Thursday 7 November 2019

MIGRATING TO MAGENTO 2?

GET TO KNOW THE REASON, PROCESS, AND COST FOR MAGENTO 2 MIGRATION



What if, one fine morning you come to know Magento is ending support for Magento 1 finally in a week or two? Will that not be shocking for you? Will that not interrupt your business? Will you regret for not having migrated your store yet to Magento 2?

By June 2020, Magento 2 was supposed to have the entire migration process completed, but Magento had to stop it for some resistance from within the industry. Now, Magento announced they would give 18-month notice prior to revoking the Magento 1 support.

That means you have time in your hand to migrate your Magento store to Magento 2.

Why migrate to Magento 2?

If this question arises in you, it’s quite natural. Apparently, you have no issue as such with Magento 1 to migrate to Magento 2. Why then will you do so?

For “improvements,” to be precise!

Magento 2 unpacks brand-new architecture, coding structure, database design, layout, modules, and a set of fresh features. With their implementation and upgrade of your store to the new Magento platform, Magento 2 intends to future-proof the market needs.

Let’s take a quick look into those improvements in Magento 2 for you to know why you should take up Magento 2 migration as the top priority.


In comparison to Magento 1, Magento 2 offers faster performance, improved security, faster checkout speed, and the ability to handle a greater number of orders, among many others. Due to speedier checkout process, that number of cart abandonment will be lower is for sure.


Cut to the cost for Magento 2 upgrade service and the required timeline.

We must talk over them because these are the two basic things you may be more curious about to know. However, planning for migration should be ever more important than only talking over why stores should move to Magento 2.

How to plan for migration to Magento 2?

Magento 2 migration if done without proper planning and roadmap will cost your online business journey severely. That’s why you need proper actions and planning to beat off some critical challenges before you initiate Magento 2 migration.
  • Data migration
  • 301 redirects and 404 errors
  • Duplicate content issue
  • Theme selection
  • Selection of Magento migration service provider
Data Migration:

Data migration covers the migration of vital website elements, such as orders, product data like attributes, description, specifications, meta titles, tags, sales data, customer information like wishlist, profile details, etc. Do you want all this data elements migrated to your new Magento 2 website? Make a list of them well before you initiate Magento 2 migration project.

Ask yourself some relevant questions before you initiate:

? Do I need to migrate entire data or carry forward some of them only?
? Am I okay with my current website appearance and don’t need changes for my new Magento 2 website?
? Are all extensions and modules on my current website necessary for my business?

To your first question, I must say that it’s a good opportunity for you to identify necessary and unnecessary website elements and add and remove them accordingly. 

Go to your admin panel for this and look for the essential extensions and modules for migration to Magento 2.



You may also opt for a consultation with Magento certified developers who can guide you and provide you with Magento extension development services.

301 Redirects & 404 Errors:

Any loss of your hard-earned landing page authorities will be painful. Perhaps, you will not like to lose them, will you?

If no, then you have to move the same old URLs for products, categories, and CMS pages to your new Magento 2 site. In case of any worst scenario, when you have got the changed URLs, you will require a guided 301-redirection service to maintain SEO ranking intact and avoid losing the organic traffic.

In the course of this migration, 404 errors might also happen. To let this not happen to your project, keep watching your webmaster tool to find out them and implement 301-redirection.

Duplicate Content Issue:

When canonical URLs are not properly set up, duplicate content issues may happen. It will be difficult for you to control multiple products, categories or dynamic URLs, which is why you got to properly implement canonical URLs. You may opt for expert guidance to set up all basic SEO perspectives for Magento 2 migration. 

Theme selection:

Do you want the same appearance to reflect in your new Magento 2 website? If yes, select the same theme from Magento marketplace and get them customized to suit the new Magento 2 environment. Copying the theme folders from Magento 1 and migrating that to Magento 2 environment won’t work. You will require the professional Magento theme customization service.

Magento Migration Service Provider Selection:

The number of Magento development providers that can provide Magento 2 migration service is less in number than the number of Magento 1 websites waiting for Magento 2 migration. Delaying any further for this migration service will take up your migration project. And, you know that will subsequently impact negatively on your online business.

What does the Magento 2 migration service cost?

This is a crucial question. I may say that it depends on the size and customization needs for a project. The website that requires the development of a few new extensions will obviously cost higher than that requires none. That cost will include services of developers as well as those of designers.

Based on the technical requirements of a store, the Magento 2 migration cost for a project is decided. If you need further help in calculating your budget and timeline, you may consult our Magento 2 certified developers for FREE here!

Wrap-Up:

Citytech has a team of Magento certified developers, which can help you guide, plan, analyze, and get started with cost-effective Magento migration services. Take a look into the list of Magento websites development achievements by Citytech. So, why delay anymore to initiate your project? Delaying any further will make you run at the last minute, will you?

Get a FREE consultation to know your Magento 1 to Magento 2 migration cost and timeline. 



Joy Das at Mastodon.social




Wednesday 5 November 2014

Top 10 reasons for iTunes App Store Rejection

Publishing mobile apps seems to be a craze nowadays. From large corporations to SMBs, everyone is vying for a place of their apps on Apple Store despite knowing the fact Apple Store maintains high standards. It is very common majority of apps are turned down and sent back for redevelopment.

Here are the reasons why App Store turns down apps very often.

