Introduction to Magento Versions
In this article, we will see an outline of Magento Versions. Magento is an extremely popular and powerful e-commerce platform. For your information, it is open-source and created employing PHP.
There are 2 versions of Magento:
- Magento 1
- Magento 2
Magento 1 is the first version of Magento while Magento 2 is the second as well as the latest version. Note that support for Magento 1 will end in 2020. Many prominent websites are powered by Magento. There exists a large community of Magento developers currently. This platform is extremely flexible as well as customizable. Magento leverages the Zend Framework. Magento 1 was released in 2008 and seven years later i.e in 2015 Magento 2 was released.
Features of Magento Versions
Below are the features of Magento Versions:
1. Magento 1
Many e-commerce sites are still powered by Magento 1. It is a familiar platform for many people and businesses. However, the trend today is to migrate Magento 1 powered online stores to Magento 2 powered e-commerce sites. Nevertheless, Magento 1 has some valuable features for enterprises of varying sizes as well as domains.
- Responsive Web Designs: There exists a responsive design theme for Magento 1’s default theme. It is easier to set up responsive e-commerce websites. All consumers browsing the site obtain a consistent brand experience on whatever device used. There is also a significant benefit of higher search rankings.
- Global Trading Friendly: There exist many enterprises who run e-commerce sites from different locations around the globe. Magento 1 offers them a useful feature which is price consistency in global trade. Pricing is clutter-free as well as accurate. The tax structure which is usually different in different nations is simplified so that you need to pay the same price despite tax variations.
- Search Engine Optimization Functionality: The user gets access to a plethora of SEO tools
They are mentioned below:
- Auto-generated site map
- Integrated google Site map
- Moderated reviews
- Product tags
Magento 1 is pretty strong in terms of SEO features. Hence the sites powered by Magento 1 rank higher. The result is more visitors as well as more revenue for various enterprises.
- Watertight Security: Magento 1 has a wide range of security features specifically designed to fend off various security threats. There is an exclusion of the ‘.swf’ file, improved file system defenses as well as cross-site scripting to bolster the level of security of the online store.
- Checkout and Shipping Feature: It is convenient to checkout as well as get delivery of orders for customers. This feature is intuitive as well as user-friendly. It is well organized and pretty accurate so as to avoid confusion and errors. On offer is seamless payment gateway integration, single-page checkout, shipping function integration as well as a host of other useful features.
- Order Management Feature: Thanks to the well-designed and rigorously tested admin panel, various enterprises can conveniently view, modify as well as create the respective orders. Useful features include printing of respective invoices, generating shipping labels and others. Enterprises can avail of facilities such as shipments, multiple invoices, customization of the order status and more.
- Catalog Management Feature: The success of an online store is determined by good quality catalog management. Magento 1 offers myriad features to facilitate superior catalog management. They include the facility of sharing of company products on various social media websites, dynamic determination of price, unlimited product attributes and others.
2. Magento 2
It is recommended that you migrate your site to Magento 2 at the earliest. Not only is Magento 2 superior to Magento 1, the current support to Magento 1 will cease very soon. We will take a look at the many features of Magento 2.
- Product Videos: There is native support for including product videos from YouTube. So, you can market your products better which will lead to a superior impact on the consumers as well as generate a greater amount of revenues.
- Customer Segmentation: You can craft personalized and tailored shopping experiences to your valued customers. This is achieved by dynamically displaying promotions as well as content to customers. The order history, wish list items are taken into account. Even unknown website visitors can be targeted based on factors such as items in the cart, the products viewed as well as other important parameters.
- Superior Navigation: The latest version of Magento has an admin interface that is less cluttered when compared to the older version of Magento. There are better organizations of menus making it easier to locate the pages as well as functionalities. Administrators are more productive thanks to better navigation.
- Ajax Cart: In Magento 2, products are added to the visitor’s shopping cart for which the entire page needs not be loaded as was earlier done in Magento 1. Ajax Cart feature is leveraged for this purpose. It is a built-in feature of the latest version of Magento. Shoppers get a better shopping experience encouraging them to buy from the site as well as return to the site for more purchases. The result is increased traffic and revenue for the online store.
- Quicker Search Feature: Visitors can locate desired products with greater efficiency and speed. The search features are a generation ahead when benchmarked against Magento 1. Better search features result in a superior shopping experience for customers. The result is enhanced traffic as well as revenues for the enterprise.
- Superior Data Filtering: A novel feature is the data grid view. Here you can customize the attributes as per the requirement. Hence the interfaces are better organized. The valuable feature aids in visualizing the data in a better manner.
- Multiple Admins Feature: The drawback of Magento 1 was that it allowed only a single admin at a time. With the latest version of Magento, multiple administrators can work on product details at the same time. This is useful for larger enterprises that have vast catalogs as well as multiple administrators.
Conclusion
Now that you know the features of both the versions of Magento, you are in a better position to make a decision on which version to use. For the short term, Magento 1 may be better while for the long term Magento 2 might be a better choice.
Recommended Articles
This is a guide to Magento Versions. Here we discuss the introduction to magento versions with different features of magento versions in a descriptive way. You can also go through our suggested articles to learn more –
