Ecommerce has become the most preferred way of buying and selling. If during the start of the decade it was only a forte of large brands, in the last few years ecommerce has spread its wings among small businesses and individual product/service sellers. It is a multi-trillion dollar industry with tools such as Magento powering hundreds of thousands of online stores. Its Community and Enterprise editions hold more than 30% of the market share making it the most popular ecommerce platform in the world. From niche online stores to multi-brand larger ones, Magento has been a favorite tool with all of them.
The release of Magento Community Edition 2.0 and Magento Enterprise Edition 2.0 in November 2015 has been timed to perfection and would meet the changing needs of the stores as well as aspirations of the customers. Many new features and functionalities have been introduced along with capacity augmentation promise of better services and more flexibility. Magento development service providers have been quick to realise these benefits and are implementing the latest versions in their projects. If you are running a Magento powered store you need to immediately upgrade to the latest version to derive these benefits.
General Improvements
Magento 2.0 has come with a new range of improvements which improve the performance of the site and also make it more scalable. They have introduced a new framework library and also enhanced the security of the store to cope with the present day challenges that you would face. The integrated testing framework is fully automated allowing developers to test each and every feature and functionality internally before making them live on the store.
Easy Frontend Development
The new version draws more juice out of new technologies such as HTML5 and CSS3. This allows developer to work on the look and the feel of their online stores without having to bother about the functionality of the store. Coding has been minimized as most of the cosmetic changes can be made using WYSIWYG like editors. This is highly beneficial for online store owners who manage their stores themselves and don’t have the best of technical skills.
More Customization Options
Every business has its own needs and ‘one size doesn’t fit all’. Magento has been quick to realize the varied needs of its clients and introduced the Visual Design Editor. This ‘drag and drop’ tool is extremely easy to use and allows developers to customize the layout of the store based on their needs. You would be able to tailor the blocks and containers as per your requirements without any technical knowledge. This allows you to work on a fluid like canvas enabling you to express your creativity and imagination to the maximum.
Separate Your Databases
One of the key improvements in Magento 2.0 has been the fact that you would be able to separate your databases. Developers have had a tough time with a single database so far when the store needs to cater to hundreds of customers simultaneously often leading to databases crashes and poor customer experience. Updating to the new release would allow you to have all your products and other content pages on one MySQL database that can be scaled up through caching allowing thousands of users to access it. The cart can be moved to a new database that would help faster transactions and higher conversions.
Improve Speeds
Increased competition in the ecommerce space means your store needs to cater to the customers faster. The new version with improved indexers, performance toolkit and Varnish Cache helps in speeding up the performance of the store. It reduces the server loads and improves page load even on slower Internet connections.
Improve Checkout Process
It has been estimated that more than 60% of all online shopping abandonments happen in the checkout process. There were some shortfalls in the checkout process in the previous version of Magento which developers overcame with modification. The new version offers better payment option and customers are no longer required to select the type of card as the system automatically detects that reading the credit card numbers. Also users no longer require remembering their passwords.
Improvements in Magento Connect& Reduced Cost
Along with all the changes and upgrades that have been made in Magento 2.0 the marketplace Magento Connect has also been revamped. This will allow users to shop for Magento extensions within a single window and add to the features and functionality of their store. Also the cost of upgrade to the new version has been kept considerably low for the benefit of the clients and this is a welcome step for small online stores that operate with small capital.
The opportunities with Magento powered store are many when you hire the services of a professional Magento development company. With experience in hundreds of different projects we, at Semaphore Software can deliver results in quick time and edge over your rivals. Get in touch with our team at info@semaphore-software.com and we will take you to new era of ecommerce.
