How Upgrading nopCommerce Improves Your Website

Have you updated your website to the latest version of nopCommerce?

nopCommerce, the most popular ASP.NET Core shopping cart in the world based on Microsoft technologies, releases minor patches throughout the year. But the platform also has at least one major version update each year. If your website was built on nopCommerce, upgrading to the latest version of the platform allows you to leverage the latest Microsoft technology and .NET performance gains to improve your site’s user experience and search engine ranking.

What Are the Benefits of Upgrading to the Latest Version of nopCommerce?

Currently, nopCommerce 4.50 runs on the latest Microsoft .NET 6 platform. Each new version of .NET offers a more stable and secure platform for your website, providing a performance upgrade and the latest and greatest set of features.

Looking at specific benefits, upgrading to nopCommerce 4.50 can:

• Increase conversions and decrease bounce rates due to faster page response times
• Ensure your nopCommerce theme supports modern browsers and the latest mobile devices
• Improve your PCI compliance by upgrading to the latest client-side payment integrations
• Get support for the new Google Analytics 4 (GA4) via third-party plugin
• Access data faster with the new Linq2DB data access library, replacing Entity Framework
• Lower your hosting costs by moving to Linux and MySQL with built-in multiplatform support
• Reduce your compute costs if you are running in the cloud
• Improve image load times with built-in CDN support for Azure Blob storage
• Enable you to get future nopCommerce minor release updates without requiring a full upgrade

One of the most important reasons to keep your version of nopCommerce up to date is to ensure there is no disruption in your access to long-term support (LTS) from Microsoft. LTS includes regular updates to functional capabilities, security, and performance improvements.

The previous version of nopCommerce — version 4.40 — ran on .NET 5, and Microsoft ended long-term support for .NET 5 on May 10, 2022. So if you haven’t already upgraded to version 4.50, you no longer have access to fixes, updates, or online technical assistance from Microsoft.

nopCommerce .NET Versions and Microsoft Support Timeline

What Are the Risks of Not Upgrading?

The greater the gap between versions of nopCommerce, the more work will be required to get your website up-to-date, which could in turn raise the cost of upgrading.

Your website is also going to run slower than the latest version of nopCommerce, potentially putting you at a disadvantage against your competitors. Slow page load will impact the user experience on your site, decreasing your conversions and increasing your bounce rate. Page speed also plays a key role in determining your search engine ranking.

Operating on a previous version of .NET means you no longer have access to LTS from Microsoft, leaving the security of your website vulnerable.

Why Partner with Spinutech to Upgrade nopCommerce?

Upgrading to the latest version of nopCommerce is no small task. The average time frame for completing an upgrade is 2-4 months, depending on the level of customization to your website. This is why we stress the importance of beginning the process sooner rather than later. 

When you partner with the nopCommerce-certified development team at Spinutech, the process begins with an audit of your existing nopCommerce code base, theme, and database scheme to identify all customizations. As part of the upgrade, all customizations will be migrated to work with the latest version of nopCommerce. Our team moves all custom code into nopCommerce plugins, isolating your customizations in one place, which will help allow your next upgrade to be completed quicker and typically at a lower cost.

As part of the upgrade, our development team will also:

• Upgrade nopCommerce integrations to your CRM and ERP systems
• Convert existing service calls to multi-threaded asynchronous calls so that you can service simultaneous page requests faster
• Convert old heavyweight Kendo Grid UI controls to use faster, lightweight DataTables javascript library
• Upgrade existing plugins that have source code available
• Upgrade third-party themes from vendors like Nop-Templates (upgrade license fee may apply)
• Upgrade licensed third-party plugins (upgrade license fee may apply)
• Provide a staging environment for UAT testing

All of which will be performed as a live site upgrade, minimizing downtime.

Our team performs nopCommerce upgrades frequently and has been doing so for more than a decade. That experience has allowed us to cultivate learnings we can apply to future upgrades, enabling our team to provide more strategic guidance to our clients. It’s why we stress the importance of a web maintenance plan to ensure critical updates are being made.

Contact Spinutech today if you’re ready to get the most out of your nopCommerce website and ensure your platform doesn’t hold you back from achieving your business goals.