On February 1st, 2015 Magento Go will be shutting down for good. This leaves every current subscriber of the eBay-owned ecommerce service with a decision to make, and that decision is where to go for a worthy new shopping cart solution.
If you aren’t already familiar with the Magento line of e-commerce programs, there are three (now soon to be only two). The first is Magento Go, which is designed for small businesses, the second is Magento Community, designed for mid-size businesses, and the third is Magento Enterprise, designed for large-scale and/or fast-growing businesses.
Below are some details to consider in your decision of migrating from Magento Go to Magento Enterprise.
Selecting Enterprise: A Big Decision
First and foremost, migrating to Magento Enterprise will only be the right move for a select number of smaller-scale businesses. No matter how you spin it, Enterprise is designed not for local storefronts like the neighborhood bakery, but for large e-commerce outlets and chain retailers.
If you’re used to the layout and features of Magento Go, Enterprise will follow this same path for customization and background tools, only on a much larger scale and tailored for revenue-building analytics and growth-driving promotional features.
The move from Magento Go to Magento Enterprise might just sound like the same service just with an alternative name, but this is not the case. One of the most important things to realize and understand with these two e-commerce programs is this: Magento Go is designed for and caters to small businesses, and Magento Enterprise is designed for and caters to large-scale businesses.
Find out more about what your options are with these two programs here.
Something to Consider Before Migrating
When selecting a new shopping cart solution for your business, there are a lot of different things to consider. In the case of a small-scale business deciding to migrate from Magento Go to Magento Enterprise, questions of business growth are most important.
Do you consider your business to be fast-growing?
Do you plan a major expansion to your business in the very near future?
Would you say that awareness of your brand is accelerating?
These are all questions to consider when researching your migration to Magento Enterprise, and they all revolve around one word: growth. For some small-scale retailers out there, you might be seriously considering Magento Enterprise because of recent sales growth, expansion in customer base or something similar. In cases like this, migrating from Magento Go to Magento Enterprise makes sense and can be to your benefit in the long run.
Outside of rapid growth or increased sales, Enterprise isn’t really the right move for local storefronts and small online shops. We can help you compare options for smaller-scale solutions like Bigcommerce and Shopify.
Making the Switch
As always, get in touch with us if you need any help selecting the right alternative platform for your e-commerce needs. We can help you figure out which switch is right for your business, no matter what size or scale your business happens to be.