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Over the decade of working in e-commerce, our team has participated in creating and improving several dozen Magento-based web stores. We’ve noticed that the tasks are always more or less similar – we were asked to improve the website performance, detect and fix the code flaws, and reduce dependencies.
However, lately, we've been increasingly asked to either build a web store using the Hyvä Magento theme or migrate the existing store to Hyvä. Below, we will explore the Magento 2 Hyvä theme to see if it is really an innovation to Magento development.
Currently, there are more than 130 thousand live Magento-based websites. Moreover, in 2022-2023, the number of Magento-based web stores was rising even more actively than in 2020, the year when e-commerce faced a real boom:
The creation of a new Magento website requires the use of a theme. At NEKLO, we start almost every project with a basic theme, and in most cases, it used to be Luma – the standard option for Magento 2. However, we have noticed that projects based on this theme can sometimes be rather slow. This is facilitated by not ideal architectural solutions and an overabundance of scripts, styles, and third-party integrations necessary to make the UX for customers as comfortable as possible.
As a result, pages load slower, and developers must work with many different libraries, including Knockout or RequireJS, making the development process more complex and the final project rigid and hardly scalable.
It couldn’t go on like this anymore. In 2021, a group of intelligent young people from Western Europe who were working with Magento and constantly searched for simplification of the development process suggested a solution – the Hyvä theme for Magento 2.
Hyvä Themes is an innovative front-end solution for Magento-based websites. It was used with optimization in mind, and the creators really wanted to make the development process simpler without compromising quality. Actually, the four main principles of the Hyvä theme creators are simplicity, quality, performance, and fun. Yes, the inventors of Hyvä really believe we should all have fun doing the work. Excellent approach!
Right now, the use of Hyva Themes is more active in the Western European countries:
However, considering its benefits to e-commerce business owners, we expect Hyva to win the attention of the US-based Magento-powered website owners soon.
Technically, Hyvä is available in three licensees – Hyvä Themes, Hyvä Checkout, and Hyvä Enterprise:
Purchasing the Hyvä Themes License allows you to apply the theme to one Magento 2 installation with limitless domains and views. You’ll get access to the Hyva theme code and all the compatible third-party modules. Among other advantages, you’ll receive Hyvä UI free of charge.
The cost of a license is €1,000, billed once.
This new solution allows you to install Hyva to the checkout of your Magento-based website only. For now, you are required to purchase the Hyvä Themes license first, and the solution will be valid for one Magento 2 installation with unlimited domains and storeviews.
The price is €1,000 for five years, but you can select to pay €250 yearly, starting from the second year.
It is a premium offer from the Hyvä Themes creators. It is compatible with all Adobe Commerce features, including the B2B Suite and Adobe Sensei. As with both previous options, it is valid for only one Magento 2 installation with limitless domains and storeviews. Pay attention that it requires the purchase of Adobe Commerce version and Hyvä Themes license.
This solution costs €2,500; you can pay yearly or once for five years. In this case, the cost will be €10,000 instead of €12,500.
Hyvä Themes is sometimes associated with PWA (Progressive Web App). But, as the developers have clearly stated, Hyvä Themes is an alternative to headless PWA. JavaScript can not be the only possible solution for e-commerce systems development, and, therefore, now there is a product different from headless PWA, yet it allows one to build websites quickly and without hiring a large developers’ team.
Hyvä was not created to become “just one more Magento 2 theme”. Our Magento developers have already worked with this solution and admit that it really speeds up both the development process and the final product.
So, what was the Luma theme missing to remain one of the most demanded solutions for Magento 2 development? The developers have two answers to this question:
We believe that the Hyva developers had these exact disadvantages in mind when creating their theme. See below what benefits Hyva offers to users.
The Magento 2 Hyvä may not yet seem an evident choice for website development. However, it has several benefits that can make it a “match made in heaven” for developing an e-commerce website.
Page load speed and overall performance are the two vital points for every e-commerce website owner. Especially when even a 100-millisecond delay in the load time can increase a bounce rate by 7%.
The Hyvä theme was created precisely to skyrocket your web store: as the volume of code delivered to the users is reduced, the speed and performance grow.
As mentioned above, the Hyvӓ theme was created to make the whole process simpler. And it really does: instead of loading over 200 JS/CSS resources (1.5 megabytes), Hyvä loads 2 JS/CSS resources (0.2 megabytes).
As there is no need to work with RequireJS, Knockout, and UIComponents, the work of a Hyvä themes developer becomes significantly less complicated.
Hyvä Themes allows users to add any necessary block to the website, making the web store design unique and aligned with the brand’s concept.
Moreover, it is compatible with more than 400 various extensions, so you can easily add the desired functionality.
When working with Hyva, our Magento developers were amazed by the provided support. Basically, when you start working with Hyvä on Magento 2, you join the fast-growing community of developers. You get access to all the official documentation, get added to the official Slack chat and GitHub page, and receive all the updates as soon as they are released. You can track all the tasks that are currently in progress of the Hyva developers team, and you are free to request any help necessary.
