Just like a good story is incomplete without its protagonists, a good e-commerce storefront is also incomplete without an intuitive, attractive, easy-to-use, and fast loading theme. You must have guessed from the name that in this article we are going to know about the Hyvä themes for Magento 2 stores. Hyvä themes are the new way of developing Magento storefronts. These themes are lightning-fast, highly integrated, and easy to operate.
The demand for a better customer experience is consistently rising by the users which are increasing the competition among online stores. When traditional businesses ask for e-commerce development companies like to build them an online store, the efficiency, speed and performance of the site all depends upon the platform on which it is built. As far of now, Magento is amongst the most used e-commerce development platform for this purpose.
However, until now the agencies were using inbuilt themes to create and deploy a website which has several limitations. But recent developments have led to a new and improved Hyvä theme which is far superior to the old Magento themes. Thus, in this article, we will go through every aspect of the Hyvä themes including its benefits, drawbacks, need, etc. But before moving to Hyvä let’s know about Magento traditional frontend “Luma”.
What is Luma?
The standard frontend of Magento is known as “Luma”. It is the name of Magento’s demo storefront along with the reference theme. The themes based on Luma are not very fast. It is pre-installed with Magento and has been written in LESS CSS. More than 90% of the Magento 2 themes which have been developed so far started with the LUMA framework. Currently, Adobe has no plans to update the LUMA stack and it doesn’t provide you with the best possible frontend framework.
LUMA has in fact become an outdated technology with the overuse of JS that makes the frontend quite sluggish and inefficient. The pages load at a very slow rate as the size and number of JS & CSS files on the page are quite high.
LUMA themes are over-engineered and quite complex as well. This makes the development of new themes time-consuming for Magento developers and in turn increases the development costs. Basically, there are 4 major drawbacks of using the Magento Luma theme:
- It is very slow
- It is not very mobile-friendly
- There are many dead codes in Magento Luma theme
- Costs more than it should
What is Hyva (Hyvä)?
All the above problems of Luma themes result in unhappy business owners, unhappy visitors, unsatisfied developers, frustrated project managers and all this unhappiness led to the birth of the Hyvä theme. All the issues of the LUMA framework have been overcome by the creator by giving a fresh start to the Hyvä theme. They have removed obsolete technologies such as RequiredJS, KnockoutJS, and bootstrap from the frontend development.
Hyvä themes run on a highly advanced and new technology called Tailwind CSS and Alpine.js. TailwindCSS is an advanced front-end framework that aims to reduce the sluggishness and bulkiness we see in the traditional CSS and Alpine.js combines the functionality of multiple JS files in a single framework. Tailwind CSS and Alpine.js are the two pillars of the Hyvä foundation. All other components of the website are customizable.
The Core Principles of Hyvä Themes:
We can say confidently that Hyvä themes follow these core principles:
1. Reduced Complexity:
Hyvä themes are focused on retaining all the features & functionalities while offering a simple structure. It allows you to reset the native templates which results in less complexity while building a Magento store.
2. Improved Performance:
The Magento stores developed using Hyvä themes are quite faster than the stores developing using Luma. The main reason behind this is that Hyvä themes’ primary focus is on improving speed & performance.
In today’s time, the buyers don’t have patience for a slow-running website. Thus, this principle is highly beneficial for online store owners.
3. Developers-friendly:
Hyvä themes are not just limited to improving the UX of customers but they are also developers-friendly. It has a very simplified and lag-free UI by which you can create & develop without any obstacle. Also, there is a minimal learning curve for developers.
The Hyvä creators have made it easy to adapt. The TailwindCSS and Alpine.js are the only two things that you need to get used to.
Also, the developers don’t require any special training to operate this new theme builder. There are fewer dependencies and it also increases the development velocity.
How is Hyvä different?
There is a huge community behind Hyvä and it goes further than all the other front-end alternatives.
There have been many frontend experts who tried to develop a new frontend base for Magento but no one gets long term traction within the community which is down to them not solving the above-mentioned issues.
- Many come up with modern tooling on top of the problematic Magento tech stack, it increases the complexity and causes more problems
- Some developers modified the Magento codebase for improving performance but only one problem was being solved and in return, the complexity was further increasing.
