website is quick and safe for the users.
Here’s how you can update Magento 2 to the latest version.
Magento 2 update is usually easy. But not all upgrades are equal. Sometimes, updating Magento to the latest version can get painful. Courtesy of its technicalities and complexity.
In such cases, never shy from having experts handle core upgrade operations for you.
Optimize Magento Step #7: Review and update the third party Magento extension
You may compare Magento 2 core with third-party extensions. But the story is completely different for both. There’s very little you can do about Magento 2 core. They’re developed by experts and well-optimized already.
But Magento extensions may
choke the website speed
create frustrating user experience instead of adding value to their buying journey
Make sure you do a third-party extension audit. Turn extension on and off and observe the site’s speed. You want to do it more frequently for money and conversion pages. If
you find a site abusing extension— update them
you find it still abusing the site— remove the extension and write the vendor for a refund.
Disabling unused extensions in Magento 2 is the easiest yet effective step you can take.
You may have wanted Magento 2 modules in the past! But there’s no point in clinging to unused extensions. They only bring bad site speed and terrible user experience.
Here’s how you remove/uninstall unused Magento modules/extensions.
Optimize Magento Step #9: Disable debug logs
Debug logs take heavy resources in your store. These are the unnecessary large files in the system. The only catch with disabling debug logs in Magento 2 is it may not have the same effect in every store.
So you may find very little to no change as well. But it’s always worth checking if your debug logs are set to default (disabled).
Here’s how you turn off the debug mode in Magento 2.
Optimize Magento Step #10: Use built-in cache/clear varnish cache Magento
Varnish cache is as funny as JS bundling, at least, for us. Magento 2 recommends it for page optimization. But it only reduces the speed of your website. There’s a simple explanation to it. Varnish uses extra software. So it consumes more resources.
On the other hand, you can observe better page performance by disabling varnish. And also choosing the built-in cache application option as an alternative.
Here’s how you can disable Varnish
Optimize Magento Step #11: Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Do you need a CDN for a fast Magento 2 store? You need to use CDN in Magento 2 for an uninterrupted information flow between the servers. Constant traffic usually takes up a lot of bandwidth.
Result? The bottleneck in the bandwidth affects information flow. Using a content delivery network (CDN) gives you control over data flow. You can reduce the stress on bandwidth by carrying on important requests first.
Even free CDN for Magento 2 can promise
better store infrastructure
dynamic capacity
Optimize Magento Step #12: Use secure HTTPS connection along with HTTP/2 async file
You can speed up the Magento store by simply using the HTTPs connection for your website. Another addition would be choosing a hosting partner that allows Http/2.
Here’s an online tool to identify if your site uses HTTP/2. Take a look at the example.
The problems with DIY Magento speed optimization
Look! We love that anyone can follow these steps to optimize their Magento store. But speeding up a slow Magento website has many more technicalities than you can imagine.
You may see better results with these page speed optimization techniques. But the market is getting more competitive. With the internet getting faster, your users will make you pay for every millisecond.
It is why you need page speed optimization experts to save every millisecond they can. You never know— what a millisecond may be worth in the coming Magento sphere.
Magento 2 Website Loading Very Slow? 15 Known Issues That Kill Site Performance
So you’re not the only one whose Magento site is running slow. Your competitors are looking to fix their Magento problems as well.
Looks like someone is having a far more terrible time than you… :/
But you know what— you can have your store play a little less devilish! The hack to it is finding what’s affecting the Magento performance.
So why not find out what’s slowing your Magento 2 site without further ado? This way, you can work on Magento performance optimization quickly. You can then give users the much-needed buying experience.
Why is Magento so slow?
Magento is so slow because you may be using unnecessary themes, extensions, and customizations. Also, Slow hardware, far hosting server, not caching data, not enabling flat catalog, not minifying CSS and JS, and not updating your store lead to Magento’s slow performance. Remove unused extensions, turn off varnish cache, get CDNs, etc. to fast your slow Magento 2 store.
Now let’s check each one of them in detail.
#1: Your hosting server is too far
Your Magento 2.0 web hosting solution is probably located too far from your location. The farther the hosting provider, the slower the Magento store. Consider a Magento hosting company that is blazing fast, secure and nearest to your geography.
#2: Your hardware is too slow
Maybe you should check the hardware you’re using to run the Magento store. Magento 2 stores have a hardware requirement benchmark. For example, your server needs to have Linux; your RAM needs to be above 2 GB. You can find a detailed list of Magento 2 technology stack requirements here.
#3: You’re not caching enough data
Maybe you’ve disabled data caching. So the browser is not saving HTTP requests, database queries, or images. Users have to wait to interact with the store because browsers don’t respond quickly. Consider caching for a quicker web load experience. It puts the snail on a rolling spree.
#4: You’re not enabling flat catalog
You could have reduced data fetching requests from the Magento database. All you had to do was to enable a flat catalog. Adobe suggested not to use the flat catalog for whatever reason. But many merchants and developers feel flat catalogs improve page optimization.
#5: You’re not minifying CSS and JS
Maybe you haven’t combined the CSS and JavaScript files. Not minifying your CSS and JS files may lead to bigger data files. And you already know bigger data files take more to load. Though Magento 2 stores are not slow by default, these mistakes reveal what makes them the snail.
