What’s New in Magento 2.4.2? Features and Benefits for online stores

The widespread effects of the covid epidemic have pushed more people into making their purchases online. Additionally, it provides prospects for shop owners and merchants, and adds a direct dose of buzz to the growth of eCommerce websites. The Magento platform is ideal for creating an eCommerce website because of how simple it is to administer the website. Furthermore, it is feature-rich, open-source, and free. Users’ expectations of eCommerce websites are rising, thus the underlying platform must evolve to accommodate them. This will improve both the store’s functionality and the customer experience. With the introduction of version 2.4.2, Adobe has provided merchants and shop owners with a tool to increase Magento store sales and supplement Magento online store development. This article will discuss all about new features of Magento 2.4.2. 

Updated Search Engine

Whenever a person visits an online store, they have the option to utilise a search engine. To provide a positive buying experience for your users, you must optimise their search functionality.

To use Magento 2.4.2, you’ll need to install Elasticsearch on your server, as the latest version of Magento no longer relies on MySQL for its support and maintenance.

Your current hosting provider may not support Elasticsearch, which may increase the price of developing your eCommerce website.

You can hire magento developers if you don’t know how to do this. 

Updates in Media Gallery and More Secure Admin Account

Here we have additional UI enhancements, but this time they’re for the Administrator.

Your Magento Admin account is even more protected with two-factor authentication. The process is conventionally the same with 2FA-enabled services. The second tier of security involves the delivery of a system-generated code to the user. Your store’s admin may now search, filter, and sort photographs much more quickly than in earlier versions of the platform thanks to the redesigned Media Gallery. And according to Magento, it can “perform up to 30 times quicker.”

Photos are a powerful marketing tool. If you streamline the process of working with photographs, your e-Commerce store’s sales process will increase in speed and effectiveness.

In addition, samples of stock images may be accessed from the Media Gallery itself thanks to the new integration with Adobe Stock.

You might say that Adobe is trying to expand the market for its stock photography offerings. It’s excellent for business, and some customers may like this added convenience. It’s best to consult with Magento Development Company to know how you can utilise this new update for your benefit. 

Assistance for Sellers

Your support staff may now rapidly log in to the website as the consumer directly from the Magento admin thanks to the new seller-assisted shopping feature introduced in Magento 2.4.2.

• They’ll aid shoppers in locating the items they’re looking for.
• Help them through the process of configuring a certain function.
• With their in-store expertise, they can even walk the buyer through the bespoke features that will make the most sense to them.
• They will wow clients by efficiently processing orders and providing quotations, saving valuable time for both parties.
• The administrative work, such as adding customers and establishing approval policies, may be handled by them as well.

This is the most significant feature for businesses, especially those who provide online service. 

Purchase Approval Process only for Magento E-Commerce

This new feature allows businesses to better manage their budgets by establishing purchase-specific approval processes.

They can do this by establishing order-based SKU limits, shipping cost thresholds, and other criteria that trigger approval procedures. Consider a scenario in which the Purchasing Manager must approve any order that exceeds $5,000 or 10 unique stock keeping units. Through the use of a Purchase Approval Workflow, this may be automated with little effort.

It is possible to have many approvers, all of whom will be alerted when their permission is required. There is a simple interface where approvers may log in, see purchase orders, and make decisions about whether or not to approve them.

In addition, purchasers are alerted at key points in the buying process, thus increasing the transaction’s openness. A magento development company can aid you in utilising this feature easily.  

Other General Updates

Other than Elasticsearch, Magento 2.4 also has other platform updates that developers should be aware of.

These are all specified in the technologies needed for Magento 2.4.

Specifically, Magento 2.4 now works with the newest versions of PHP (PHP 7.4) and the MySQL database (MySQL 8.0) due to the significant speed, security, and dependability enhancements introduced in these releases.

This exemplifies Magento’s dedication to making its platform responsive to the needs of cutting-edge technologies.

Upgrade in PWA Technology

The use of PWA technology in online commerce keeps growing. Magento has upgraded PWA Studio to version 7.0.0 in an effort to streamline the PWA development process. Conversion rates might be increased with the aid of PWAs because of their dependable and simple to comprehend mobile user flow.

PWA Studio has been upgraded with new features, refactors, and enhancements such as:

• Improved visual presentation of shops in Venia;
• Web sites specifically designed for making a purchase;
• Website page dedicated solely to confirming purchases;
• Common practices when using dialogue boxes.

Optimization in Performance and and Infrastructure

In addition to the aforementioned enhancements, the move of core Braintree integration to a Vendor Bundled Extension further enhances the shopper experience. With the new version, users may make purchases using their preferred mobile payment system, such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, or Venmo, and can also take use of previously saved information in their web browser to complete their purchases even quicker.

There have also been enhancements to infrastructure and other performances, like as

The shopping cart page has been optimised, and there are now more opportunities for automation thanks to the new Composer Upgrade Plugin, and the page load times have been reduced thanks to the use of Redis optimization.

Conclusion

If your e-commerce platform is still based on Magento 1, you must upgrade to the most recent version, which is Magento 2.4.2. The reason for this is that the previous version of Magento is no longer supported and has become obsolete. You can hire magento developers to do so without any hassle. If your store is running on Magento 2, you can continue using it. However, make sure to consult with the  Magento development company to know when you should upgrade and how you should do it.