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November 27, 2015

Industry Highlight: Improvements to Magento 2.0 VS. Magento CE 1.9

The hottest topic these days in ecommerce industry is definitely the release of Magento 2.0 that happened on November 17th, 2015. Although Magento launched Magento 2 Merchant Beta Release in July 2016, this release means that time has come to upgrade to new and greatly improved features.
It’s been 5 years since the first Magento 2 release announcement. So, this is definitely good news not only for developers (because of improved framework and coding standards), but also to merchants and other Magento beneficiaries.

Along with improvements in the field of coding and framework, many things are now different regarding business administration and customer experience. Comparing the brand new Magento 2.0 with Magento Community Edition (CE) 1.9, there are just a few over many other things that this new release has brought to its users:

1. New File Structure

The brand new version of Magento means that things have changed from the ground. Magento 2.0 has a totally new directory structure compared to Magento 1.9 CE (Community Edition). For example, some of the directory files are now grouped under bigger folders. In Magento 1.9, for instance, there were much more separate folders. On the other hand, some of the folders have been removed. The other big change is on the frontend level. Therefore, the organization of files under “design” and “frontend” folder has also been changed in order to simplify the files’ structure. The screenshot below illustrates some of the file structure changes brought by Magento 2.0:

 

2. Improved Performance

Magento 2.0 brings many improvements that will affect webshops’ performance. One of them is full-page caching. As you know, in the previous Magento versions (also CE 1.9) full-page caching was mostly used as Magento extension besides the existing Magento functionality. Its purpose was to significantly speed up page load time. Less time for page loading means better webshop ranking, which also contributes to increased sales conversions. And so on. In Magento 2.0, full-page caching is a built-in feature. It is available for both Magento 2.0 Community and Magento 2.0 Enterprise edition. Built-in full-page caching excludes database calls when a user comes to the site; in fact, very few file systems initiate a call to return the page to the user, making the page loading faster.

 

3. Different and grouped menu

Besides other major improvements between the new Magento 2.0 and Magento 1.9 CE (Community Edition), there is a brand new Admin Panel. Firstly, it is visually different, which is obvious from the first login. Comparing it to the previous version, new Admin Panel has a totally different menu structure. Most of the menu items are re-grouped under new menus. For example, creating newsletters is now under the “Marketing” menu. Logically, all the things related to activities that aim to promote the webshop are now under this menu. On the other hand, the “Reports” tab sums all categories relatively similar to those in Magento 1.9 CE, though some of the sub-menus are rearranged to other categories.

 

4. Improved checkout process

One of the most painful processes for online shopping is checkout. Many website owners know that a simple and fast checkout leads to more purchases and, therefore, provides more revenue. With Magento 2.0 we can surely expect a better checkout process. After choosing a desired product (product detail page), users go to checkout / cart, fill their contact details and automatically proceed to the next step. This next step is, actually, account verification. The verification is confirmed once an email is sent to user. In this way, users save their time instead of pestering with more than one step for completing the checkout process. Magento 2.0 system also remembers customer login, so additional passwords are not needed for account verification. Shopping can be done coming as a guest user, while the account is made during pre-population of necessary checkout fields (details are saved after the checkout).

 

5.  Improved UX for admins/merchants

Compared to Magento 1.9 CE, new Magento 2.0 admin is made to be used on touchable laptops, but also tablets and smartphones. In the era of mobile and portable device, ecommerce doesn’t lose its way to achieve the best possible results. The main idea was that merchant and other admin users can access the dashboard from every device and make quality changes anytime. Since most of the work is to import and export products, Magento 2.0 is made to save 100k records in just 25 minutes.

All in all, the first impression is that Magento 2.0 is really different comparing it to Magento 1.9 or other Magento 1.x versions. The most important things for both developers and merchants is that:

• Magento 2.0 is expected to work much faster (and on every device)

• Developers have a more structured directory with grouped files and, therefore, easier access to files

• Checkout process is simplified, which is good to  avoid shopping cart abandonment

• The framework is much improved for both backend and frontend development

• Quality code and improved coding standards are also a big advantage of Magento 2.0

We are prepared to brand new Magento 2.0. If you have any particular questions or specific requests based on the above mentioned improvements, feel free to contact us. We’ll be glad to start exploring full Magento 2.0 potential with you.