- Many develop pure themes which have improved design but didn’t solve any problems.
- PWAs solve many existing problems but that too results in a lot of complexity and overhead which are often unnecessary for the majority of online stores.
Except for PWA, neither of the other solutions have succeeded as they were utilizing the core Magento technologies which is largely down to 2 steps that are required while removing them:
- A complete redevelopment of the frontend which is a huge task
- The frontend for 3rd party and Adobe Commerce (earlier known as Magento commerce) modules will no longer work
The redevelopment of the frontend is still achievable but the module incompatibility is too big for any team to resolve. It requires the community to come and put efforts which thankfully has already happened with Hyva. In Hyva, we are seeing more compatibility modules being added regularly such as:
- Magento Page Builder
- Magento B2B RMA
- Algolia Search
- Amasty CustomForms
- Mirasvit SEO
- Smile ElasticSuite
Benefits of Choosing Hyvä Themes:
If you want to keep working with Magento for your e-commerce store then this is the best alternative for you. Switching to a different platform would be costlier and more resource extensive than choosing a Hyvä theme for your existing Magento store. Here are some solid reasons why you must choose a Hyvä theme for your Magento store?
1. Best Performance:
Well, we have already mentioned this several times that Hyvä themes are created by considering performance as a special focus. But why does speed matter a lot?
Firstly, there are many SEO benefits of a strong page speed score. Google prefers to rank better Pagespeed score websites on better positions than the slower ones. If you want higher organic visibility, then you need a fast-performing website.
Secondly, from the user experience perspective, speed is a very important consideration. We know that a 1-second delay in page load can trigger a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction. In fact, if it takes more than 3 seconds then 53% of the visitors will abandon your site.
Hyvä themes are even faster than Adobe’s newest frontend framework, PWA studio. This new framework is still in progress but you can achieve the same level of performance as PWA but at very fewer development costs.
Fast loading web pages keep your customers engaged while a slow-running website results in low conversion rates, high bounce rates, and low customer retention rates.
The architectural structure of LUMA negatively impacts storefront performance on most mobile devices and poor internet connections. On the other hand, Hyvä gives you a rocket speed on almost every device.
2. Low Maintenance Requirement:
Many store owners believe that using a default theme for your Magento store is the best way to avoid any extra costs associated with maintenance. But if you replace the default theme with Hyvä then there would be very little maintenance as well.
In Luma architecture, any update made by the Magento 2 platform impacts the whole template while Hyvä removes all the default output. So any update of the Magento platform will not directly impact the templates of your website.
Hyvä can also store HTML, CSS, and JS files in different components. So you can only select the component that requires any change. This will reduce the maintenance time significantly.
3. Reduced Costs and Time To Market:
In the e-commerce business, time is very crucial. Hence, you must be able to deploy any changes in your store as soon as possible. The simple architecture of the Hyvä theme makes it easy for the developer to work with. Since Hyvä theme is built upon modern web development tools and there is reduced frontend code and files, it is easier for the frontend developers to develop any new feature or resolve an existing issue within minimum time.
The easier a theme to develop and alter, the fewer hours will be spent by the development team. So to get a better and faster product at a very less price, you must choose Hyvä instead of Magento’s default LUMA theme.
4. Developer Experience:
Although Hyvä themes are relatively new there is a huge development community behind this project. The famous development community that has built itself around Magento has never been so rejuvenated in the lifetime of Magento 2.
Why it is so important?
Because the bigger the community of an open-source product, the more free extensions you will get with the Hyvä theme and the faster the Hyvä themes project will evolve.
Currently, there are more than 800 developers are in the main community – a hub of experts and enthusiasts sharing experience, knowledge, and best practice to benefit one another’s projects.
How it is beneficial for you?
The more knowledge transfer-sharing is going on, the more ideas and solutions you will have if you encounter any problem. This way, all your questions will be answered quickly and output quality will increase.
5. Adaptability:
If you are already your e-commerce store on Magento 2, then you don’t need to worry. Hyvä themes don’t require starting with the fresh installation of Magento 2. You just have to replace the current theme and don’t need to recreate the backend/admin panel functionality as it is already in place.