Getting started to work with Hyvä Themes for a developer already experienced with Magento can take a couple of days or so. This time is enough to learn how Alpine.js works, understand the theme’s structure, and practice assembling it. We would also recommend learning what Tailwind CSS is because this framework creates styles in the Hyvä theme.
Having released several Hyvä theme projects, our specialists worked out a complete plan to set up the Hyvä theme to an e-commerce website, and here it is!
Following the initial meeting, our experts will conduct a tech audit of your e-commerce solution to assess its current state and analyze the performance metrics. We will suggest an action plan depending on the requirements and estimate how the Hyva theme installation will impact your website.
Before starting the work, we ensure the time frame is clear to everyone involved, including the team members working from our side and the client’s stakeholders. We also select a period to report the current progress and show the demo-version of the website with established updates.
We will continuously test every improvement made to the website and provide all the necessary customizations and third-party integrations, leading the project to end-to-end user acceptance testing and pre-go-live simulation.
With Hyvä, we can avoid creating a special maintenance page for the period of theme installation and setting up. Special services, like readymage.com, allow launching Hyva on your website with zero downtime. Your customers will be able to continue shopping without any inconvenience!
Within the first week after the project is released and functioning, our team members track the essential website performance metrics and regularly check for probable glitches to make the necessary improvements immediately.
In addition, our e-commerce development experts can assist you in consistently improving your Magento-based solution, offering new strategies and functions tailored to your exact business needs.
Our experience in Hyvä Themes development allows us to provide a full spectrum of related services to get the maximum of Hyvä’s potential to your web store.
We will help you achieve optimal performance by seamlessly incorporating the Hyva theme into your Magento 2 store.
The NEKLO team will create a Hyvä theme-based interface for your web store from scratch, following your brand’s identity and business strategy.
Our developers will move your current solution to the Hyvä theme, enhancing the UX characteristics and backend functioning.
We will apply all the benefits the Hyvä theme offers to improve your e-commerce website speed and responsiveness.
Our specialists will test if the extensions you use to widen your web store functionality are compatible with the Hyva themes and get the equivalent solution from our experts in case they are not.
With our professional tech support and maintenance services, you’ll receive an e-commerce website that is functioning smoothly and error-free.
NEKLO specialists will share the necessary knowledge and practical insights with your web store admins to help them get the maximum of the Hyva functionality and performance.
The NEKLO in-house Magento 2 developers are excited to work with the Hyvä Magento 2 theme. They say it is clear, easy to use, helps free up precious time to make real improvements to the website and brings real value to the eCommerce business.
Below, we’ll show you three cases we were working on, either developing the Hyvä theme for the project from scratch or migrating the existing solutions to Hyva.
My1stYears is a luxury kids’ apparel brand from the United Kingdom. They produce exclusive baby clothes and accessories.
Challenge
The client requested NEKLO to upgrade their website, introduce new features, and provide quality technical support. Unfortunately for the client, their previous Magento development services provider didn’t complete the tasks on time, and we jumped into the project halfway.
Seeing the progress delivered by the NEKLO specialists, the client asked us to migrate the store to the Hyvä theme and provide integrations with third-party services and platforms.
Result
Our team followed the client’s requirements. We fixed all the flaws left by the previous developers and applied the latest security patches. We moved the web store to the Hyvä theme and executed all the necessary customizations.
The client remained pleasantly satisfied with the new web store functionality, but the brand was especially surprised by the skyrocketing page loading speed.
Moreover, thanks to Hyvä, the client got a website with a responsive design that is entirely compatible with and easily interpreted by various browsers on mobile devices. Such responsiveness pushed the website closer to a broad audience of customers who prefer shopping from a smartphone, and the client noticed a significant increase in conversions.
JustBeeKids is a brand focused on producing and customizing kids’ wooden toys and homeware products.
Challenge
The client asked NEKLO to develop a custom Magento website to sell personalized wooden toys and accessories for children. They underlined the importance of the Hyvä theme application to this website and Adobe Live Search implementation as a search engine.
Result
This Magento 2 Hyvä development project is notable because even at the development and testing stage, it demonstrated the reduction in loading times, which, together with a modern and responsive design, helps provide an exclusively convenient user experience.
Our client is a UK-based modern fashion brand focused on producing various genuine leather products.
Challenge
The client came to us with a request to develop a custom Magento Community website, applying and adjusting the Hyvä theme, following the client’s requirements. We were also responsible for integrating the Odoo modules and improving the overall performance.
Result
As with every project, this one started with a comprehensive audit and estimates presentation. After all the calculations and analysis, our experts discovered that migrating the website to the free Magento version would save more than 40% of the development budget.
We’ve executed the migration, shifted to the Elastic Suite product recommendation mechanism, and customized the Hyvä theme, adding new modules and integrating essential payment gateways.
Hyvä in Finnish means “good” or “advisable”. And after working with this solution, we can say it is really excellent and very convenient. It helps to optimize sometimes overly complicated development processes and not just promises but also ensures the e-commerce website performance enhancement and load speed increase.
If you need a qualified and experienced Hyva theme developer, contact NEKLO. Our experts in Hyvä Themes development will provide you with a consultation and will become a reliable partner for your project.