Magento is by far the most widely used ecommerce solution and it keeps getting better by the day with new technology enhancements added to make it a robust, new age and sustainable solution. The field of ecommerce has seen a transformation recently with more and more businesses moving towards an online presence and opting for Magento web development Company. The transformation got even better with the mobile technologies that swept the market. Today ecommerce solutions need to have a mobile readiness too!
Magento has announced its latest releases for CE and EE versions and they include all the features an ecommerce site would require to increase sales, capture new customers and go responsive too! The latest releases of Magento are:
- Magento Community Edition (CE) 1.9
- Magento Enterprise Edition (EE) 1.14
Both these come with a host of new features.
PHP, Zend Framework Updates and higher Apache Solr version support
Both EE 1.14 and CE 1.9 versions of Magento include major technology updates that give it that extra appeal. Magento development professionals are already enthusiastic about using these features to provide customers with exemplary features for their online stores.
- The use of PHP 5.4 provides for better memory usage thus enhancing the overall performance.
- The Zend Framework has also been upgraded to 1.12.3.
- Magento EE 1.14 now also supports Apache Solr versions upto 3.6.2.
Built to be Responsive – Mobile Ready
The new releases for community and enterprise edition of Magento incorporate a responsive default theme, making them mobile ready effortlessly. Online store owners do not require to Hire Magento Developers separately to make their website responsive and mobile friendly.
- A mobile ready site can be made up and running in half the time and resources giving you ample marketing time. Without extra expenses on responsive Magento web development.
- You are better equipped to stand out in the fierce and rapidly growing mobile commerce competition.
- Presents merchants with new opportunities with less expensive maintenance.
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization) benefits can also be derived from a responsive website.
- The new Magento responsive themes uses Sass or Compass which is a CSS pre compiler and provides organizable and reusable CSS, JQuery for all the custom java scripts in the responsive theme and some additional JavaScript libraries too.
Cross Border Trade / Price Consistency
Merchants can take advantage of the Price Consistency model and maintain the same prices across a large customer base whose taxes differ and are not same as the store tax rates.
- This feature is advantageous for merchants operating in diverse geographical locations and for those who wish to show a single price to all customers.
- Store Owners get a clutter free pricing structure, regardless of the tax structure that varies from county to country.
- NOTE: this feature is available for the EU (European Union) merchants and the prices must be displayed inclusive of the taxes.
Breeze through the checkout process and increase sales!
Checkout process is very crucial for any online store. It decides whether you finally made that sale or not! Making it easy, convenient and appealing to a customer is always the prime focus of a Magento Developer. The new Magento EE and CE releases include the following enhancements to the checkout process:
- Ajax is used to enable users to change the number of items in the shopping carts without refreshing the page – a very desirable feature from a sales perspective. Users generally lose patience at this stage and the result is – an abandoned cart! Well, with the new Magento, this will be handled.
- Introducing the new payment scheme for customer’s convenience – “Bill Me Later†this option enables the customer to pay for the purchase within the next 6 months. Merchants get paid up front. Merchants need to pay only the regular PayPal transaction fee.
- Bill Me Later is estimated to result in 18% increase in sales.
- The new and improved checkout process enables customers to select an alternative payment mode in case the credit card processor fails.
- A few steps in the checkout process can be eliminated by the merchants to improve customer experience. Merchants can disable the Order Review page (or enable it if they require so) and also eliminate the necessity of “Update Order†before proceeding to “Place Orderâ€. This drastically reduces the checkout process and users can breeze through the check out process very fast and without unnecessary complications!
Solr Search Engine Changes – Magento EE only
Indexing improvements have been added to Solr in Magento Enterprise Edition 1.14. The indexing is now done automatically in the background as and when the product catalog changes. Shoppers see the most updated search results and hence customer experience is greatly improved.
Other than these, Magneto EE 1.14 has a lot of security enhancements and have closed many security vulnerabilities from the previous versions.
The new Magento is packed with features for a new technology revolution in the ecommerce world. It’s time for you to catch up and derive the advantages of these and see the difference in conversions, sales, and overall business growth!
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