#6: You’ve enabled JavaScript bundling
Maybe you took Magento’s advice too seriously this time. But JS bundling is one of the most common Magento issues. Magento started the so-called “technique” to make Magento run faster. But they didn’t know it was eating up the store from within. JS bundling creates 5-10 Mbs of files that load very slow.
We all try to over-fix the store… Completely missing the fact we haven’t updated the store. Every new Magento update comes up with better speed and security features. You’re crumbing loopholes for hackers if you don’t update the stores timely.
#8: You fly your store on lots of third party extensions
Magento marketplace offers 3600+ extensions. It’s easier to get carried away if you’re trying to create a seamless experience for users. But at the end of the day, they’re not coded by your developers. They may have performance and security issues. So it’s always recommended to audit third-party Magento modules.
#9: You aren’t getting rid of the “the unused” Magento extension
We know it’s tough to get rid of the extensions that once served plenty of benefits. But with so many options, you may go overboard with extensions. The worst is— you’re probably not going to use them in the present and future. So when it’s about using Magento extensions, be as miser as you can. Begin your “clean my site campaign” with these unused extensions.
#10: Your debug log is on
Your debug log can hold large data files to slow down any Magento eCommerce store. They record database operations, errors, and system processes of transactions. Deleting them may or may not have any effect on your store. So better count your luck with it.
#11: You’re over-relying on Varnish cache
Magento 2 Varnish Cache came out as a “promising” speed booster. Later it turned out built-in cache boosts slow-loading websites more than Varnish. Maybe you haven’t turned it off yet!
#12: You’re missing big time on Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Maybe you feel your Magento webstore doesn’t need a CDN. But it would help if you acknowledged how CDN revolutionized web hosting services. We know it’s all the “technical stuff.” But we have always got your back. You might as well consider talking with one of our experts to get Aureate services for CDNs.
#13: You’re not running the store on HTTPS and HTTP/2 connection
Ask your web hosts— do they use HTTP2? And what about your website? Are you using HTTPS in your store? If you use HTTPS and HTTP2— your customers can experience page load improvement by 15%.
#14: You’ve picked up a cumbersome theme
We know you’re competing to give the best user experience. But a poor-coded “aesthetic” theme eats up the entire purpose. You should rather pick a simple theme that doesn’t ask you to compromise on the speed front.
#15: Your store has lots of unoptimized images & videos
You want to put high-quality images and videos for the users. But it defeats the purpose if it slows down your store and gives a bad user experience. Imagine what 1000s of un-optimized files can do to your website in synergy.
Step 1: Choose the server closest to your location
Step 2: Enable all caches in Magento 2 store
Step 3: Enable Magento 2 flat catalog categories
Step 4: Minify CSS and JS in Magento 2
Step 5: Disable javascript bundling
Step 6: Upgrade the Magento version/ don’t miss Magento 2 updates
Step 7: Review and update the third-party Magento extension
Step 8: Disable/uninstall Magento 2 module
Step 9: Disable debug logs
Step 10: Use built-in cache/clear varnish cache Magento
Step 11: Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Step 12: Use a secure HTTPS connection along with an HTTP/2 async file
Magento Speed Issues Summary
Magento speed issues are created because of slow and old hardware systems, far located hosting server, uncached data, disabled flat catalog, non-minified CSS & JS files, enabled JS bundles, not-up-to-date Magento store, plenty of third-party extensions, unused plugins, enabled debug log, enabled varnish cache, no CDN, heavy theme, and website on HTTP.
If you don’t get over these issues asap, your customers may abandon you without warning.
DIY store speeding is scary…
You’d never want to go through the Magento page optimization checklist. It’s long, scary, and, more importantly, it’s damn hard to execute.
But you’ve got the vetted experts to absorb the nightmare page optimization brings. So what are you waiting for? Contact us right now.
FAQs
Which mode is faster in Magento?
The mode that is faster in Magento is Production. This mode is ideal for ready stores and is used for live sites. The mode enables cache and compiles other files to significantly boost the website’s performance. However, production mode limits the ability to modify existing code and features. If you need to change any code, you need to switch to developer mode.
Why is Magento admin so slow?
Magento admin is so slow because your front-end processes might be slow. The page might have too many extensions or customizations in place. Or, the page data might be too large to load quickly. This can also happen if cache isn’t enabled or isn’t cleared regularly. Occasionally, it can be an issue with the hardware or the hosting server.
How to reduce HTTP requests in Magento 2?
To reduce HTTP requests, you can follow these steps: 1. Merge all CSS and JavaScript files. 2. Enable full page caching or utilize cache extensions. 3. Optimize page data by eliminating large and unwanted media files. 4. Remove unnecessary or redundant coding through code minifiers 5. Switch to faster loading themes, minimize the number of customizations, and regularly update it. 6. Use intersection observers to enable lazy loading so the site sends media requests only when required.
What does flushing Magento cache do?
Flushing Magento cache clears the cache in the memory. This function only removes data from the default commerce memory. Items with the commerce tag are cleared from the storage, while other items aren’t affected. This boosts the page performance without affecting the data of other processes that may share the same cache memory.
