Magento 2 is here and we like it
Posted on November 16, 2017
Magento 2 has been here for a while and is slowly but steady working its way forward to a more community supported platform. This article gives an overview of some of the most important changes in Magento 2 and why you should opt for moving to this new platform.
Magento 2 is here and we like it
Magento 2 has been here for a while and is slowly but steady working its way forward to a more community supported platform. This article gives an overview of some of the most important changes in Magento 2 and why you should opt for moving to this new platform.
The management of the online store has been improved greatly, it`s a lot more intuitive compared to the old version. The dashboard shows all kinds of useful statistics on the performance of your online store. The admin has a clear overview of the best sellers, most visited products, new customers and many more items.
The main menu structure is comprehensive and supported by a search functionality which makes finding your subject a lot easier and quicker.
Magento actually made the admin panel completely responsive which means it will work on desktop and mobile devices, a great improvement for users / managers needing to do quick changes or have insights on the fly wherever and whenever they need it.
Proper management and categorization of products in online stores is often a headache and hard to really get it right. The Visual Merchandiser for Magento 2 offers several options to simplify this. By using smart categories where products automatically appear depending on the different settings you configured you can work a lot faster. Several options exist where you can filter on price, color, date of addition, quantity, brand and many more. You can also set what should be automatically sorted in the products in any form: by price, inventory, name or by color. The visual power comes with the drag and drop functionality which also has the option to view the products overview just like the client would see it.
The content and preview function make it very easy to launch products, promotions or content. This is the perfect tool for release management. A marketeer can plan the future within the system with a visual staging dashboard. It displays all active and future changes whether that be promotions or product launches. Another powerful feature is the preview module, with this one can view future changes on the actual website. So what will the website look like during the coming summer campaign and on top even test discount codes that will become valid on a certain future date.
This option is really gets magento 2 in the big league of e-commerce, it is possible to provide users a real time personalized shopping experience and not only for registered users also for guests. Magento basically registers the behavior and navigation of the first time users and hence knows what the user is interested in and uses that to segment content. A standard example is that when a user returns to the homepage or a category page for that matter, it displays a customized banner with an offer for the product that he/she just clicked on.
Rules for segmentation can be configured by the admin and can be done with a variety of criteria such as navigation behavior or values in the shopping cart or wishlist.
Speaks for itself that for registered customers even more data can be gathered and played around with to come up with specific promos, for example based on their purchase history. Even advanced configurations like basing an offer on a customer's purchase history, let’s say 1000 USD in combination with having summer articles in its wish list at this moment.
On a more general level marketeers have a lot of possibilities with promotions. The rules options are pretty extensive and the related banner feature makes the whole promotion complete to run on your website. Setting up a promotion is straightforward and guides the admin every step along the way. As with personalization it is possible to do advanced configurations like checking the purchase history and combining it with its current items on his/her wish list with the difference that it would apply to a group and not a specific person yet still powerful!
Magento 2 has followed the footsteps of many extensions that already existed to improve customer experience. Many features are now standard with Magento 2. One item which is a breakaway from standard e-commerce website is the new checkout page which is focused clearly on not distracting the user in any way. Even the header and footer are not displayed anymore during these steps.
The focus on engaging customer experience also comes back in items like more imagery (like on the homepage or the thumbnails of the products on the checkout page) and well thought through placement of elements like reviews and ratings.