Hyvä vs Luma? Pick the Right Magento Frontend For Your Saudi Store

If your Magento store hasn’t moved away from the default Luma theme yet, then your storefront is working harder than it needs to and likely losing customers in that process.

With Luma-based stores, slow load times, inconsistent mobile experiences, and weak Core Web Vitals have become quite a common issue now.

And in Saudi Arabia, the country with a truly burgeoning eCommerce market, where the competition is getting fierce, digital experiences need to be fast, modern, and friction-free.

The Saudi shopper expects almost instant responsiveness, be it fashion, electronics, beauty, grocery, or even luxury goods.

This is where Hyvä completely changes the game. Hyvä is a modern Magento frontend theme built using Tailwind CSS and Alpine.js, replacing the old heavy architecture of Luma, resulting in a faster, smoother, cleaner, more scalable Magento storefront without changing your backend.

Hyvä isn’t only about a design update. It is an improvement in performance and conversion.

In this blog, we will focus on understanding the comparison between Hyvä and Luma and which is good for your Magento storefront aligned to the Saudi users.

Saudi Context of eCommerce: Performance Drives Profit

Saudi Arabia’s eCommerce business is quickly growing, with a projected $15 billion in 2024 and $29 billion by 2030, thanks to rising digital penetration, rising customer needs, and more competition across industries.

With mobile users accounting for the great majority of traffic, your online store’s speed and efficiency are directly proportional to its performance.

Due to a slow-loading storefront, the bounce rates increase, reduce confidence, and drive clients to faster competition. High-performing shopping experience customers browse for longer, boosting their chances of making a purchase.

Better performance strengthens SEO and reduces paid advertising costs. In short, for Saudi merchants, website speed is now a revenue strategy-not just a technical detail.

Why Luma Is Holding Your Store Back

Luma was built in a previous generation of frontend development and carries multiple layers of outdated frameworks and heavy code along with it. Even on optimised servers, storefronts running Luma often struggle to respond quickly, especially on mobile connections

Common Challenges with Luma:

• Slow Time to First Paint (FCP).
• High Largest Contentful Paint (LCP).
• Layout shifts affecting visual stability.
• Complex Customisation Cycles.
• Higher overall development and maintenance costs.

Luma can be optimised, but it requires more effort, more time, and more budget than most teams are willing to continuously invest in.

How Hyvä Solves the Problem

Hyvä upgrades the Magento frontend stack to something that is faster, cleaner, and easier to maintain. With its modern architecture, Hyvä completely redefines Magento’s approach to frontend development—an improvement widely recognized by magento experts by replacing the outdated structure with a faster, cleaner, and more maintainable framework.

While Luma is based on a number of legacy technologies that make performance worse and increase maintenance costs, Hyvä features a lightweight and modern frontend stack that was designed to be fast, flexible, and scalable.

Smarter, Faster, and More Responsive Frontend

Hyvä saudi eliminates unnecessary frontend dependencies, so only what is necessary to render the page gets loaded.

The result is a snappy, app-like experience performing equally well on desktop and mobile devices, improving user experiences at every touchpoint.

Hyvä uses an effective development structure with Tailwind CSS and Alpine.js, reducing technical debt and hereby providing quick and easy updates in the future.

Real Performance Gains After Migrating to Hyvä

Merchants migrating their store from Luma to Hyvä regularly report significant performance improvements and quantifiable business impact.

Here’s what they’ve done:

• 30–50% faster load speeds.
• Google Lighthouse performance scores in the 90+ range.
• Significant reduction in bounce rates.
• Higher add-to-cart and checkout completion rates.
• Improved SEO visibility and rankings.
• Better ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) from paid campaigns.

These are improvements beyond mere technological updates; the business outcomes have also improved.

Why Hyvä Makes Development Faster and Cheaper

Beyond raw performance, Hyvä also changes how your store evolves.Its modern architecture simplifies both front-end customisation and ongoing maintenance.

How Hyvä Streamlines Development

• Tailwind CSS allows rapid design and layout modifications with minimal code.
• Alpine.js keeps frontend interactions lightweight yet powerful.
• Fewer frameworks, fewer files, and fewer overrides mean less friction and fewer points of failure.

This translates into tangible business advantages:

• Faster time-to-market for new UI updates and features.
• Lower long-term maintenance costs.
• Easier onboarding for new developers.
• Cleaner codebase that supports long-term scalability.

In short, Hyvä delivers a faster frontend and a smoother development workflow, empowering teams to focus on innovation rather than maintenance.

Migration Roadmap: Luma → Hyvä

Going from Luma to Hyvä is easier than you think. This change only touches the frontend layer, so your backend, product catalogue, order workflows, payment methods, and integrations remain untouched.

Hyvä Migration Step-by-Step Process

• Audit Existing Frontend Components: Spot existing UI components, custom modules, and dependencies.
• Check Extension Compatibility: Third-party modules should be reviewed for usability after migration.
• Choose UI Strategy: Re-use styles or design a new look with the Tailwind CSS library.
• Hyvä Theme Implementation: Combine Tailwind CSS with Alpine.js for a modern and high-performance frontend.
• Optimise for Mobile-First Performance: Make sure the layouts and load times are optimised for mobile shoppers, which is very important for Saudi eCommerce audiences.
• Test on real devices and networks: Make sure design is consistent, responsive, and loads well across different environments.
• Launch & Track key metrics: Track improvements in Core Web Vitals, conversions, and overall site speed after launch.

Typical Migration Timeline

Usually takes 4–8 weeks, depending on how complex your store design is and how many custom features/extensions you have. This short timeline pays long-term dividends in the form of a future-ready Magento frontend: faster, easier to manage, optimised for growth.

Conclusion

For Saudi Magento stores that are eager to grow, satisfy customers, and be digitally competitive, the move from Luma to Hyvä is one of the most strategic upgrades.

Hyvä offers faster page speeds, stronger SEO performance, and smoother mobile usability on a cleaner development foundation-all directly improving conversion rates while lowering the long-term cost of running your store.

Hyvä ensures that, in today’s market, where user expectations are growing and competition is scaling at a faster pace digitally, your storefront is built for performance today and ready for scaling up tomorrow. Connect with our Hyvä experts to implement it with ease.