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Should I replace my theme or replatform?

We break down your options to getting back to the top of the search results.

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While Adobe Commerce is a great platform, it suffers from a common problem to many other solutions: time. Time has an intrusive way of making change acceptable—only as we look back over the years do we see that these updates have added to a three-headed, seven-footed monster.

Because Magento 2 is open-source, it’s easy for developers of almost any skill level to make these modifications. This architecture is beneficial for the initial timeline but, over time, represents an exponential increase in maintenance costs. How? You fix something that breaks something else. It takes more time to ensure a delivery is ready to go.

This article will help you identify your path forward, clearly explaining the pros and cons of each option.

I’d be remiss not to remind you about Magento’s value proposition: open-source means it can do anything. There is nothing it can’t do. It is ideally suited for merchants needing significant levels of customization.

In our experience, Adobe Commerce is NOT the point of frustration—it is the scape goat. Inexperienced developers make poor customizations, which may be completed inexpensively at first but cost significantly in time and money over the following years.

The below points are what we commonly see—none of them is the platform’s fault.

A team that knows Adobe Commerce inside and out will bring the best effects to your website. They will write better code, making it easier to ship, maintain code better through automated testing, and proactively identify performance bottlenecks.

Executive Summary

Your website is likely your company’s revenue’s lifeblood (or at least a key aspect). I applaud you for looking into the future to evaluate “what’s next”.

May we help you work through the next steps? Our solutions consulting team is highly qualified to walk you toward a successful outcome. We offer a 15-minute laser-focused call with you to learn about your goals and challenges to prepare a presentation. A second 15-minute call will share our recommendations and answer your questions.

Additionally, here is an easy-to-follow diagram highlighting the critical decision path. Note that we can’t detail all nuances in this document. Thus, we make our offer above.

Common Frustrations

Poor performance metrics (doesn’t hold up to the latest standards)

Most Adobe Commerce websites we review have Google Page Speed scores in the 30s for mobile and 50s for desktop. Considering Google indexes websites in mobile-first mode, this is a tremendous problem. Magento’s lack of out-of-the-box image optimization (especially on content pages) complicates this. Adobe Commerce uses 10-year-old technology as its default for the frontend. Unfortunately, custom theme packages revert this even further.

What would it look like to have a website that achieves frontend metrics?

Difficulty with search engine optimization

Speaking of SEO, some odd quirks can cause Google problems when it indexes your website. You have logged in hundreds of times to your website. This login path is often modified (very quickly) to add thousands or more unnecessary pages to the Google index. Multi-locale websites do not interact well with canonical tags. There is no hreflang support. Of course, you can install a module for this—and then troubleshoot why it doesn’t work as expected.

How would it affect your brand to have a website that checks every technical SEO box?

Lack of capability for content development

While Adobe Commerce has Page Builder, its capabilities are limited. It was a great idea but never took off as a content-building solution. Few module developers have added Page Builder widgets, resulting in custom-only content. Page Builder is not ideal for page speed, either. Widgets are often clunky, wasting time getting the look “just right”.

How would it affect your bounce rate and conversion rate if you are able to render amazing-looking content?

Poor WCAG compatibility

WCAG support adds to the cost of a project, and it’s an easy lever to pull to reduce the scope. Reducing WCAG-compliance scope works until you get papers stating that you’re the subject of a new lawsuit. Which means immediate legal expenses. Additionally, you will need to re-arrange your development schedule to prioritize these changes that would have been much faster to implement at the beginning.

What peace of mind would it provide knowing you are ADA-compliant—and can support visitors with disabilities?

Ongoing frontend bugginess that affects mobile customers

You probably spent 90% of your time on your website utilizing your desktop machine—perhaps with TV-sized monitors. It’s effortless and takes discipline for otherwise behavior. However, if averages apply to your website, at least 50% of visitors navigate it on their phone.

What would your conversion rate look like if you had a next-level mobile experience?

Expensive maintenance

Adobe Commerce is expensive. However, it offers a tremendous feature set and unparalleled customization. It also includes all of the technical debt accrued over the years, a gift that keeps giving. This gift is excellent for your agency support provider but not your bottom line.

How would your CFO react to reducing ongoing costs while also increasing the conversion rate?

Security

Security is last on this list from a known ROI perspective. It’s hard to quantify. Adobe Commerce has had some issues over the past few years, but this is entirely expected because it’s open source.

What would your IT director think of a solution that reduces your security exposure?

Why do we stay where we are at?

Risk aversion

Change means risk.

It’s easiest to keep the status quo, albeit with minor tweaks. Maintaining the present state of affairs is a strategy for slow losses. Leaks happen (technology and standard changes), and these minor adjustments plug a few holes, but eventually, the dam breaks, resulting in an emergency.

Concern that visitors won’t like change.

This apprehension is widespread on B2B websites, where visitors tend to be on the older spectrum. Frontend updates don’t have to change the look/feel. No one will complain if the website they browse is faster. They will complain if their favorite features disappear one day. This demonstrates how critical a quality discovery is for the project’s success.

