Shop relaunch from Magento to Shopware for Heise Medien GmbH & Co. KG

MIGRATION FROM MAGENTO 1 TO SHOPWARE 6

Heise Medien GmbH & Co KG decided to modernise its online shop. To this end, they decided to migrate from Magento 1 to Shopware 6.

Relaunch of the Heise Shop e-commerce platform

Heise – successful media house

Heise Medien GmbH & Co KG is part of the Heise Group and emerged from the long-established publishing house Heinz Heise, founded in 1949. With c’t and iX Magazin, Heise publishes award-winning and highly successful IT magazines. In addition to other technology and photography magazines, Heise offers heise online, a website that is regarded as the leading medium for German-language high-tech news. In addition to the sale of IT magazines, specialist books, eBooks, digital magazines and gadgets, the online shop is also an important sales channel for subscriptions and additional editorial offers.

Project facts

Goal

Modern, secure and high-performance shop system after the end of life of Magento 1

Technology

Shopware

Target group

B2C

Services

Shop relaunch

UI design

SEO

shop.heise.de

End of support for Magento 1 as reason for relaunch

Due to the “end of life” of Magento 1, as the basic technology of the online shop, Heise decided, with the help of our advice, which future technical basis the shop should receive. When selecting the future shop technology, the customer’s constantly growing system and process landscape had to be taken into account in addition to the growing requirements for usability and shop functions. The previously separate sales processes for subscriptions, event tickets and other products were to be merged into a single shop experience for the customer.

The different payment providers and post-order processes, depending on the sales channel, were to be simplified, bundled and optimised as part of the shop relaunch. It was therefore imperative to centralise the data management of all product information in the future in order to create a clear “single point of truth” for product data for the shop team, but also for other work areas such as CRM and marketing. Knowing these requirements, Heise decided against migrating from Magento 1 to OpenMage or Magento 2 and in favour of switching to a different shop system: Shopware 6 Enterprise.

Magento to Shopware 6 - Heise Shop

The conversion from Magento 1 to Shopware 6

Due to the requirements of the shop relaunch project, we opted for a complete replacement of Magento 1 and a technical and content relaunch with Shopware 6 Enterprise as a modern, secure and high-performance shop system. The Shopware system offers a fully comprehensive “API-first” design approach and, with its powerful headless commerce functions, optimal conditions for seamless integration into Heise’s complex IT system landscape. Before the relaunch, end customers used different shops and check-outs. There are various data models in the shop’s new joint check-out and, thanks to the product import from various interfaces, both subscriptions and other products can be conveniently purchased and paid for together. End customers now also have the option of managing their subscriptions directly via their customer account without having to access the shop. This means that digital products, such as e-books, can be accessed both by e-mail and via the customer’s own customer account.

The result: Shopware system ensures improved shop data management

Thanks to the use of many existing standard functions and the deliberate modular development of the required components, the Shopware system can now be optimally maintained and reliably updated.

Shopware 6 offers completely new “worlds of experience” and the associated content editor now enables Heise to seamlessly integrate editorial content and product offers directly in the shop. With the content editor, it is now possible to quickly create landing pages, thematic focuses or special offer pages, making it a powerful tool in the shop team’s arsenal, as well as for the Heise editorial team.

Optimised content management Shopware 6

In addition to the technical relaunch of the platform with the Shopware system, we also initiated a content review and reorganisation: The shop’s product range, navigation structure and customer approach were examined and optimised from the outset with regard to search engine optimisation (SEO) as well as specific customer needs and search trends. A responsive, high-performance and appealing UI design on all end devices is also a matter of course. In this way, not only existing customers will find what they are looking for better and faster in future. The consistent, holistic approach to all content and structures will also enable the Heise Shop to achieve even better visibility in future in order to attract new customers in a targeted manner.

With the relaunch of the shop website from Magento to Shopware and the open source PIM Akeneo, the Heise Shop makes optimal use of the impressive possibilities of modern e-commerce and is fit for the future of digitalisation thanks to the seamless integration of the new systems into the company’s existing Heise IT landscape!