Upgrading your Adobe Commerce platform is incredibly important to ensuring that your eCommerce store stays secure, performant, and PCI-compliant.
We know that in most cases, when our clients delay or defer their Adobe or Magento platform upgrade, it is due to the immediate cost. However, if you continue to bury this important task under the rug, it will ultimately cost you so much more in security and performance issues, which will have a lasting negative impact on your eCommerce business and brand.
Delaying updates results in enormous technical debt and higher overall costs. Our advice to our clients will always be to perform regular updates to maintain stability of your site, and reduce overall costs to your Adobe or Magento updates.
Why you need to perform an Adobe Commerce Update to 2.4
So you ask…why upgrade at all?
“Security is one of the top reasons for upgrading as 83% of security incidents occur on outdated software…
According to IBM, the average cost of a data breach is $3.86 million.”
Source: IBM
In addition to the obvious benefit of mitigating security risk, upgrading your platform helps your business to stay agile in the evolving eCommerce industry, and allows your platform to always be compatible with the latest features that maximize sales and conversions.
We know the process can seem daunting. Over the next few weeks, we will share with you more helpful tips and guides on:
- How to prepare for an Adobe Commerce 2.4 upgrade
- Upgrade best practices
In the meantime, thanks to our partners over at Adobe, we’re sharing an Adobe Commerce / Magento Upgrade Plan to help get you started when thinking through critical considerations in upgrading your Adobe Commerce site.
Adobe Commerce Upgrade Checklist
| Goals |
|---|
Review current KPIs and adjust as needed. |
| Extensions & Customizations |
|---|
Review all current extensions and customizations and ensure they are still needed based on business requirements. |
Consider replacing any extensions that don’t have a good track record of keeping up-to-date with Adobe Commerce versions. |
| Team |
|---|
| Ensure, you have the right team in place, with the proper Adobe Commerce certifications and skillset. *Hint: Brain & Code is your perfect Adobe / Magento upgrade developer agency partner! Get in touch, we’d be happy to help. |
| Budget & Timing |
|---|
| Use the Adobe Commerce release calendar to plan your next upgrade and prepare ahead of time. |
| Discuss which versions you’ll adopt next year (full and security patches) based on anticipated needs. |
| Set aside budget and team capacity for the upgrade. |
| 3rd Party Integrations |
|---|
| Review current Adobe Commerce third-party integrations you have and their maintenance windows for the year. You may want to align your upgrades together. |
| Scope & Deployment Planning |
|---|
| Agree on budget, timeline, scope. |
| Run the Upgrade Compatibility Tool to identify potential issues prior to upgrading. |
| Consider using the upgrade to address issues identified by the Site Wide Analysis Tool. |
| Document dependencies and any technical stack changes required such as PHP or Elastic Search versions. |
| Gather project team with Adobe Commerce certifications. |
| Create a stakeholders communications plan. |
| Plan maintenance window if downtime is anticipated. |
| Review and approve the testing strategy; use the Application Testing Guide or a third-party automation suite. |
| Confirm all extensions / customizations are compatible. |
| Review post-launch steps if issues are discovered during or after upgrade. |
| Post Deployment |
|---|
| Monitor site for issues – performance, order processing, analytics, and others. |
| Perform Adobe Commerce security scan or other third-party scan and review potential security vulnerabilities. |
| Perform a retrospective with all stakeholders and document what went well and what didn’t and how to improve. |
| Modify your plan for the next upgrade with lessons learned. |
Need help with your Adobe Commerce 2.4 update? Talk to our Adobe Certified Experts today!
