With the performance of your website impacting your business's conversions more than ever, let's look at the comparison of two Magento frontend themes; Hyvä and Luma.
As Magento is a bespoke eCommerce platform you don’t want to be restricted by the frontend, but you also need to consider the cost, performance and complexity of builds.
With customers demanding speedy load times and a positive overall customer experience, the performance of your eCommerce platform is a deciding factor for your customer's buying journey.
What is Luma
Luma theme:
Luma was released in 2016 as the default Magento 2 theme, and until recently it has been one best options for a default starting theme for Magento/Adobe Commerce developments. Luma has a powerful infrastructure and integrates Responsive Web Design (RWB) practices into builds. Based on the Magento UI library, with its customisable components and interface, Luma uses CSS3 media queries for its adaptability and responsiveness to devices.
The Luma theme is compatible with all third-party extensions, which can ease the development time and reduce the cost of a new build. However, you need to consider the impact of this on the performance of your site. Due to the reliance on third-party extensions, requiring additional JavaScript and CSS, it can cause poor performance and SEO - which in the current eCommerce landscape are crucial for conversion.
Luma Benefits:
- Adaptive layout for devices
- Integrates with Third-party extensions out of the box
- Familiar checkout
What is Hyvä Theme
Hyvä is an innovative Magento 2 frontend theme that has transformed the developments of Magento eCommerce stores since its release in 2021. Built with speed and efficiency in mind, it is less complex than other themes and has transformed the speed of development and therefore reduced the cost of projects.
Favoured by many developers when compared to headless PWAs, Hyvä has a minimal tech stack. By replacing requireJS and Less with Alpine.JS and Tailwinds CSS, it achieves a great experience for developers and customers alike.
Due to its enhanced features, it has improved the SEO ranking of web pages, increasing conversion rates and web vitals close to 100/100 across Google. It also works seamlessly with Magentos quarterly updates with minimal disruption.
With Hyväs powerful simplified architecture and overall improvement in the performance of websites, it is currently seen as the future of Magento frontend web development by a large number of developers. Here are some of Hyväs benefits:
Hyvä Themes Benefits
- Less complex development
- Easy to manage
- Improved page speed
- Reduced costs of developments
- Fast development
- Improved SEO rankings
- Reduced dependency on 3rd party libraries
- Expanding developer community
- One-off payment for a Hyvä License
When considering development with Hyvä:
Hyvä theme is currently compatible with all Magento Open Source features, but it is not yet compatible with all third-party Magento modules or Adobe Commerce features out the box.
Although the Hyvä community are continuously creating solutions. With the release of Hyvä compatibility tracker, modules are being created and shared free of charge. Find out more about Hyvä compatibility modules here!
As a Hyvä solution provider, we have experience developing compatibility modules for our clients and the community to optimise Magento sites. Check out our Hyvä builds
Comparison:
Performance comparison:
With customers demanding speedy load times and a positive overall customer experience, the performance of your eCommerce platform is a deciding factor for your customer's buying journey.
47% of people don’t wait more than two seconds for a web page to load.- Unbounce
When comparing the two themes, overall Hyvä theme outperforms Luma with its less complex tech stack that reduces the time of development, along with its simple architecture. It allows for easy management and is built with the performance and speed of your site in mind.
While Luma is powerful and can provide an effective experience, it can be complicated and the overall performance of Luma storefront is incomparable to Hyväs near 100/100 web vitals. This is down to Lumas clunkier framework, however, the performance can be somewhat improved through optimisation, to keep up with customers' demand for high-performing sites.
Development comparison:
For developers who are used to working with Magento 2 frontend technologies (require JS, Knockout JS, Less and jQuery) the Hyväs theme offers a breath of fresh air. Developers are able to achieve the same results in less time and the finished result is noticeably more performant and easy to use. Frontend developers who are new to Magento will find it much easier to learn and implement changes due to the reduced complexity and the more familiar syntax of Alpine JS as well as the improved extensibility of using the utility-class-based CSS framework Tailwind CSS.
Hyvä is arguably the most future-proofed option for frontend of any Magento 2 store. Particularly due to its improved developer experience and the community support, its simplified tech stack and its drastically improved frontend performance and UX.
As an experienced team of Magento developers, we understand the importance of providing the best platform to our clients and can identify the pain points you may approach during development. - We have worked with both Hyvä and Luma themes and have a thorough knowledge of building with both.
If you're looking for a Hyvä supplier and want to find out more from our experts?
Take a look at our Hyvä theme packages
Phoebe Dodd
Designer & Content Creator
Phoebe is a Designer and Content Creator who has worked in design since 2019 and has been with Develo since 2020. Phoebe’s favourite aspect of Content Creation is creating engaging graphics and videos that blend storytelling and marketing. Her biggest achievement from working at Develo is enforcing humanised content in a B2B business that engages with our target audience. Outside of work, she can be found competing in cross country and athletics, or walking her Romanian rescue dog, Lyla.
Develo is a leading Magento agency and eCommerce web development company based in Birmingham, in the UK, serving clients globally since 2010. Our Blog covers topics around the array of services we offer including Magento web development, Hyvä themes development, Adobe Commerce, PunchOut catalogues, ERP integrations and much more. To speak to a friendly member of the team about your next project, contact us here.