Concern that the timeline or budget will be blown.

This is a significant risk if your agency partner doesn’t know Adobe Commerce or has not adequately discovered the work to complete. While this is technology, and there is always a possibility for overages, in our experience, discovery is a critical aspect of a quality foundation.

Concern about past challenges affecting leadership’s excitement to embark on a new adventure.

The critical variable is who is doing this project. Is this an agency with a track record of success? A new provider may be the best solution for moving your project forward.

Expense

Is this project a tax or an investment? We only make investments when there is a solid case for a return on that investment. The only projects to be tackled should have a return from revenue or improved efficiencies.

The options

The SwiftOtter offer of hospitality

Options are daunting. What if you could rely on industry veterans to provide an official recommendation? This will take only 30 minutes of your time (in two 15-minute segments). We will create a roadmap for your eCommerce experience to become the best in your industry.

Remediation

Recommendation: Use this approach if you need an immediate remediation plan and don’t have a long-term need for speed (e.g., you will re-platform next year).

This process is about finding the problems and fixing them. Then, they are documented, fixed, tested, and released, which can be done incrementally over time.

This process typically starts with an audit, during which we thoroughly review your website to identify bottlenecks and technical SEO impediments. We also often investigate the customer journey and user experience. This is delivered back to you with estimates so you can make an easy decision.

You can expect a stable, faster website. It won’t be revolutionary, but it will be an overall improvement. Expect your total cost of ownership to be the same or a little better.

Pros

  • Lowest investment because this is the least effort.
  • Minimal impact as it leaves “everything” in place.
  • It can be incrementally released over time.
  • Full module support.

Cons

  • The law of diminishing returns applies. You are likely to hit an optimization ceiling.
  • The risk of breakage is the highest because legacy frontends are often a web of technical debt.

Hyva

Recommendation: Use this approach if you have a healthy budget, are happy with Adobe Commerce, and may have a limited lifespan for this platform.

Hyva (pronounced hoo-va) is a $1,000 Magento theme that has made significant progress and is considered the theme to be used on a reasonable number of new builds. It is a German-made design system that looks decent out of the box and is made for developers by developers.

Your frontend needs to be rebuilt on Hyva—there is no “one-click migration” plan. Everything that you see will be powered by a somewhat different technology. You can move to an entirely new user experience or lift/shift to the new theme, keeping everything roughly the same. Note that a lift/shift adds to the cost. Hyva has paradigms, and creating a new design around these paradigms will ease the development efforts.

The result should be Google Page Speed scores in the 90s. It isn’t easy (expensive) to keep it at 100s across the board. We see this as a cost-benefit tradeoff. 90s are well more than passing.

Pros

  • Middle-ground cost.
  • Fast, out-of-the-box performance.
  • Reasonable module support.

Cons

  • Dependent on backend Magento speed.
  • The custom module’s frontends have to be rewritten.
  • Some 3rd-party modules are not yet supported.
  • Must pay close attention to maintaining page speed.
We wrote the book on Composable/Headless commerce.

Composable

Recommendation: Use this approach to stay on Adobe Commerce for the foreseeable future and want a best-in-class, future-proof, search-engine-optimized website.

Composable has turned a corner in the past year. Thanks to its attainment of overall maturity, its adoption rate is skyrocketing. While it is still more expensive than other options, it has lower risk and a reasonable total cost of ownership.

Of all the options, this is critical to having a well-qualified team. A junior developer can do some pieces, but in our experience, this still requires an outsized ratio of highly experienced developers. We at SwiftOtter have made these investments into a second-to-none composable commerce team.

The result is incredible SEO, easy content management, unbelievable speed, and reasonable ongoing maintenance costs.

Pros

  • Wow-worthy speed. Literally. Ace page speed scores for better SEO.
  • Modern technology makes it easier to maintain. This improves SEO through better technical capabilities.
  • Integration into best-in-class content systems. More straightforward to deploy and maintain fantastic content.
  • Less risk and change management because backend systems are maintained.

Cons

  • More expensive than Hyva.
  • Can’t “install” new modules that affect the frontend.
  • Can be still affected by backend performance problems.

Replatform

Recommendation: Use this approach if you’re past the point of no return on Adobe Commerce. You’re frustrated by constant problems, and moving instead of fixing them feels best.

Moving platforms is a big project. The results are worth it, but there are many boxes to check. Cutting corners through a cheaper agency often results in extended timelines, frustrations and an inadequate end result.

The result is a clean slate on a shiny new platform. You’ll have faster, perhaps excellent, Page Speed scores. You can expect a slight dip in search results as the search engines get used to the new site layout. The long-term result is almost guaranteed to have a lower total cost of ownership.

Pros

  • Start from a clean slate to move only necessary functionality. This means less technical debt.
  • Potentially reduce licensing fees.
  • Move to a platform that is releasing more features.

Cons

  • Most effort to ensure all necessary pieces are appropriately moved.
  • Often the highest expense.

Adobe Commerce has, far and away, the best B2B feature set on the market today. Adobe Commerce continues to maintain its lead over BigCommerce and Shopify.

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