And if you are starting a new e-commerce store on Magento 2 from scratch then you can obviously use Hyvä themes for your store. Remember, Hyvä themes are only available for Magento 2 and not for Magento 1.
Drawbacks of Using Hyvä Themes:
There is no qualm over the fact that Hyvä themes are disturbing the ecosystem of Magento. Although, we believe that Hyvä themes are the best choice for Magento frontend but that means there are no downsides to Hyvä themes. Here are some drawbacks that you must know before starting out your first Hyvä Themes project:
1. Magento Version Compatibility:
This drawback is pretty simple to understand and overcome.
Hyvä themes are compatible with only Magento 2.4 and higher versions. If you are currently operating an earlier version, you have to first upgrade the Magento version to use Hyvä themes. This one is easy so not to gripe here.
2. Checkout:
Currently, Hyvä themes don’t come with the Magento new checkout. But there are many checkout solutions being offered by Hyvä themes that you can use with the framework.
The most common is the LUMA checkout fallback extension that is included in the license. This extension lets you use the existing Magento 2 checkout or any 3rd party checkout extension with Hyvä themes without any issues.
You must also know that the development team of Hyvä themes is working on two alternative checkout solutions which will be released soon in the future. One is a ReactJS based checkout and the other checkout is custom-built called the Magewire checkout. Currently, they are in the infancy stage but still, they are showing huge potential as alternative checkout solutions for Magento 2 websites.
3. No support to 3rd party extensions:
Not every 3rd party extension can work with Hyvä themes. To make them compatible, you may need the developer’s help. But this doesn’t apply to all extensions. Let’s know in detail…
Most Magento extensions are developed using the same technologies as the LUMA themes so won’t be functional with the Hyvä themes. To use these technologies, a rewrite of JS, templates, and CSS is required.
This is not a huge amount of work so you don’t need to worry about it. But it is good to know that this is limited to storefront output. All backend code, external integrations, and admin panel-related output are not affected.
4. Adobe Commerce Compatibility:
Currently, Hyvä themes are only compatible with all Magento 2 Open Source features. But same is not true for Adobe Commerce. Adobe Commerce is an enterprise-level edition of Magento which is mostly used by established e-commerce businesses. The Hyvä themes are currently focusing on making their framework compatible with all Adobe Commerce features and they are expecting this to be complete within the new few months.
5. Costing of License:
Although there is a huge community behind Hyvä themes product sharing code, still it isn’t fully open-source. As with any great thing online, there is a cost of the Hyvä theme and we believe that it is an absolute bargain.
The license cost is a one-time payment of €1,000 and the merchant can use a product in a single instant of Magento 2. That means if you are running multiple stores on Magento 2, you will still require only one license.
It will cover all future updates and support from the developers’ community, all code access, complete documentation, and the compatibility library.
6. Hyvä Themes Longevity:
A question may come into your mind “What happens if the Hyvä Themes team stops supporting their product?” This is also a very valid question that merchants should be asking.
The simple answer is that they won’t.
We have worked with the Hyvä themes since the launch of their product and we know that Hyvä themes will stay for very long and the product is going evolve, become bigger, and better. In the worst-case scenario, only the support for the Hyvä themes can be dropped. But then it would become a completely open-source project and will be continued by the growing community which is already surrounding it.
Wrapping Up:
Hyvä themes may ostensibly seem very costly but they are really worth for money. By paying a one-time license fee, you will be enjoying limitless benefits. For the LUMA theme, you don’t need to pay any license fee but in the long-term, you will realize that it costs you more than the Hyvä theme.
Hyvä theme has revolutionized the working of one of the most sought-after e-commerce platforms, Magento 2. And almost everyone in the Magento 2 ecosystem says that LUMA is too bloated and slow for creating a next-level e-commerce store.
At Ceymox Technologies, the best Magento Hyva development company in India, we are having expertise in developing Magento 2 stores using Hyvä themes. Our certified Magento developers are well-versed in utilizing the Hyvä themes and will give your store the best performance. Let us know your requirements.
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