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As many of you will know firsthand, migrating to a new eCommerce platform is a major project that impacts every area of business, from marketing to management to the tech team and external suppliers. For that reason, it is often something that we try and put it off as long as possible. However, if you are a marketer then you might actually look forward to the migration from Magento 1 to Magento 2 due to some of the fantastic new specs it has to offer.
If you are a marketer then you might actually look forward to the migration from Magento 1 to Magento 2 due to some of the fantastic new specs it has to offer.
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When it comes to eCommerce platforms, most features are made with sole customers in mind… and rightfully so! However, from generating better user engagement to more out of the box SEO features, we think Magento has released version 2 with marketers in mind.
New Interface For Admins
A big part of Magento 2’s allure was updated and revamped admin interface, and let me tell you now, the new design has not disappointed. It features a much cleaner design which eliminates a lot of the previous “visual noise” that Magento 1 had to offer. On the new Magento 2 interface, you will now find the menu bar is featured on the left-hand side of the display making it similar to other popular CMS options and therefore a lot easier to follow. There is also the option to manage how Google displays your content directly from the Magento 2 dashboard and no extensions are needed to do so. Last but not least, it also takes a lot less time to add a new product to Magento 2. Simply type in the category name and away you go!
Better Customer Engagement With ‘Email A Friend’
The new ‘Email A Friend’ feature now allows shoppers to share a product with a recipient of their choice with just the click of a button when on a product page. The button can also be customised to coincide with your brand identity making it look part of the web design. A final big positive of the ‘Email a Friend’ feature is being able to fight the dreaded spam mail by limiting the number of email recipients and products that can be shared on a per-hour basis.
To set up the “email a friend” feature on your website, follow the below steps:
Admin > Sidebar > Stores > Settings > Configuration > Catalog > Email to a Friend
The New And Improved Marketplace
Shortly after the release of Magento 2, Magento opened up “Magento Marketplace”. Fortunately for us marketers, this resource is now carefully vetted. In the past, you had to worry about the quality of third-party plugins which live deep in the Magento ecosystem. Now, since the update, the marketplace has a strict order in one place where buyers and sellers can both benefit from the upgrade in extension quality.
SEO Features
Fortunately for marketers, Magento 2 added a handful of features that make it much easier to optimise page elements. For example, the feature ‘Fields Auto-Generation’ allows you to set templates and apply metadata to products on a global level saving you a lot of time tediously editing each meta description. Additionally, Magento 2 gives you the flexibility to edit directly from the admin page such as when generating an XML sitemap in the configuration settings.
However, the Magento 2 SEO feature which we think is the most beneficial, is the ‘Microdata Integration’ feature. With this new feature, you can forget adding schema or JSON-LD code to products manually, it now marks up new products automatically. Pretty cool right? Although this is still done on a fairly basic level.
Faster And Easier Checkout
Magento 2 is battling cart abandonments upfront by allowing shoppers to check out as a ‘guest’ avoiding long-winded account sign-ups which were a huge barrier to purchase previously. If you are worried about the impact of guest checkouts on the number of website subscribers you will collect, then don’t be – guests can still create an account by simply clicking a box during the checkout process. Additionally, handing over an email address is commonplace in order to complete a purchase so plenty of data is still being collected to aid those nifty email marketing campaigns.
The checkout process on Magento 2 also loads product images in the order summary, automatically loads shipping rates and delivery options when a shopper inputs their address and lastly, Magento 2 now includes an option to indicate that your billing address is the same as your shipping address. Simple right!
Integration With Google
As a marketer, you probably use Google Tag Manager to handle your third-party UMTS. With the new Magento 2 integration, you can speed up websites and streamline your workflow by adding the Tag Manager code directly to the Magento Admin. However, this feature is out of the box only with the Magento enterprise version. If you are running the community version of Magento then you will have to find a third-party extension from the marketplace, add in the Tag Manager code to your dashboard, and simply enable the feature.
Google Universal Analytics
Administrators have benefitted from Magento’s analytics integration for a long time now, but Magento 2 has introduced us to some new features.
The ‘new products’ section now tracks product impressions, add-to-cart clicks and product clicks. Your data is more granulated than ever before so in short, every single event between the homepage and confirmation page is now included allowing you can set up conversions to your heart’s content.
Magento 2 also includes Adwords conversion tracking. Adwords configuration settings can be found in “Store View”, so you can still edit tracking configuration differently based on each version of your store. Additionally, you can set conversion amounts to be dynamic or constant dependant on the nature of your business.
Out Of The Box Full Page Caching
Another awesome feature is full page cache (FPC) capabilities. This feature used to only be of use to Magento enterprise users but thanks to Magento 2 it’s now an out of the box feature. Better yet, you can easily integrate Varnish, an HTTP accelerator designed for dynamic sites delivering a lot of different content.
Magento 2 Websites Are Responsive By Default
Yes, that’s right, Magento 2 websites are fully responsive on all platforms by default. This is especially important given Google’s journey towards a mobile-first index. What is more, is the admin panel in the backend of Magento 2 is highly responsive, so if it comes down to it, you can work directly on your smartphone…Say what?!