10 Reasons to Switch to Magento 2.0

Since June 2020, support for the first version of Magento has officially ceased, shifting focus entirely to Magento 2.0. Over the past year, numerous webshop owners have made the transition to the latest version or popular alternatives like Shopware. If your webshop is still running on the old Magento and you’re curious about what Magento 2.0 has to offer, we’ve compiled the 10 most important reasons for you!

#1 Responsive Web Design in Magento 2.0

Like most modern website and webshop builders, Magento 2.0 offers full support for responsive web design. The default theme is already fully responsive, making your Magento webshop accessible on various devices, from computers to tablets and mobile phones. This is crucial, considering the significant rise in mobile device purchases nowadays.

The availability of diverse themes for Magento 2.0 has grown consistently in the last few years. At the time of writing, there are thousands of different themes available, catering to general purposes or tailored specifically to certain types of webshops. Popular responsive themes for Magento 2.0 include Porto, Market, Infinit, Ultimo, Claue, and Expert.

#2 Security: Support for Magento 1 is Ending

With several structural adjustments, Magento 2.0 has become much more secure. The new “pub” folder is a significant contributing factor to this improved security. Now, the root of Magento is only accessible through this folder and not via http requests. This enhancement enables developers to protect the code more easily and efficiently against various security vulnerabilities. Consequently, applying security updates has become smoother, resulting in quicker implementation within your shop.

Ensuring security is particularly important when it comes to Magento 2.0, as support for Magento 1 has already ended. This means that no security patches for older Magento versions are available anymore. Continuing to run your webshop on Magento 1.9 therefore poses significant risks, especially since Magento’s popularity and open-source nature make it a prime target for hackers. The consequences of a hack can be severe, ranging from stolen passwords to customer data being compromised.

#3 Improved File Structure and New Techniques

Magento 2.0 has seen substantial changes in its file structure. In this version, all basic views have been shifted to the module structure. Each module now has its own view directory, allowing you to access all template, layout, JS, and CSS/Less files from different modules. This alteration significantly simplifies the lives of developers creating customised Magento themes.

While the techniques used in Magento 1 are outdated and far from exciting, Magento 2.0 embraces the latest coding standards, including the newest versions of PHP and JavaScript. This enables you to create responsive themes with visually appealing effects with ease and greatly enhances your webshop’s performance.

#4 Visual Design Editor

A significant change for webshop owners is the new Visual Design Editor (VDE) in Magento 2.0. This feature empowers you to make easy, entirely visual adjustments to your theme using “drag and drop” right within the CMS. This newfound functionality reduces your dependency on web developers, something many webshop owners have reason to celebrate!

#5 CSS Preprocessing

To facilitate the extension and maintenance of CSS for developers, Magento 2.0 offers standard CSS preprocessing. Using a CSS preprocessor accelerates frontend development, particularly when working with complex themes. Magento 2.0 comes with Less as the default CSS preprocessor, but developers can also utilise Sass or Compass.

#6 Magento 2.0 UI Library and Interface

Magento 2.0 boasts a flexible front-end library with nearly all basic elements found in the Magento 2.0 frontend. All these elements are customizable to your preferences, allowing developers to quickly adapt existing themes or create new ones.

Enhanced User-Friendliness
A standout feature of Magento 2’s new interface is the improved user-friendliness. The menu now naturally separates system management from shop management. Shop management includes menu items like Products, Marketing, and Content, while Configuration, Tax Rules, and General Terms can be found under System Management.

Magento 2.0 has also made shop management more user-friendly. For instance, creating or modifying a product within your shop is now much simpler thanks to the significantly improved layout.

#7 Improved Speed and Searchability

Speed Enhancement
Improving speed is a topic that excites us, and Magento 2.0 has dedicated significant attention to this aspect. Notable improvements include how module interface elements are managed directly by the modules themselves, making themes lighter (and thus faster). The Magento 2.0 core also operates with fewer and lighter elements, resulting in a significant speed boost.

Furthermore, Magento 2.0 has integrated Varnish to reduce server load significantly, and Full Page Caching is easily accessible. The benefits are immediately noticeable, with pages loading 25 percent faster on average. In addition the wait time for adding a product to the shopping cart has halved, leading to a positive impact on the number of orders.

Search Engine Friendly
Magento 2.0 includes additional features for search engine settings, making it even easier to find your shop online. Notably, you can set a ‘default setup’ that showcases how all your products will appear in search engines. You can customise this for each product to suit your preferences. Other useful functionalities for marketers include the customizable robots.txt file and the presence of an XML sitemap for images. Additionally, Speak provides a range of additional SEO extensions. Read more about SEO for Magento.

#8 Automatic Testing

A brand-new feature in Magento 2.0 is the flawless testing framework tailored for performance. It includes around 2600 integration tests, 7700 unit tests, 100 JavaScript unit tests, and 100 static tests to ensure stability. Additionally, developers have the option to create their own tests to maximise the chances of success during the live launch.

#9 Growing Number of Magento 2.0 Extensions

Over six years since its launch, the available extensions for Magento 2.0 have significantly increased, with thousands of extensions awaiting you. This wide array of extensions includes highly sought-after additions such as Mageworks SEO Suite, Amasty Improved Layered Navigation, Amasty Special Promotions, and Mageplaza Magento Blog Extension. With these extensions, Magento 2.0 webshops can benefit from countless additional functionalities.

#10 Magento 2.0 and Business-to-Business (B2B)

Magento 2.0 is also an excellent option for B2B platforms. It comes equipped with various functionalities for:

– Account Management: Allowing you to create different roles and accounts within the main account.
– Quote Handling.
– Special Assortments and Order Lists.
– Setting Credit Limits.

In addition, Magento 2.0 enables the use of SKU numbers and reordering from previous orders through Magento Commerce for online purchases.

Not yet using Magento 2.0?

With support for the first version of Magento coming to an end, it’s clear that Magento 2.0 is the one version to consider. Thanks to the aforementioned reasons, it is a valuable successor to the original and an excellent choice for your webshop.

While there are still some using the old version, we advise webshop owners to transition to Magento 2.0 as soon as possible. Alternatively, you may choose a different path and opt for other webshop software. One suitable candidate, for instance, is the German platform Shopware, which has been gaining popularity since its launch in 2004. In this article, you can compare Shopware vs Magento 2.0. to find the similarities and differences between the two.

Regardless of your choice, the future looks promising for Magento 2.0. Not only has it been acquired by Adobe, but the number of extensions, themes, and updates continues to grow. Now, it is even possible to offer products via Progressive Web Apps. We are genuinely excited about all the news Magento has in store and are here to help you make the most out of your webshop.

Visit our Magento page to learn more about Magento 2.0 hosting and explore our offerings.