[00:00:00] Hi everybody. Welcome to this episode of Commerce Today, and we are gonna talk about leaky buckets. Specifically the slow leak that so many e-commerce sites have due to poor performance and how to fix it. We're actually gonna have a five step leak test for your site, and all of this really is around the subject of Hyvä and is Hyvä a the right choice for improving the performance on your site. And again, we're gonna go through five tests for any e-commerce team. So for those of you that are in front of your computer go to page speed insights and get ready for a test. So first up why does this matter before we get into the tests?

And you've heard the stats. I've quoted the stats. You've read the stats, but. So you don't always believe the stats, but there's a very clear link between slow poor performing, poor user experience sites and conversion rates. Specifically a one second difference in load times can [00:01:00] create a 9% difference in conversion rates.

I've seen even more extreme numbers quoted before, but this is the most current number that I can find that I trusted and I can link to the sources in the show notes. Also. The front end experience, and this is one of the reasons why Google's page speed has moved away from just absolute numbers and the lighthouse score and all those things into the core web vitals.

The perceived, the user's perception, 70% of the perceived speed of your site is actually all about the user experience and that frontend experience. And also there's a lot of debate about do we install a new theme? Do we switch to a new platform? Do we go headless? Headless has been. Such a buzzword for many years.

And a lot of people have tried to use it as a performance fix, but it's a very heavy involved solution. Thinking about all of this, especially thinking about the conversion rate, maybe go grab your conversion rate out of Google Analytics, look at maybe the most recent full month, and then that'll give you an opportunity to [00:02:00] benchmark and see what sort of performance gains you might have as we go through this episode.

So I mentioned there's five tests. First test is. A speed baseline. So run Google page speed and lighthouse on your site and look and see how you're doing on core web vitals. Of course, as you probably know, hopefully know Hyvä is well known for scoring all green or all passing on core web vitals.

So if you have one or more core web vitals that are failing. That's your first test, your first indicator that looking at Hyvä might be a solid opportunity to improve your site's performance. Save this report save your page speed and your core vitals report. Maybe go ahead and circle which metrics you're failing so you know which ones to dig into.

Next up, next test is development velocity. Now this gets into a fun one. So in our experience sites that we develop and support on Hyvä. The development work on them is faster, especially anything that touches the [00:03:00] front end. Substantially faster than Luma, definitely faster than working on a headless setup.

And when I say faster, you probably think I'm talking about web performance, but I'm actually talking about developer performance, so it takes fewer hours. Which of course means fewer dollars to implement new features. Maybe go check out, see how long it's taking your team to do various development tasks.

How long is it taking? Especially if you're having to pay a developer to swap out banners or to make purely graphical changes on your site, that's a sign that your front end maybe hasn't been built the best way possible. Maybe it's been built in a way that. Just locks you into having to spend more developer hours.

So that's another sign that it might be time to consider Hyvä. Next up is feature fit. There's some rumors, there's some fud, fear, uncertainty, doubt out there about Hyvä, and we'll actually talk about that. Very end of the episode, I'm gonna dive into some pitfalls and myths about Hyvä.

But it is important to make sure that the features that [00:04:00] you need on your site are supported by Hyvä. And the reason I mentioned myths is there are some people out there that say, oh, Hyvä doesn't support Adobe commerce. It doesn't support B2B. That is absolutely not true. There is a Hyvä Enterprise edition, Hyvä Hyvä Enterprise Edition that has full support for the B2B functionality.

Hyvä actually has some great documentation on their website showing you what is and isn't supported. So I definitely recommend go into the Hyvä website. Pull up the list of extensions you have, if you have Adobe Commerce. If you're using the B2B module, pull up the list of features that you're using, compare that for your site against the documentation.

On the Hyvä website, again, they have a list of extension compatibility of Adobe commerce enterprise level feature compatibility. Make sure that, you have the features that you need. They are supported in Hyvä. Now, as you're doing this test, if you're also thinking about a headless system, realize that if you go headless you're building everything yourself from scratch.

That's a lot of work, a lot of effort. [00:05:00] In some cases it definitely makes sense. We've done some interesting headless projects at creativity, but. Just be aware of the custom features and functionality you have. Also, the features and functionality that you're using out of Adobe Commerce, out of the B2B module, different things like that and realize that chances are Hyvä is gonna support those out of the box.

So that's gonna definitely save you some implementation costs. Next up, fourth test, total cost. Talking a lot about cost, but I know that so often on the budget and business side. Cost is king. Cost is what matters the most. Look at the license of Hyvä versus the license of any other theme or solution that you're considering.

Versus building a PWA versus building a headless site. I typically see that your year one cost for Hyvä implementation can easily be 40 to 50% less. Then using other themes, and especially then going headless and doing it full custom. Definitely look at your numbers, look [00:06:00] at, especially if you have a ballpark put together for a headless or another new theme type implementation.

Look at those numbers, compare those to what it might look like to purchase Hyvä and implement Hyvä. If you're not sure, if your team isn't familiar with Hyvä feel free to reach out to me. I am more than happy to give you a ballpark of what a Hyvä implementation might cost for your specific site.

Now, the fifth test, and this is the one, all the other tests, very quantitative, very easy to measure. They're all about numbers. I'm gonna flip it around on you and we're gonna dive into the tricky world of people and personalities. And the fifth test is your team's DNA. Depends on the type of team you have.

If you have a development team that is very happy, sticking with the status quo, they want to keep using the Luma theme that shipped with Magento two, what, 10 years ago, or was built at least about 10 years ago. They don't like change. Hyvä and headless and really anything might be tricky for them [00:07:00] also.

