CEO Alex Nguyen Shares His Journey to Landing 50,000+ Customers, and Still Counting

Alex Nguyen is the brains behind LitExtension, a tool that has helped countless business owners find the right ecommerce platform migration. With over 10 years of experience in the ecommerce industry, he is now the CEO of LitExtension, a top shopping cart migration service.

LitExtension helps automate manual tasks for both developers and merchants. And it does its job well, with over 150,000+ successful project completions, and 50,000+ customers all around the world.

And that’s far from the full stop! Here’s Alex, to share with us his journey so far, and what’s in store.

Lakhani: Hi Alex, it’s lovely to have you with us! Could you please tell our readers about yourself? Walk us through your journey so far.

Alex: It’s so great that I have the opportunity to be here and share my story with you guys. First, let me briefly introduce myself. I’m Alex, the CEO of LitExtension – the world-leading shopping cart migration expert. 

Our customers are e-merchants, developers, freelancers, or agencies – whoever is seeking an ultimate solution to automatically, accurately, and securely migrate from the current store to a more robust platform. 

LitExtension team always puts in a great deal of effort to ensure that customers are totally satisfied with our service. We keep collecting feedback and continuously upgrade what we can offer. 

Plus, LitExtension is delighted to bring more benefits to our customers by collaborating with top-trusted partners in the same field.

I’m proud to say that we have successfully migrated 150,000+ stores for over 50,000 customers worldwide and 98% of them are satisfied with their choice. We strongly believe that these numbers will continue going up in the future. 

Lakhani: How do you see Magento as an individual and what’s the importance of Magento in the ecommerce industry?

Alex: Magento comes with outstanding ecommerce features that can fuel all business sizes, especially large-scale ones. Notably, the advent of Magento 2 in 2015 impresses me with significant improvements that leave Magento 1 miles behind. 

Although Magento is a steep learning curve for a majority of e-merchants due to complicated underlying code, this open-source cart is always a preferable platform. Thousands of online store owners have counted on Magento as this platform provides outstanding built-in features, a huge reservoir of powerful apps & add-ons, unlimited customizability, and utmost security. Those highlights above doubtlessly an ace up one’s sleeve. 

Lakhani: What resources do you think newbies would find helpful to learn Magento development?

Alex: Some entry-level merchants may worry about the coding skills needed to create and manage a Magento store. But I don’t think this is a big problem because there are hundreds of resources available for Magento training. 

My suggestion is that you can spend time delving into Magento forums and Magento tutorials in the form of documentation, blog, and video. Asking for help from experienced Magento experts is also a decent way to get accustomed to the operation of this platform. If self-learning is too difficult, consider taking Magento Development Courses for comprehensive guidance and dedicated support from the teaching assistants. 

Lakhani: How would you compare Magento 1 with Magento 2? Have you tried Magento 1 after EOL? 

Alex: To be honest, I haven’t experienced using Magento 2 since its replacement for Magento 1. However, LitExtension received a lot of reviews from store owners who used our migration service to upgrade their Magento store after Magento 1 End of Life. So we have compiled this information as well as an in-depth evaluation of other Magento professionals for a comprehensive comparison between these two versions. 

To cut a long story short, Magento 2 is made-to-measure for enterprise-level businesses. There are Magento 2 Enterprise Edition (EE) and Magento 2 Enterprise Cloud Edition (ECE) besides Magento 2 Open Source for SMEs mainly. 

Magento 2 has better performance in terms of loading speed and mobile friendliness. More importantly, there are some new technologies that help streamline store management, namely, NGINX, Varnish, Composer, and so on. Other key differences that prove Magento 2 is much better than its older version are ease of navigation, simple checkout process, dedicated support for enterprise-level editions, and so on.

Lakhani: Your tool assists stores in migrating from M1 to M2. What’s the process behind it and what’s your future plan to make these migration processes easier?

Alex: Yes, LitExtension provides a Magento upgrade that allows merchants to migrate from M1 to M2 effortlessly and affordably. Our customers can choose from two options: Basic Migration or All-in-one Migration. 

With Basic Migration, you’ll have the flexibility to configure the process on your own with only 3 simple steps:

• Fill in shopping carts’ information as needed.
• Configure the migration.
• Run the free demo & full migration.

The All-in-one Migration service was designed to significantly save your precious time and ensure the highest level of migration quality with the involvement of LitExtension experts. All you need to do is give us your Source and Target Store credentials and let us take care of the whole process. Emails are regularly sent to keep you up to date with the process.

We receive a lot of positive feedback about both Basic and All-in-one Migration services. In the long run, we will invest in market research and technology improvements to satisfy customers’ further requirements to the fullest.

Lakhani: What’s your thoughts on Headless, PWA, and other related technologies? How are they going to benefit the merchants and ecommerce industry?

Alex: Well, I highly appreciate the advent of Headless, PWA, and other related ecommerce technologies especially when we are struggling with physical contact disruption during COVID-19. Although these newly appearing technologies haven’t reached the peak of their popularity yet, I believe that they’ll be widely used in the near future due to the benefits they can offer. 

