Top 11 Reasons to Upgrade to Magento 2.4

Magento is the leader of open-source commerce innovations in the eCommerce industry worldwide. With the announcement of Magento 1 EOL in June 2020, many merchants chose to perform the Magento 2.4 upgrade. However, the industry is still filled with many businesses who are skeptical about Magento 2.4. If this is your case;  this article is just the read for you. We are here to give you ample reasons to upgrade to Magento 2.4 and higher.

1. Magento 1 EOL
2. Platform Upgrades
3. Infrastructural Improvements
4. Changes in Payment Mechanisms
5. Performance Enhancers
6. New Media Gallery
7. Inventory Management
8. Order Approval Workflows
9. Seller-Assisted Shopping
10. Facilitating In-store Pickup
11. Headless Commerce & PWA Development

Now let’s understand these reasons one at a time to gain deeper knowledge on why it is imperative to upgrade to Magento 2.4.

Magento 1 has more than 195,000 live websites and ranked 8th amidst all websites using Open Source technologies across the entire internet. It is a globally trusted brand with a massive clientele. Business owners prefer Magento for their eCommerce business as it has rich built-in features, impressive security capabilities, and overall remarkable performance.

Way back in 2018, Magento announced Mangento1’s end of life. This 12-year-old product was all set to retire officially, and hence there has not been any more official support or updates for Magento 1 after June 30, 2020. Businesses will eventually find it hard to stay on Magento 1 beyond a certain point, and Magento will not provide any more quality fixes for the version. Also, after Magento stops supporting and releasing security patches, eCommerce websites would be prone to cyber-attacks. Finally, extensions might not be compatible with any new updates or patches released to the core platform. So the number one reason still remains Magento 1 EOL.

An Open-Source eCommerce platform is written in PHP. Magento 2.4 supports PHP 7+ versions while including all its features to improve the platform’s core strength. PHP 7.1 and 7.2 are no longer supported. To provide a sophisticated search feature, Elasticsearch 7.6x is the preferred catalog search engine for Magento commerce. However, the MySQL search engine is no longer in action. Default Elasticsearch also supports partial word search. Users can now search for any portion of a word. Although Magento 2.4 supports MySQL 2.4, to experience enhanced performance, security, and reliability, migration to MySQL 8.0 is recommended. Magento does not support Maria DB 10.0 and 10.1 versions of the database. Though Maria DB 10.4 is still supported. Hence it is advisable to upgrade to the same. Finally, the Signified fraud core integration is disabled, but existing Signified users can obtain the extension from the marketplace for free.

For experiencing Magento at its best, the latest version in every feature, code, and extension is vital. The above-mentioned version upgrades are to optimize the store performance, and once you are garnered with the latest version of Magento, i.e., Magento 2.4, the optimized functionalities start to support.

Magento discontinued the option to customize a Magento installation in Magento 2.4, to use a split database. Hence, business owners who are using a split database should switch to a single database. Also, Magento 2.4 contains code updates to improve API performance and Admin response time, helpful in deployments of massive catalogs. Magento 2.4 supports diverse catalogs up to twenty times greater than Magento 1 because of various scalability improvements. Large-scale enterprises can reap the benefits of improved catalogs and can efficiently list more products to sell. Businesses still running on old versions can’t expect to scale unless they migrate to Magento 2.4.

Magento doesn’t support third-party payment methods integrated into the core anymore, including Authorize.Net, Braintree, eWay, CyberSource, and WorldPay. Businesses now need to use official Marketplace extensions. Also, the Paypal Javascript SDK is now updated in Magento 2.4. People will get limited payment getaways with the stores running on Magento 1, which can hinder the shopping experience. This is the reason why Magento 2.4 upgrade is a necessity.

Magento has improved and enhanced logic for invalidating customer data sections. The Redis speed is enhanced in several ways as well as, the size of network data exchanges has shrunk between Redis and Magento. Redis also has a comparatively lesser CPU usage as the adapter’s ability to detect user needs is automatically improved. Race conditions for Redis write operations are also reduced. Redis error logs are created, and interruptions are now better managed.

