Replatforming? Invest in the PWA as a first step!

Not so long ago Magento’s Peter Sheldon wrote a brilliant blog post about the Business value of Progressive Web Apps. It’s hard to not agree with the reasons he gave t there for investing in PWA s next year.

Guide: PWA for eCommerce

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According to our last report on eCommerce Trends for 2018: Progressive Apps seem like a new Mobile Standard. It comes across that it makes little or no sense to build, maintain and promote the installment base for separate dedicated apps. It’s a no-brainer to do it once, provide virtually the same experience as native apps and leverage the same marketing budgets you’ve already spent on promoting the core e-shop.

I believe that’s the reason our Alokai (the first, open-source Progressive Web App for eCommerce) is doing well. Even very well — with about 80 contributors across the globe and five enterprise partners. Right now with version 0.3.0, we’re ready for the first commercial implementations!

Many clients I’ve been speaking with are considering eCommerce replatforming the next year. Switching from Magento 1 to Magento 2 is one of the most popular scenarios.

Of course, each project is different, but usually, the replatforming process takes a long time and quite a significant budget (50–100% of initial implementation is standard).

Therefore, it’s always good to do some necessary ROI calculation for the business value after spending this 50–150 grand for having pretty much the same features and layouts but on the newer version of the platform.

In my experience, most of the implementation budget is spent on the integration part of the project (ERP, CRM, WMS …) — and this is also the riskiest part. On the other hand, the most significant value (Conversion Rate optimization, time spent on site) can be achieved by investing in the frontend — the User Experience.

Some time ago I wrote about the business cases for PWA’s — Alokai , especially for your business.

PWA before the Migration is another one. Alokai can work with both Magento 1 and Magento 2. If you have Magento 1 up and running, integrated with all the backend systems, maybe it’s worth considering adding PWA features by just connecting Alokai with your existing framework.

Just by using Alokai — the Magento integration part — you’ll be able to update the platform however you want in the future while keeping the modern, progressive frontend layer in place. It is the value of the Headless approach.

I don’t mean to convince you to NOT re-platform. It can be a significant and necessary change for many reasons: starting with new backend features and security.

What I would instead suggest is to consider phasing. First of all investing in frontend and business value, keeping the operations safe and sound.

After the first step, your efforts will probably be paid off with increased conversion rates. Then, of course, phase two is to move out of the legacy backend.

It can be the optimal way to re-platform from both the User AND Business perspectives!