  • Apps which are exhibiting bugs are summarily rejected.
  • Apps which have false, fraudulent, and misleading representations are rejected.
  • Naming of apps creating confusion with iTunes Connect
  • Apps containing placeholder text
  • Incorrect ratings by developers lead to rejection of apps
  • When a user interface is complex, unoriginal, and not user-friendly, it will be rejected.
  • When app's name, description, and screenshots conflict with the contents and functionality of the app, apps get rejected.
  • Apps having beta, test, demo, or trial versions
  • Apps giving incomplete information categorized under “More information needed”
  • Not complying with Developer Program License

It is important to know the reasons of app rejection before you develop iOS app. When you know them, chances of getting rejected are less.







Benefits of using Test Flight Method over traditional Provisioning Method

Acquiring approval of Apple Store for new app upload involves a complex process. From sending them out for test in beta form, to obtaining the device's UDID and adding it as a device in your iOS developer portal page, the process is pretty lengthy.

One can bypass it, which is unlikely feasible by using the traditional provisioning methods such as Ad-hoc Distribution, Custom B2B app method, etc. Try out iOS Beta Testing Service, aka TestFlight instead and experience the difference. 

By using the TestFlight method of distribution, you can simplify the process of getting UDIDs from all your devices. Plus, this will enable you to easily manage and distribute your builds.

How to use it:

First, sign up for a free TestFlight service. Upon finishing the sign up, you will come to the TestFlight dashboard. There you can invite testers to join your team and register their devices. As they are done, you will be receiving emails with their device UDIDs. Option to manually add to your developer portal and the provisioning profile is available there.

So, when will you be able to upload the build to TestFlight finally? You can do it as you got provisioning profile and app built. You can also install TestFlight desktop app to automatically find out compilation time of new build. You will also be asked if you want to upload it to TestFlight.

Benefits of using TestFlight method during iOS App Development:

1. Receive the names of eligible users for the application automatically

2. Check, select and upload names

3. TestFlight takes the onus of hosting the build and sending out emails to users of selection.

4. TestFlight emails the users detail a thorough user guide of the application

5. Users receive the details for app installation


                     Check below an iOS App available on iTunes for Free Download



TestFlight method puts a limit of app uploads by 100 devices per account and this app is available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch running iOS 8 onwards.  

Thursday 19 June 2014

Why businesses are chucking Servers & Embracing Cloud Services?

Anytime-anywhere accessibility compels businesses to junk servers. Cloud has come as a replacement enabling them to be more flexible and save their IT costs largely, besides attaining increased efficiency and lots of innovative benefits. Contrary to the constraints and ineffective features of traditional IT management, cloud-based services are friendly even with a non-IT person, give easy solutions to set up personalized work environment, a secure backup facility and recalling of data, and a much reduced IT cost. Don’t you believe all these solutions are sufficient to chuck old piece of junk and embrace cloud services?

Here in this infographic are shown a bucketful of benefits obtainable from using cloud services. Whether it is a small business, a medium one, or a large enterprise, all of them can make most out of them at reduced costs, more securely, reliably, and efficiently. Oman Data Park has brought them for businesses having base of their operations within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. Check out them into this infographic.





Feel free to put forward your queries regarding Cloud Services via https://omandatapark.com/

Friday 9 May 2014

Online Advertising: Why is digital ad spending growing so rapidly?

Forecast is online ad spending is going to further upset TV ad spending balance sheet. Take a look at the internet ad revenues of 2013 which soared to $42.8 billion surpassing TV ad revenues of $40.1 billion! What does it suggest? Are the advertisers shifting their leanings towards online forms of advertising?

Ad experts are saying in its support. Online advertising is capable to promote ad materials via various forms of advertising, namely banner ads, search engine optimization, social networking, email marketing, online classified ads, site takeovers, and also SPAM! Facebook ads, YouTube ads, Sponsored Tweets, Rich Media Ads, Popup ads, Blogging, etc. do also come under the online advertising.

In fact, you may come across such ad materials present on almost every web page in a form or the other. Online advertising is thus one of the fastest ways to reach an audience.

As per various advertising models, three categories of them are more popular than the others. They are CPA or Cost per Action, PPC or Pay per Click, and CPM or Cost per Mille.

CPA model of advertising transfers all risk to the publisher. Advertisers pay the publishers only when the conversion is made via clicks. Advertising costs are quite high here.

PPC model of advertising is very common form of advertising. Advertisers pay their publishers when their ads get clicks, even if a purchase doesn’t take place. In this model, target keywords are highly important.


CPM model is popularly known as Cost per Thousand. The ‘M’ in CPM represents 1000. If a publisher charges $2 CPM, then the advertiser has to pay $2 per 1000 impressions of its ads.

Customer Service: Is social engagement taking over it?

The verdict is out! Social customer engagement is better performer than conventional customer service. Look into the organizational efforts ensuring customer service where you’ll come to know how they’re leveraging social and mobile technologies! Customers feel comfortable by sharing their views, putting their inquiries, and getting an issue resolved through social channels. As a result, a rapid shift to social media engagement is visible in organizational efforts to gain positive impact from them.

Facebook, Twitter, etc. are the examples. Customers are turning to them whenever they plan to purchase anything, want to be vocal about a bad service experience, or seek to collect a feedback of an item in a matter of seconds! It is reported that over 30% of customer service inquiries are initiated over social channels. Take a tour around Facebook and Twitter to understand how efficiently they are handling customer service requirements.  

As the whole world is coming into your hand-grip, companies are moving to mobile customer service. Platforms, tools, technologies are changing the way of interactions by ensuring expediency in the foreseeable future.


Social customer engagement is the key takeaway for better customer service. Explore various social channels to know how they are allowing companies to build deeper and more intimate relationships with customers as long as they can promote peer-to-peer engagement and provide relevant and timely information as and when required.