Magento 2 is an online shop powerhouse which is a blend of highly scalable design and a wide-ranging support network.
An open-source PHP based eCommerce platform, Magento 2 is a full-fledged shopping cart solution for medium to large-scale business needs. It is a feature-rich platform and offers an unmatched flexibility to the users where they can manage the content, functionality and layout of their eCommerce store.
To begin with, Magento 2 is responsive and search engine friendly. It has an alluring design and a better UX. It offers improved product creation, better data view & filtering and admin navigation improvements.
Apart from that, Magento 2 also offers a split database solution. There are three separate databases for product data, checkout and orders. with Magento development you can also eliminate unwanted bugs which can be risky for your eCommerce store.
Magento 2 also has data safeguards for product data. Using them, multiple administrators can simultaneously work on any given product data. The admin navigation interface to is cleaner and clutter-free. Also, organized menus make finding a page much easier and simpler.
Also, depending on your business requirement, you can choose from the three versions that Magento offers :
- Magento Community Edition — It is a fully open source and has the largest and the most active community of users
- Magento Enterprise Edition — It is a paid version and depending on the need and requirements of your company you can choose from the various feature sets that are offered
- Magento Go — This version is paid and is hosted on Magento’s servers
Moving on, here are a few reasons why you should seriously consider Magento 2 for developing your eCommerce store in 2018:
1. Enhanced Performance Parameters
Magento 2 reduces the load on the server and increases user interaction considerably. Also, page loading time is faster and the rate of cart abandonment has decreased a lot. However, the major parameters on which Magento 2 has improved are:
Ajax cart — Using JavaScript, Ajax Cart can add items to the shopping cart without reloading the entire page. Due to this, there is less load on the hardware and it generates a more responsive experience for shoppers.
PHP 7 — Magento 2 is built on the PHP programming language. So, it is optimized for PHP 7 which provides enhanced performance and superior loading as compared to the older PHP versions.
Cache — Magento 2 uses Varnish cache and HTTP accelerator which can easily cache requests. Because of this, more than one admin users can edit the eCommerce product information without any data conflict.
Hosting environment — There are many new features and functionalities in Magento 2 using which you can easily distribute the demand on your hosting infrastructure over multiple servers. Hence, handling traffic spikes will be comparatively easy.
2. Streamlined Checkout Process
Checkout is an important parameter when it comes to eCommerce platforms. Lack of easy checkout might prompt the customers to abandon their shopping carts.
Magento 2 has an improved checkout process. While Magento 1 had a six-step checkout process, Magento 2 has just a two-step checkout process. Also, in Magento 1 it was impossible to skip any of the processes. The user could not check out before undergoing all these procedures.
The six steps in Magento 1 included checkout method, billing information, shipping information, shipping method, shipping information, payment information and lastly the order review. Whereas in Magento 2, the first step in shipping and the second step is review & payment. Also, they are shown on two different pages.
This two-step checkout process considerably improves customer experience. It also allows a guest checkout option. This eradicates the need for login or registration and speeds up the process for users.
Moreover, it offers a dynamic shipping rate. The rate is shown according to your geographical location and varies according to country, region and postcode. All these features reduce friction and increase your business’s conversion rate.
3. Improved Indexing and Toolkit
Magento 2 offers enhanced indexing which increases the query performance speed. Indexing is a strategy that increases query processing speed and performance of the web store. It also transforms merchant data by creating index tables and updating it regularly.
Magento 2 performs better in all use cases. Magento 2 has an improved toolkit that offers:
- Efficient backend operation
- Optimized web pages for faster delivery
- More server response time for all website activities
- Enhanced database flexibility which can handle peak loads
- Performance widgets to create test scripts for your business
With the updates widgets and toolkit, users can easily use Magento 2 for setting their eCommerce store.
4. Highly Compatible
With Big Data and NoSQL-like databases in place, it is a challenge to integrate attributes with other eCommerce platforms. But, Magento 2 has made it easier to integrate data, third party tools, web and cloud services without any difficulty.
Magento 2 also offers compatibility with the latest PHP frameworks like Zend and others. It also works well with major databases like Hadoop, Oracle and MySQL. Also, as Magento 2 has a jQuery library as its default JavaScript library, jQuery and Prototype conflicts don’t occur. Hence, programming with Magento 2 is not a hassle.
Also, being an open-source platform, Magento 2 is user-centric and offers rich templates, modules, extensions and widgets to build efficient eCommerce storefronts.
To sum up:
Magento 2 offers many powerful tools like- SEO tools, Catalog management tools and Marketing tool.
Magento 2 is supported across devices and offers cross-browser support too. Because of all these powerful features and tools, Magento 2 has been the best pick for almost every business that is looking forward to having an eCommerce store.
For businesses that are still running Magento 1, in spite of using the data export/import tool, migration to Magento 2 from Magento 1 will not be a smooth process. Because the amount of changes needed while migration depends entirely on the amount of customization you have done to your Magento 1 store. However, you can hire an eCommerce developer to make the migration easy and smooth.
Magento 2 is the ultimate eCommerce platform that offers a safe business environment and it will surely boost your eCommerce conversions.