In November 2015, Magento revealed the much anticipated Magento 2 and 2016 seems to have been the year of Magento 2. Overall, Magento 2 has proven to be a better experience in terms of performance, ease of use, efficiency, and customer experience.
The new and improved look of Magento 2 shows a level of refinement and maturity that was missing in Magento 1. Prominent changes found in Magento 2 held true to its core by providing:
- Streamlined Checkout Process
- Performance Improvement
- Framework Enhancement
- Better Scalability
A Comparative Study of Magento 2 versus Magento 1
Page Cache
For those sites with heavy traffic, Magento 2 comes with a well-developed cache layer helping to ensure front-end performance shines.
Partial Indexing
Magento 2 introduced the concept of partial indexing or incremental indexing. In Magento 1, this feature was available only in the enterprise edition. With Magento 2, developers can now use this capability with both the community and enterprise editions.
Database Scalability
Magento 1 failed to handle multiple databases for a single installation. It couldn’t even perform checkout, catalog, and customer operations on separate master databases. Magento 2 now offers three separate master databases for catalog browsing, order management, and the checkout process. This feature, however, is currently only available with the Enterprise Edition.
Development
Magento 2’s new architecture conforms with the best practices for the development of Magento projects.
Catalog
Retaining the catalog features of Magento 1, Magento 2 features an improved UX and workflows that has received excellent reviews from both the end-users and Magento development companies. In addition, multiple product templates, the creation of categories from the product page, and building complex product structures are all possible with Magento 2.
Scale for Growth
Enterprise Edition 2.1, loaded with Elasticsearch, turns shoppers into buyers. The search engine supports 33 languages out-of-the-box and lets you set ‘stop words’, search synonyms, and attribute weighting to deliver highly relevant search results. It’s also designed to handle large catalogs and can easily scale to support enterprise and fast-growing merchants.
Security
Magento 2 enforces several industry standards for security and development practices to ensure protection against potential attacks. SHA-256 password hashing has been introduced in both Community and Enterprise Edition of Magento 2. Previously, hashing was found solely in the Enterprise Edition.
Extensions
Magento will not support backward compatibility. All the extensions developed for Magento 1 will need refactoring to remain compatible with Magento 2.
Extensions Distribution
Magento Connect is being replaced with an App store. The important distinction in the new App store is that Magento is setting up an extension developer verification process. The extensions published on the App store will be reviewed for quality before becoming live. This will produce better quality extensions on the App store and merchants won’t have to worry about untested extensions breaking their Magento site, though an unfortunate side effect being a fewer number of apps in the App store.
Payments
Magento 2 now integrates popular payment gateways like PayPal, Authorize, and Braintree in the platform. It also lets the developers integrate older versions of payment gateways in Magento 2 through simple customizations.
Enterprise Edition 2.1 features PayPal enhancements that streamline your checkout experience, and boost sales. Magento announced that PayPal In-context Checkout increases conversion rates by 69 basis points by enabling shoppers to pay with PayPal without ever leaving your site. Securely storing credit card information through PayPal Saved Credit Cards means fewer security headaches, and more frequent purchases. Customers love to check out quickly without entering their credit card information.
Magento Cloud
Enterprise Edition 2.1 is now available in the cloud. New Enterprise Cloud Edition allows you to focus on creating amazing brand experiences, without worrying about infrastructure. You get a fully-customizable, secure, and scalable storefront built on AWS and optimized for rapid deployments and performance. Magento provides you the flexibility to deploy your site in whatever environment suits your goals and operations best, including cloud, hosted or on-premises.
Cloud Service supports you with the following:
- PHP;
- MySQL (MariaDB);
- Solr;
- Elasticsearch;
- Redis;
- RabbitMQ
2016 revealed that Magento 2 has fulfilled its promise to provide improved performance, security and scalability. If you're ready to simplify site operations, enhance user experience, and increase profits, call us at 717-431-3330 to upgrade to Magento 2 today.