Magento & Google News
September was a very busy month for Magento
Magento Open Source 2.2.0 was released for general availability. This release includes numerous functional fixes and enhancements based on feedback from Magento customers over the last few months.
These improvements include a new B2B Module which corrects the issue of supporting the B2B community with one platform while still giving a best in class B2C user experience to which users have become accustomed.
Highlights include:
- Improved Account Management
- Request a Quote with all quotes showing on dashboard and ability to interact with merchant per quote
- Shopping Cart can include comments and documents along with the quote request. All quotes can be viewed from their dashboard. Also, it’s possible to interact with the merchant per quote.
- Custom Catalogs and Price Lists
- Manage Credit Lines – Extending and maintaining credit to customers, all tied into the Account Management features.
- New API’s – Company, Company Credit, Shared Catalog, Quotes and Requisition Lists.
- Additional Tier Prices features from B2B.
- Advanced Reporting previously only available via third party Magento extensions and customization.
- Ability to combine your Magento store data with your Google Analytics Data. This allows for more robust charts and dashboards. You will also have the ability to drill down deeper into the details from one single dashboard for all your KPI’s.
- Signifyd will now be available already integrated into Magento 2.2. Signifyd provides chargeback protection and fraud screening for merchants. This integration is available in all editions.
Benefits of Signifyd:
- Reduction in loss rates: Merchant protection will help to reduce fraud losses significantly.
- Sell more: The Signifyd team has seen some merchants increase their sales 3x or 4x by allowing them to safely serve new markets backed by their strong decision engine and guarantees.
- Reduce costs: And finally, merchants who operate fraud prevention solutions (internal, external, or both) find it quite costly and time-consuming. Merchant protection can remove a significant chunk of the cost.
Platform Technology Updates:
- Ongoing improvements in the technology behind the scenes. The technology stack was updated including removing support for PHP 7.1, Varnish 5, Redis 3.2 and MySQL 5.7.
- Hardened security of the platform, eliminating unserialized calls were removed from all critical performance code and an improved hashing algorithm for all sensitive data.
- Front-End changes to logging for cron & JS exceptions as well as the minimized core for plugins. Magento 2.2 will be in line with WCAG 2.0 and improved pipeline deployment process w
Performance Updates:
- Indexer Improvements – Website visitors, can now interact with the storefront while indexes are executing with no slowness of the site. Indexes will operate in batches to better manage memory and improve run-times.
- Cart Improvements – 300-line items or more are now handled with little to no impact on check out functionality.
- Cache Improvements – Varnish mode “Grace” & “Saint” enabled by default
- The Performance Toolkit has updated profiles and expanded profiles for Bundled & Configurable Products Images & Swatches Attributes. Developers can expect to see up to 14x improvement in the generation.
Magento has responded to the community’s feedback and appears to be giving people what they really want. The new approach to B2B provides numerous opportunities to ecommerce merchants, while the upgraded B2C toolkit will bring better experience to online shoppers.
If these improvements have peaked your interest in upgrading from Magento 1 to Magento 2, give us a shout to see how we might help.
Important Google News
Chrome 62
We finally have a date: Chrome 62 is tentatively set for release on October 24, 2017. As we mentioned back in May, this is a particularly important date for online retailers who have been dragging their feet on adopting SSL. Chrome 62 will extend Google’s effort with the “Not secure” badge scheduled to show up in the URL bar of more HTTP pages. You may recall Chrome 56 began marking HTTP sites with password or credit card fields as “Not secure” in the URL bar. Google is now extending the warning to any HTTP site where user data is entered, including search input fields, newsletter signups, contact forms, login and password fields, checkout, etc. It is worth noting that the badge will not appear in the URL bar until users begin entering information into a non-secure field.
Google’s end goal is to show a “Not secure” warning for all HTTP pages to notify users that their information is not secure, and encourage site owners to ensure more secure pages. The company notes the transition is easier and cheaper than ever, while also allowing for more functionality.
If you need a hand setting up sitewide SSL, don’t hesitate to contact us.
New Products
Google’s second generation family of consumer hardware products include:
- The Pixel 2 Pixel owners get unlimited storage for their photos and videos, and an exclusive preview of Google Lens, which uses AI to give you helpful information about the things around you.
- Google Home Mini brings the Assistant to more places throughout your home with AI-based Smart Sound, Max has the ability to adapt your audio experience to you—your environment, context, and preferences.
- Pixelbook is the first laptop with the Assistant built in, and the Pixelbook Pen makes the whole experience even smarter.
- Pixel Buds combine Google smarts, the best digital sound, and they’ll even help you communicate in a different language.
- Daydream View brings comfort and simplicity to the virtual reality (VR) headset
- Google Clips captures genuine, spontaneous moments—all powered by machine learning and AI. This tiny camera seamlessly sends clips to your phone, and even edits and curates them for you.
The best part of these products is the ability across all these devices to interact with the Google Assistant any way you want.
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