What I have found is if you're a purely JavaScript team, like if you're all your front end developers are React and JavaScript type people they're gonna want to go headless. Like headless is just absolutely what those devs tend to gravitate towards. They're not gonna be as open towards a solution like Hyvä.

The interesting thing I've found is if you have a team that is more focused on PHP development or even a mix of PHP development and solution or software architects, those teams pick up Hyvä a lot faster than some of the other teams. And then a lot of the other technologies. So look at if you have a, internal culture and an internal team that is very much focused on PHP development, Hyvä's gonna be a great choice to look at. So just keep that in mind. Next up some pitfalls and myths. Hyvä isn't. Magic. It sounds like magic, like Hyvä. I don't know. There's I haven't watched enough Harry Potter, but there's probably an incantation in there.

But it sounds like magic. [00:08:00] But it's not magic. You don't just purchase Hyvä and then suddenly your site's all green Core web vitals. You're making billions of dollars and life is good and you're not even gonna work as hard anymore. That's not the way it works. If there was a. Product like that out there, I would let you know, but so far have not found one despite what I have seen on tv.

But. Hyvä is a great solution when applied correctly. It's a great way to improve the performance of your site. It's a great way to offer a better user experience. Just know that you need someone who knows how to use it. You need to install it properly and you're still gonna need the right infrastructure behind it.

So if you're on Adobe Commerce Cloud, a lot of that's taken care of for you. If you're on Magento open source or the on-premise edition of Adobe Commerce, then. You might need some tuning and tweaking. Make sure you're with a good hosting provider, make sure you have a CDN, make sure you're doing all the caching and other good things that you really need to do some other pitfalls and myths.

There's a lot of people that like to say, [00:09:00] oh, Hyväs for open source, it's not a serious frontend system for Adobe commerce. Or it doesn't support Adobe Commerce already mentioned. It absolutely does. Hyvä Enterprise has support for the Adobe commerce. Features and functionality, including the B2B module that's fully documented, fully transparent on the Hyvä website.

I have, I don't work for Hyvä but I know a lot of people that do and have done a lot of work with Hyvä, and I can tell you that from what I've seen. Adobe and Hyvä have a great relationship. This isn't an adversarial relationship. They understand the kind of synergies between the two platforms or the two technologies.

And so there's actually great communication between the Adobe team and the Hyvä team, and there's great support there. Again, a lot of people say, oh, it doesn't work for B2B. That's just flat out wrong. There's other people that say that it's complicated, that it's hard to use, hard to learn. It's different.

It's not the same as Luma, but when you actually look at it, Luma, the theme that was built into Magento all those years ago, that's the thing that's hard to learn. But there's [00:10:00] so many Magento developers out there that have worked with Luma for so long that it actually makes sense to them now, as scary as that is to say.

And then going to something like Hyvä that's built around modern best practices and modern framework that can feel hard. And challenging. But I have found actually, if you find developers that haven't spent a lot of time with Luma and you introduce them to Hyvä, it makes a lot more sense to them than if you try to train them on Luma.

So talked a lot about Hyvä. We have several episodes we've already done on the basics of Hyvä, so if you're interested in learning more about Hyvä definitely check out the links in the show notes. Just a very brief summary. Hyvä is a. Paid replacement for the Luma front end system in Magento or Adobe Commerce.

It makes your site faster, it makes your site easier to maintain, and it is a much more modern approach to web front end development. So it also makes your developers happy. So it's a great way. It's actually the, what I recommend for all new Magento and Adobe commerce [00:11:00] implementations. But then also if you are.

An existing Magento or Adobe commerce merchant and you're having performance issues your site's not as fast as you'd like it to be. Front end tasks are taking you longer than they should. Definitely look at Hyvä. I actually did a presentation at Meet Magento, Florida earlier this year about a project where we were able to eliminate substantial technical debt.

Save the merchant quite a bit of money by replacing their existing Luma based theme with a Hyvä based front end. And that was actually an Adobe Commerce B2B site. So I'll link to that video as well so you can dive in deeper. If you're curious, whether you're on Magento or Adobe Commerce or not, maybe you're on BigCommerce, Shopify, or another platform and it's still not performing quite the way you want, or the front end doesn't look quite the way you want, reach out to me.

My name's Joshua Warren. You can find me on LinkedIn with a creativity gold background. Behind my headshot, and I would love to give you a free 30 minute e-commerce problem solving session. In this case, I would actually call it a. Hyvä feasibility call. So more than happy to walk through [00:12:00] with you if Hyvä is a good match for what you need and the best ways to implement a Hyvä site.

And then either can point you to some resources so that your team can do it, or of course, me and the creativity team would love to help you with your next Hyvä implementation. You can also DM me on LinkedIn and I have a, ho a checklist that I use in that process that if you don't wanna do the full 30 minute call, more than happy to send you that checklist.

I'm actually gonna be back in a week or two talking more about Hyvä. I want to go dive into actually how you implement a Hyvä site. Give away some of the secrets and tricks of the trades so that if you have an in-house team or maybe. You are an in-house developer at a merchant watching this and you're looking to implement Hyvä, want to give you some pointers and help you out.

Also, I have an e-commerce dinner coming up in El Paso. And who knows, I might even record a podcast episode from El Paso and from the questions at that event. So stay tuned. It's gonna be an interesting couple of weeks and [00:13:00] definitely reach out to me on LinkedIn. Always love to hear from people that watch Commerce Today.

Thanks.