What Magento Commerce 2.4.2 Has in Store for Merchants in 2021?

Although 2020 has been a challenging year for one and all, the eCommerce industry has witnessed substantial growth because of increased online shopping. The year 2020 has compelled many businesses to go online to ensure continuity of their business during and post-COVID era. As customers are relying more on digital commerce to stay safe during the ongoing global pandemic, it has become essential for eCommerce businesses and developers to keep pace with current eCommerce platforms. Magento eCommerce platform is the first choice of many eCommerce developers and enterprises because of the countless benefits the platform offers. Being a leading Magento eCommerce development company, we keep an eye on all the latest updates and trends in the Magento world to deliver future-ready Magento solutions. The latest update of Magento is here – Magento Commerce 2.4.2 which comes with new features, security, and performance enhancements.

Adobe has already rolled out Magento Commerce 2.4.2 version along with security-only patches 2.3.6-p1 and 2.4.1-p1 to strengthen its security, boost performance, and provide advanced tools for online merchants and retailers to prepare for the continued eCommerce growth. If you need to upgrade to the latest version of Magento Commerce, you may hire Magento 2 developers from us for the required Magento 2 support.

How Can Magento Commerce 2.4.2 Help Merchants?

Magento Commerce 2.4.2 version will help merchants to explore more eCommerce opportunities with enhancements to B2B purchase approvals, extended support for PWA and GraphQL, and improvements to boost Magento’s Page Builder and Media Gallery performance and developer experience.

If you’ve indulged in Magento eCommerce development, then here are some of the improvements brought by Magento Commerce 2.4.2 version that you need to consider:

1. Better B2B Purchase Approvals and Headless Commerce

Magento 2.4.2 now supports online payments to enhance the B2B purchase approvals experience which earlier supported just offline payments. This gives flexibility to merchants to accept purchasing policies irrespective of payment methods and customers can use the same, hassle-free approval process for all orders.

Magento Commerce 2.4.2 also comes with new GraphQL APIs such as Company Credit and Requisition Lists that provide support to crucial B2B use cases to implement headless commerce.

2. Enhanced Ecommerce Storefront Performance and Content Management

Initially introduced in Magento 2.4 version, the new Media gallery now comes with an Image Optimization feature. When this feature will be enabled, the storefront will make use of a web-optimized version of an image instead of the large-size, high-resolution version stored in the Media Gallery. This will lead to the creation of a smaller image file without changing the original one to improve storefront performance and shopping experience.

The Media Gallery also supports an Access Control List in the Admin panel to help merchants to define user permissions for access to the Media Gallery and control user actions. This enhancement allows designers and Magento 2 development companies to gain access to the Magento instance and manage assets in the system directly without requiring merchants to expose their data.

Another improvement has been done to the Page Builder. The Page Builder now allows users to preview content for desktop and mobile views. Furthermore, improvements have been made to reduce the effort of developers in migrating content to the Page Builder and customizing Page Builder CSS.

3. Introduction of PWA Studio for Quick Time-to-Market and Reduced Cost of Ownership

The PWA Studio facilitates faster time to market and lower cost of ownership for Progressive Web Application development. PWA Studio provides support for multiple languages and currencies which helps in launching international websites as high-performing PWAs.

The latest PWA Studio updates come with new Venia components that cover “My Account” to boost up launches, as well as extensibility and performance improvements that can drastically improve the developer as well as buyer experience. You may refer to all the updates in the PWA Studio release notes for more information.

4. Introduction of In-Product Guidance to Ensure Faster Time-to-Value

This is another amazing benefit that you can leverage if you invest in Magento 2 development services. Magento Commerce 2.4.2 version has introduced the concept of In-Product Guidance. This concept offers highly responsive, scalable, and personalized in-product experiences to help users explore and engage with essential product features and value paths. All these experiences boost time to value and enable customers to become self-served power users quickly.

If you’re thinking about how in-product experiences can help, then here are some examples that will signify their importance. Creating an in-product experience can help increase awareness of new features, enable new customers to quickly onboard, or guide the existing user on how to use high-value, under-used features.

In-product Guidance feature is accessible to Magento Commerce merchants running their stores on 2.4.2 or later and requires users to opt-in to Admin Usage Tracking. This option comes enabled already for many customers. In case it is not enabled, or if customers are not sure, then they can adjust the setting in the Admin UI under Stores.

Go to Admin UI -> Stores -> Configuration -> Advanced -> Admin -> Admin Usage.

If you’re less confident about the technical stuff, you may hire Magento 2 developers for reliable Magento 2 support services.

5. Enhancements to Platform Quality and Performance

Magento Commerce 2.4.2 version brings many enhancements to the platform quality and performance that eventually enhance the developer and the merchant experience. Some of the significant improvements include:

VBE improvements cover the following – Introduction of Buy Now Pay Later Functionality by Braintree, dotdigital offers transactional SMS messages, and Vertex provides support for commodity codes for shipping in and out of global locations.

Furthermore, companies with significantly larger catalogs and multiple stores can benefit from the improved scalability thanks to the enhanced API performance and Admin response time that provides support to stores with large, complex catalogs.

Additionally, Cloud now supports remote storage solutions with AWS S3 support to offer opportunities for saving on costs and optimization of infrastructure.

Besides, more than 280 functional quality issues have been resolved covering all existing issues from 2.4.1.

Looking Forward to New Updates and Announcements in Q1

1. The New Upgrade Compatibility Tool

Currently in Alpha, the new Upgrade Compatibility Tool compares your current production version of Magento Commerce with a newly released version to analyze the compatibility of existing custom modules. This makes the entire upgrade process more transparent and reliable.

The compares any two Magento Commerce 2.x versions and generates a detailed report of issues and warnings associated with the compatibility of custom code as well as an estimated complexity score for the seamless upgrade process.

However, the Upgrade Compatibility Tool will undergo further improvements based on the feedback given by users.

2. Split Database Deprecation

It has been announced that the Split Database scalability solution for Magento Commerce merchants has been marked as deprecated. This functionality will be removed from the core code with the release of Magento Commerce 2.5.

3. PHP 7.3 End of Support Coming Soon

For more information, you may refer to the details of the full 2021 release calendar of Magento.

Wrapping Up

So, these are the new improvements and enhancements brought by the Magento Commerce 2.4.2 version. As a next-gen Magento eCommerce development company, we keep pace with the latest updates and trends in the Magento 2 development world to deliver future-ready Magento 2 solutions for our global clients. If you’re looking for futuristic Magento eCommerce solutions, you hire Magento 2 developers from us at affordable rates.

Frequently Asked Question

Q.1. Why should I move to Magento 2?

If you want to build an eCommerce store with more features and scope for greater scalability and customization, then Magento 2 development is the best choice. Magento 2 provides improved features that make it an ideal solution for more complex businesses, provided if you have the technical knowledge or hire Magento 2 developers.

Q.2. What technology is used by Magento?

Magento uses the PHP programming language, MySQL or MariaDB relational database management system, and elements of the Zend Framework. It is based on the conventions of object-oriented programming and the model–view–controller architecture.

Q.3. Can you help me migrate to Magento 2 from a different eCommerce platform?

Yes, of course. You can hire Magento 2 developers for fast and reliable Magento 2 migration or any other sort of Magento 2 support services.

Have More Questions? Feel Free to Ask Our Magento 2 Experts Right Away!