Instead of caching 16 queries of SQL query results to inventory tables, now there is only one. Rapid add-to-cart performance has been enhanced by twenty-five to thirty percent.

To load images, lazyload can be used. As a result of this, in Magento 2.4, off-screen photos will now be loaded when the view is reached. This will improve the page load times manifolds.

The New Media gallery has shown considerable improvement. The administrator can search, sort, and filter photographs 30X faster than in the previous version. Users will be able to experience an updated user interface with an integrated Adobe Stock.

To support multi-store modes, in-store pickup and bundle products are available.

Magento 2.4 is a flagship upgrade for its B2B capabilities. Magento 2.4 offers a new order approval workflow functionality that allows the Purchase managers in the customer companies to set approval rules for the buyers based on total value, SKUs, shipping costs, and more. These companies can regulate and customize the approval process using a simple form. Purchase managers can create unique approval conditions and incorporate email notifications to the approver at multiple stages of the buying process to approve, comment, or reject the purchase order. It also provides a complete detailed log of all the actions performed during the purchasing process.

B2B businesses can accelerate their business in the current commerce environment by leveraging the seller-assisted shopping feature of Magento 2.4 to drive customer-centric service. Merchants can now login into their eCommerce websites as customers from the Magento Admin and work towards enhancing the user experience. By having access to the buyer’s experience, merchants can help troubleshoot and resolve issues of any part of the buying process, including finding a product, setting up a wishlist, and addressing anything that is not working.

This feature can also give the customers an experience of certain custom functionalities that are only available at the storefront. Merchants can even save on time and effort by creating orders and quotations on the customer’s behalf, handling specific administrative tasks, and setting up approval rules.

Adobe DEI has noticed a surge in the buy-online-pickup-in-store, BOPIS, orders. And with lockdown restrictions easing up across the world, BOPIS orders can be leveraged to bring significant value back to physical stores. This would also increase the average order value, AOV. According to a study, about 85 percent of customers have made additional in-store purchases while picking up their online orders.

The in-store pickup in Inventory Management allows the merchants to select the physical locations eligible for customer pickup. Customers can view the essential store information like location and store hours. Store associates can even notify the customers with a single click about their order status. Furthermore, this applies to curbside pickup, which is another preferred way for many shoppers. These advanced features are available on both Magento Commerce and Magento Open Source Versions.

Adobe was named the global leader in both B2B and B2C commerce suites by Forrester Wave, and one of the shout-outs was the PWA studio. It is not only cost-effective but also has the complexity of adopting PWA, Progressive Web App experiences. As for Magento 2.4, Adobe has released the latest version of PWA Studio. It introduces the new Venia storefront experiences created using Page Builder content types, a full cart, and a checkout workflow. This accelerates implementation. Magento has introduced an extensibility framework to make it convenient to customize and enhance PWA Studio capabilities by either custom development or apps in the Magento Marketplace. As PWA Studio is becoming opera among merchants and developers, Magento is keen on making it faster, easier, and more cost-effective.

Another support expansion that is taking place in Magento 2.4 is for headless commerce. The Venia UI is compatible with the storefront powered by Adobe Experience Manager. This enhances personalized customer experiences while covering Graph QL APIs.

Amidst all these changes, one thing remains constant: Magento prioritizes business owners’ needs to build a profitable eCommerce business. Also, shoppers continue to expect excellent customer experience and a purchasing journey that is secure, fast, and reliable. Let’s quickly wrap up some of the highlights of Magento 2.4.

• Enhanced inventory management and efficient in-store pickup.
• Searching and filtering photos in Adobe Stock gallery thirty times faster leveraging Adobe Stock integration.
• Supporting PWA Studio 6.0.0 and 6.0.1.
• Users can add items to a new cart from a previous cart.
• Better web payments as customers can pay quickly using pre-stored data in the browser.
• Merchants can leverage improved Magento GraphQL APIs to render custom experiences throughout all touchpoints.
• And many more…

If you plan to upgrade your eCommerce store to Magento 2.4 or look for a strategic Digital Commerce Agency to support you in building a Magento store from scratch, Krish will be happy to help you.