From May 12th to May 14th, Magento invaded Las Vegas for Imagine, their premier global ecommerce conference full of announcements, speakers, networking fun, and more! Amid the excitement, Magento launched a new certification allowing eligible attendees to become the first Magento Certified Solution Specialists. In addition, the newest versions of Community and Enterprise were released, along with some sneak peeks into Magento 2. Below, we’ve rounded up a few of the key enhancements benefiting users in these releases.
Responsive Design
Both of the new Magento releases include a responsive design reference theme. When the default theme uses responsive web design principles, you can rest assured that your new products are built on a platform that’s keeping up with modern technology and best practices. The inclusion of the responsive theme can help cut the time required to develop a responsive site by as much as half. Aside from speeding up development; an easier responsive design also helps make mobile commerce easier. Other benefits include:
- encompassing all major flows, product types, and features
- a cleaner, more modern code base which allows for easier customization & adaptation
- the potential SEO benefits that come with using Google’s preferred approach to optimizing for mobile
Bill Me Later & PayPal Express Checkout
In the newest releases of Magento Enterprise and Magento Community, merchants and customers can benefit from the added Bill Me Later feature and improvements in the PayPal Express Checkout. With these features, merchants can:
- increase sales & conversion rates
- offer instant financing without incurring an additional cost
- benefit from a checkout completed in fewer steps
- automatically try alternative payment options when a credit card is rejected
Search Indexing
Merchants using Magento Enterprise Edition 1.14 receive all the benefits that come with the updated search indexing, such as:
- better admin performance
- more efficient operations
- native support for Solr 3.6.2
- up-to-date search results for shoppers
- no manual intervention on product catalog changes, indexing is performed automatically
Price Consistency
By implementing price consistency across borders, European Union (EU) merchants will have the option to show a single, clean price. Though tax structures and policies vary from country to country, they won’t interfere with your consistent pricing. This will help improve your shopping experience, benefiting both you and your users.
PHP 5.4 Compatibility
Although most of the improvements in PHP 5.4 have no impact on existing code, there are a few incompatibilities and new features that you should consider before making the switch in production environments. When you do make that switch (or if you already have), Magento is ready for you and compatible with PHP 5.4. This helps provide both better performance and more efficient memory usage.
Product Enhancements
Magento Community 1.9 and Magento Enterprise 1.14 include over 50 product enhancements to address many customer support issues. They also improve overall product quality & security.
These key enhancements and more will help ecommerce merchants work easier and more efficiently with their sites, while still offering a shopping experience worth repeating to customers. The newest versions maintain the robust and flexible platform for which Magento is known, while progressing it further for even more possibilities.
The excitement doesn’t stop there; Magento 2 is on the way. It’s set to release to beta in December and to potentially enter general release March 2015. In case you missed out on the events at Imagine, check out our post summarizing Imagine in 34 points.
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