Magento 2.4: What’s New?

The global pandemic, COVID-19, has marked some visible shifts in customer and merchant behavior. Many B2B businesses are favoring the initiative to shift to online shopping at an accelerated rate and are most likely to keep going with this shift.  Likewise, consumers are switching to the online experience; they get to shop directly from the comfort, and now safety, of their homes. Now, for Magento that’s great. But what wouldn’t be great, if the merchant is unable to prepare themselves for the future commerce landscape. Which is why 2.4 gives a much needed stability in this unprecedented rough time.

Let’s explore some of the highlights of what Magento 2.4 has in store for its users.

Seller Assisted Shopping

The road to digital commerce can be bumpy if not transitioned on to smoothly, which is why Magento 2.4 equips you with the Seller Assisted Shopping feature. You can now effortlessly tap into your customer’s buying experience, by permitting your customer service/sales representatives to login on behalf of your customer via Magento Admin. This is not only a great way to provide effectively incomparable customer service but it will also increase customer engagement.

Seller Assisted Shopping can help when your sales rep troubleshoot or walk your customer through any custom functionality. It is always an extra advantage wherever the customer’s time can be saved, so use this feature to trigger their orders and quotes or manage administrative tasks.

Improved GraphQL

Magento 2 GraphQL can be interpreted as data query language equivalent to REST and SOAP web APIs in front-end development. Magento 2.4 improves GraphQL by promoting a microservice architecture producing the following:

• Assist In-Store pick up with the pickupLocations query
• Extract categories listed within a specified filter with the categories query
• Help a signed-in user add products from a previous order into their cart with the reorderItems query

Content-Driven Experience

With a new Media Gallery, the admin has a searchable interface making it much less complicated to view, preview, and analyze – basically, use content altogether. This feature successfully cuts down your time spent on inviting customers while creating the perfect content driven experience.  Adobe Stock integration revives asset management.

PWA Made Quick and Easy

Progressive Web Application (PWA), fuses apps and features of the web, defeating the call for new apps. Give customers the ease in flow while browsing store pages without reloads. Magento 2 PWA owes this accomplishment to the following features:

• Peregrine Hooks library
• Venia Components
• Modularity
• Project Scaffolding
• Extensive GraphQL support
• Extensibility Discovery with Marketplace support
• Setup enhancements

PURCHASE APPROVAL WORKFLOWS

Magento 2.4 also comprises of a new approval workflow feature. You are offered a new opportunity to less complicate your approval processes with a simple form. Characterize approval rules depending on shipping costs, SKU quantities or order value. Each rule can further be associated to specific roles or can also specify multiple approvers.

 Approval workflows encourage the ability to serve oneself, enabling you to manage rapid deliveries and comfortable ordering while preserving conventional spending controls. This is nothing short from an ideal blend for your business’s growth.

Platform Performance

Fast, secure and most definitely reliable are all vital needs that will never be out of demand. Magento 2.4 encompasses enhancements to better its performance, security and quality. A few such enhancements have been listed below, just to give you an idea of what to expect.

• Admin portal requires two-factor authentication
• Migration to Vendor Bundled Extension
• Scalability improvements allow you to handle greater traffic without compromising performance
• Quicker cart and checkout
• Composer Update Plugin converts many manual upgrades to automatic updates
• Lasting compliance and security with improved technology stack requirements

Of course the enhancements aren’t limited to the above. Magento 2.4 embraces 68 bug fixes, 98 new features, 50 security changes, and 12 packages & extensions.