Magento is back in the news with a spanking new version of its e-commerce platform – Magento 2. This time around, Magento has made serious upgrades to its architecture and performance, among other features; and this should definitely be a strong reason for a switch over.
But before you make that switch, here’s what’s in store for your business with this upgrade:
Getting to know Magento 2
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A new, flexible and open architecture and improved speed and performance
One of the major criticisms raised by Magento 1.x users was its slow performance and poor online store speed. Magento 2 has clearly overcome this hurdle. It is built on PHP 7, a much more equipped version of PHP that has significantly notched up the performance and speed of online stores.
Now for the caching system of Magento 2: it has definitely undergone significant enhancements from its predecessor. The load speed has increased, thanks to the full-page caching feature. The new caching system stores frequently accessed pages, serving them up to visitors quickly and on demand.
Improved efficiency of backend operations, augmented database flexibility and upgraded scalability to handle peak loads tick all the check boxes of enhanced performance for this new e-commerce platform.
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Enhanced shopping experience
MAgento 2 is all about providing and sustaining good customer experience. With its pages loading almost 50% faster, it takes just about 1.5 seconds to load non-cached pages in Magento 2. Rapid server responses, quicker add-to-cart and faster processing of orders transform the way shoppers interact with a website. With enhanced shopping experience comes lesser number of abandoned carts and more sales.
According to a study, the average cart abandonment rate currently sits at 68.8%. While 26% found the checkout process too complicated, 34% did not wish to create an account. Magento 2 has attempted to resolve such issues by ensuring simple, yet key shopping enhancers. These include Ajax carts that allow shoppers to add items to their cart without reloading the whole page, resulting in speedy add-to-cart experience. Magento 2 has also worked on improving checkout by giving shoppers the opportunity to checkout their items without registration. The registration process is also simplified with fewer forms. By simplifying the checkout process, Magento 2 has ensured that the shopping experience is hassle-free. The e-commerce platform has also improved its mobile optimization, making the experience a happy one for mobile shoppers.
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Other notable technical enhancements
One of the best enhancements that users will notice with Magento 2 is on the administration panel that will facilitate ease of operation for e-commerce managers. Working on the new admin panel is easy and time-saving with convenient functionalities such as automated creation of configurable products, grid filtering and searching capabilities. The dashboards are more streamlined, with organized menus and neat layouts, and easier to navigate.
An important aspect of Magento 2 is its ability to integrate with useful extensions such as Paypal, Braintree and Authorize.net payment gateways, besides other extensions like upsell and cross-sell pops, gift cards, LandOfCoder Customer Attributes, and so on.
In terms of security too, Magento 2 has upped its game, having thrown in two-factor authentication, Google Re-CAPTCHA and cache management ACL.
Improved hashing algorithms for better SEO, delineated databases that prevent overload and system shutdowns, accelerated data integration, superior data management functionalities, and improved scalability make Magento 2 a must-migrate-to e-commerce platform.
Related: Magento is what your company needs to achieve its business goals
Time is running out…
Magento has already withdrawn support for Magento 1.x, which makes the platform vulnerable to bugs and hacks. The platform cannot perform with patches for too long, and a migration is the only rightful way to keep those online stores up and running efficiently. With Magento 2, the upgrade is just what online stores running on Magento need.
However, there is a belief that Magento has moved from its philosophy of simplicity to something that may require more focused expertise. This may be true due to the number of new technologies it has added to its bouquet of offering. However, the new ‘complex’ albeit focused architecture has an inherent flexibility that branches itself out to multiple components. These components run independently and do so with fantastic results.
“Would I need a Magento developer’s expertise?” – Yes, you would. But that mustn’t hold you back from making that all-important migration to Magento 2. It could be what gives your business the edge you are looking for.
Wish to chat with our Magento experts and find out how we can help? Just write to services@suyati.com.