If you own an eCommerce business or are launching one, there are many options to consider. One of the best in the market currently is Magento 2.

While certainly not the cheapest option on the market, it does offer some significant features and benefits. There is both an Open Source (Free) and Enterprise (Paid) edition to choose from.

On top of this, there are also two versions. Magento 1 was released in 2008 and is now a legacy product. Last year, Magento announced that as of November 2018, there would be no more support for Magento 1. Of course, this is an incentive for website owners to migrate to their newer platform, Magento 2.

Magento 2, was announced in 2010 and released in beta in 2015. Since then it has gained a lot of traction with Magento Developers.

The big benefits of Magento 2

If you are considering upgrading to a Magento 2 site, you want to know what you’re getting. Magento 2 (currently at 2.2.6) was redesigned with performance in mind. In business terms ‘performance’ means better engagement with your site, more products added to cart, and more sales.

Here are a few Magento 2 stats to consider:

• Page loads in Magento 2 are 30% to 50% faster than in Magento 1
• Magento 2 can also handle up to 39% more orders per hour
• It boasts 66% faster add-to-cart times than Magento 1
• Magento 2 can deliver nearly instant server response times for catalog browsing   

As well as this, Magento 2’s functionality can handle more traffic,  up to approximately 10 million page views an hour (Magento 1 can process 200,000 page views per hour).

Some specific features in Magento 2

If you are a Magento developer, you may be interested in some of the technical details of what has been improved from Magento 1 to Magento 2. Here are the most appealing features that our eCommerce clients have been enjoying.

Ajax Cart: Ajax Carts use javascript to add items to the shopper’s cart without reloading the entire page. That puts less load on your hosting hardware and results in a more responsive experience for your shoppers.  This is now available without any installation needed.

Cache: Magento 2 has a much improved caching system and now includes native support for caching technologies like Varnish, a popular HTTP accelerator. Caching systems will store any frequently accessed page elements and serve them up faster to your visitors.

Faster search: Magento 2 boasts search improvements that allow customers to more quickly and efficiently find your products. The default search engine is ElasticSearch for Enterprise Edition.

Smarter Product Creation:  The new product creation tools allow you to quickly and accurately add products to your store, up to 4 times faster in Magento 2.

Improved Data Filtering:  Magento 2 adds a very robust data grid view, giving you the ability to customize what attributes are shown. This leads to clean interfaces and helps you can see the data that you actually want to see.

Simultaneous Admins: Magento 1 was designed for a single admin user to be changing product data at a single time. For larger sites that might have multiple admins, this was a huge productivity drain. Magento 2 has safeguards that allow multiple administrators to work on product data simultaneously, allowing you to easily keep your store’s products up to date.

Navigation Improvements:  The admin interface is cleaner and less cluttered.   Menus are better organized so that finding the page and functionality that you are seeking is much simpler.   These improvements lead to a smaller learning curve and quicker productivity for administrators.

PHP 7: Magento is built using the programming language PHP. Magento 2 is optimized for PHP 7, which means superior performance to previous PHP versions.

Better Hosting Environment:  Magento 2 – especially Enterprise Edition – includes new features and functionality that allow you to more easily spread the demand on your hosting infrastructure over multiple servers.  This helps you better handle large traffic spikes.

Product Videos:  Adding videos from Vimeo or Youtube are now very simple and supported natively by Magento 2.  This offers a great opportunity to properly merchandise your products.

Better browsing and buying experience

The bottom line: you need your customers to be able to buy from you as smoothly and as quickly as possible. Any slowdown or inconvenience will make them look elsewhere.

These enhancements that Magento 2 offers mean that your eCommerce website is keeping up with the best in any industry.

If you are looking at a Magento 2 website or migrating from a Magento 1 website, Brandastic are here to help. We are Orange County-based certified Magento developers, with the experience and skills to build your dream website. Contact us today to see how we can take your eCommerce business to the next level with Magento 2.