Shopware PWA: One more reason that makes Shopware a platform worth choosing

Magento for years was an unquestioned king in the eCommerce industry, and - even though it is still powerful and extremely rich - the time when it must defend the position finally came. Magento 1 approaches its end of life, and the clients are forced to migrate. Yet, Magento 2 is not the obvious choice. As the rivals bring what today's customers desire the most: flexibility and speed, Magento 2 will have to face serious competition. 

Most of the biggest players in the eCommerce industry are using Magento. To be specific, the total share of this platform in the CMS market accounts for 1.9% globally, according to W3Techs . And Magento definitely earned these numbers. Launching in 2008, it soon gained the label of the most customizable eCommerce platform, quickly overthrowing the competition and dominating the market. In February 2011, it caught the attention of eBay, which eventually acquired the entire company, and, after a few more ownership shifts, it was bought by Adobe.

In 2016, the Magento Enterprise Edition, a platform as a service (PaaS) was introduced. It had the same core source as the Magento Community Edition but was designed for large businesses that require technical support for installation, usage, and configuration. That can be seen as the moment in which Magento began to focus on the biggest players. Sure, there was and still is the community edition, but the company’s intention since becoming part of Adobe is quite evident. 

What is more important now, Magento 1.9 will cease to be supported at the end of June 2020. This will force many merchants to think of migration, but moving to Magento 2 may not be the obvious choice. The total cost of the switch to Magento 2 is comparable to turning to a completely new platform, many of which are considered faster and less time-consuming. 

Shopware reaches out for Magento’s clients

One of the newcomers is German-based Shopware. It provides a plugin that enables shop owners to move from, for example, Magento, fast and with limited cost. Even though Shopware is considered a platform for small- and medium-size shops, its core strength is flexibility in combination with reduced complexity, meaning the easiness of migration is a valid argument for bigger merchants who are searching for more affordable and smarter solutions. This is especially the case with headless commerce, which gives the flexibility to adapt the content for specific channels and devices in order to deliver the best possible UX. It is a technological choice that is being made more and more often by eCommerce owners.

Shopware, in general, is very good at keeping up with all these modern trends and the PWA storefront—delivered by Shopware PWA based on Vue Storefront Next—is kind of the cherry on top. It makes it possible to launch a fully working shop in a couple of minutes, which is great for the local merchants but also doesn't limit bigger players that are looking for the possibilities to create a highly customized storefront with a full PWA experience. Shopware PWA is the best shot, as it is going to have full support for CMS pages, automatic project setup, and support for the Shopware plugins system. It simply gives merchants the desired flexibility, while being easy-to-use at the same time.

Magento is a typical monolith with the frontend tightly coupled to the backend; so no matter its riches when it comes to default features (and because of them), it is a completely different tale. It can be very slow-performing and challenging in further development as every even the tiniest change at the frontend may cause a problem in the backend because of thousands of XMLs. Sometimes it is easier to drop the idea entirely than take the risk... but in a highly competitive eCommerce industry, that approach will eventually backfire as users come to expect advanced features as standard. 

How easy is the migration from Magento 1.9 to Shopware 6?

Details: https://docs.shopware.com/en/migration-en/magento-migrationsprocess It’s as easy as the installation of a dedicated plugin from the marketplace. All you need to do is go through the basic configuration described here to have migrated many things like: 

• Languages
• Customer groups
• Categories
• Countries
• Currencies
• Shop structure (store views etc.)
• Customers
• Orders
• Media
• Manufacturer / supplier
• Property groups
• Products and variants
• Product reviews
• SEO URLs

So you don’t lose the most important parts of your current business: orders, customers, and SEO (Google loves that).

Headless architecture is the future of eCommerce

Magento is definitely not doomed but it is hard to ignore the trends looming on the horizon. Headless architecture in the fast-paced changing eCommerce industry seems to be the next big step forward.