01202 237370
Thanks to the busy Magento developers, Magento Marketplace has just been launched to replace Connect as the official Magento extension store and we thought we should offer our feedback on the new design and functionality, so here goes…
The first thing to note about Magento Marketplace is the less cluttered and more simplistic look and feel when compared to its predecessor. The design is clean and we feel a definite aesthetic improvement.
The functionality is led by search but with much-improved browse capability and curated sections for featured partners, extensions and developers. This is a good opportunity for extension developers to be discovered and for store owners to find popular, recommended and useful extensions quickly.
Searching on Magento Connect has always been a poor experience and quite often searches returned largely irrelevant results. The new search functionality seems to be much smarter and returns far more relevant results for the user. The results filters are useful and well placed and although currently only Magento 2 extensions can be searched for, the option is there for version one to be added at a later date which we’ll hope to see activated soon.
It’s been reported that Magento will be reducing the number of extensions available for each functionality or category in order to streamline the selection process for store owners. While it’s true that this will reduce the number of extensions for store owners to search through, it will, at the same time make it difficult for some developers to share their work. The overall result of this change should, however, mean a marketplace with fewer extensions but of a much higher quality.
It’s unfortunately not all positivity though and the news that Magento is looking to take a commission from developers for all sold extensions will no doubt lead to an increase in extension prices across the marketplace.