For sure, the biggest mission of these technologies is to improve the shopping experience of online consumers. For example, PWA – Progressive Web App comes with modern APIs that overcome the shortcomings of native apps and web apps to deliver both capabilities and reliability. Also, PWA is truly an ultimate solution for e-retailers to deal with high visitor traffic and competition with other fast-loading sites. 

From the perspectives of e-merchants, these technologies help them seize the chance to display products in front of more shoppers. This is especially beneficial for those who are planning to sell internationally. Plus, Headless or PWA and other similar innovations play a significant role in reducing cart abandonment, leading to the increase of conversion rates. 

Lakhani: What do you think about the Magento community? How important is it for the growth of the Magento platform?

Alex: Magento community is an insightful resource for store owners and developers to learn, contribute and connect with others. Also, this forum might be the first thing that comes to your mind when finding information to solve Magento issues. 

With the involvement of all Magento users around the world, the Magento community is powerful enough to provide quick support regardless of its open-source nature. In addition, the Magento community provides training courses to help users and developers at any level to operate or grow Magento stores effectively. 

We can obviously see that the Magento community and its forum substantially contribute to the growth of the Magento platform. 

Lakhani: What are your thoughts on online Magento events and which events are you excited about for this year? 

Alex: I have a great interest in Magento’s regular events and webinars for all Magento members and marketers around the globe. 

Meet Magento India 2021 on 4th Feb this year grabs my attention for the value it offers. I have never missed any Meet Magento event before. This virtual event illustrates the Performance Commerce and predicts the opportunities for further growth of the ecommerce industry within the context of COVID-19. 

Lakhani: How do you think these events improve the Magento experience?

Alex: I think it’s of importance for Magento users and developers to keep an eye on Magento events like Meet Magento that I mentioned easier. This is a great way to get the predictions to improve the Magento experience. 

I figure that these events will summarize the implementation of technologies that help Magento store streamline the management system or enhance customer satisfaction. Also, the speakers will focus on the prediction of which innovations would be the rising stars in the following years or provide well-tailored tips to use Magento efficiently. 

Magento is in an attempt to attract more sellers by bringing appealing benefits to the table while maintaining the scalability of enterprise-level stores with advanced coding. This is the reason why there are so many Magento events that make it easier for those who use Magento to create and manage online stores without a hitch. 

Lakhani: Where do you see Magento in the future? Any predictions for 2022?

Alex: In my opinion, Magento will experience rapid growth in the years to come. 

As you guys can see, there is a dramatic shift to online shopping as a consequence of the global pandemic. Since the demand for buying things online increases, more and more ecommerce platforms may introduce new features that help e-merchants better deal with higher order volume. 

Besides, Magento is one of the pioneers that develop custom-made editions for big brands since the release of Magento 2 in 2015. Plus, being a Magento user means you will benefit from new technologies such as Headless, PWA, or Artificial Intelligence to extend business possibilities. In 2022, chances are that Magento will continue to flourish B2B commerce with advanced functionalities and innovations. 

Lakhani: Can you please share a picture of your workplace? And any tips on how to make a productive workstation for those of us working from home?

Alex: We love working with customers and keep offering the best services possible to ensure the quality of every migration project.

At LitExtension, we appreciate the connection between different teams and departments to get the tasks done perfectly. It’s a little bit hard for both managers and team members to work from home due to COVID-19. So we apply some internal communication systems to report and keep track of workload and hold important meetings. Fortunately, this way of working shows positive results and we’ll keep implementing this system to overcome the challenges of social distancing.

Lakhani: Who are the top influencers that inspire you?

Alex: I’m full of admiration for top-influencing entrepreneurs whose products or services changed the whole world, namely, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Henry Ford. Their success stories motivate me to establish LitExtension with the aim of simplifying the process of migrating data to a more robust platform. Also, learning from industry-leading service providers is a decent way to get myself up-to-date with excellent strategies to grow the business.

Lakhani: What does your work-life balance look like? Are there any activities you enjoy in your spare hours? You can share any pictures you like here!

Alex: To be honest, I’m truly a workaholic. I spend most of my time managing the flow of the whole company or discovering new ideas and strategies for LitExtension. I also enjoy talking and sharing with other partners and experts in the same industry to nurture our long-term business relationship.

Of course, stress is inevitable. After completing a complicated project, I would love to go for a short trip with my employees to recharge energy for the next project.

Lakhani: Please share your tips and advice to our readers.

Alex: You guys may hear it a million times in most self-help books, but I would like to say it one more time: reading is the key to success. I read different genres of books but I’m fond of those that provide the explanation for practical case studies depending on academic theories and models. 

At first, it’s hard to understand the principles behind each case and I need to read more on the Internet for the definition of some specific terms. However, the knowledge I learn from these books gives me an overall picture of my business at each stage of development. So trust me, spend your time reading books on your preferred topics and you’ll see how it affects your logical thinking.

Thanks for your time, Alex!

Abdur Rahman

Abdur Rahman is the Magento whizz at Cloudways. He is growth ambitious, and aims to learn & share information about Ecommerce & Magento Development through practice and experimentation. He loves to travel and explore new ideas whenever he finds time. Get in touch with him at [email protected]

Get Connected on: Twitter Community Forum