There is no doubt that Magento is one of the best e-commerce platforms in the world. Every year, the platform sees massive improvements through the combined efforts of the Magento team and its’ community. The result is a constantly evolving, powerful, flexible e-commerce platform suited for projects of any size and scope.
The next major update for Magento, scheduled to release towards the end of 2018, will be introducing several key improvements and additions to front-end and back-end systems all of which will greatly improve speed, convenience, and usability.
We’ve put together a quick list of our most anticipated additions to be introduced in Magento 2.3. This is only a small sample of everything that is being included in 2.3. We will have a complete list of changes available once the update is released.
Bluefoot CMS & Page Builder
The first major addition and perhaps the most relevant for small businesses is the Bluefoot CMS & Page Builder. Up until now, Magento has not offered a native page builder with Magento so e-commerce customers would have to pay developers to design and populate all the pages of their online store. Alternatively, extensions like Bluefoot existed to provide a page builder option but required implementation and presented its own set of challenges.
Magento recently purchased Bluefoot creators Gene Commerce and will be including the builder as a core feature of Magento Commerce. Magento Community users will be able to get in on the action by purchasing the builder as an extension from the Marketplace.
The Bluefoot builder will provide a lot more flexibility to content management and page construction. Users will have the ability to design landing pages and change the look of other areas of their online store with relative ease. The ability to drag and drop makes the whole process fairly simple, eliminating the need for pay developers to complete basic design changes around the website.
Now, this does not mean you need to fire your designers all together as the builder will have limitations, but it will definitely help e-commerce managers allocate some time and money to other aspects of their business.
Progressive Web App (PWA)
The biggest overall addition that will be coming to Magento 2.3 is the ability to develop and deploy a PWA (Progressive Web App). Essentially, PWAs will allow Magento online stores to be faster, more reliable and create better end-user engagement which will all combine into a better customer shopping experience and higher conversion rates.
We could write a whole article on the importance and future of PWAs. But in the meantime, all you really need to know is that Magento will release what they call the PWA Studio later this year which will provide developers with the necessary tools to deploy a PWA.
Not only will a PWA be fast, it will also work with limited or uncertain network conditions and will allow simple front-end installation of the app without requiring the user to access a marketplace. This is all great news for Magento users and e-commerce as a whole.
Multi-Source Inventory (MSI)
Multi-Source Inventory started as a Magento community project and will be introduced as a core feature in Magento 2.3. Online stores will now be able to manage inventory and stock levels across multiple locations like warehouses and retail stores without any additional extensions. This is a big set up in terms of inventory management for Magento.
The Multi-Source Inventory system will introduce a better reservation mechanism to properly monitor stock levels and prevent database lock-ups. In addition, the system will also give users the ability to ship from or pick up at specific locations, allowing for more flexibility.
ElasticSearch
ElasticSearch is being implemented into Magento Open Source, with the potential of becoming the default Magento search engine in the future. ElasticSearch is a fantastic Advanced Search feature that gives end-users the ability to filter search results by specific fields and attributes as well as create auto suggestions and corrections for search terms. Once released, everyone not running an advanced search extension on their Magento Open Source setup should be switching over to this as it can greatly improve engagement and increase conversion.
When is Magento 2.3 coming out?
Magento 2.3 is scheduled to release later this year, sometime in Q3 2018 according to developers who attended Imagine 2018. There will be limited early releases and testing available to certain groups and early adopters. We look forward to upgrading all of our Magento 2 users to 2.3 as soon as it is available to us.
If you are interested in Magento 2, check out our Small Business E-Commerce Starter Package. This package is tailored towards small businesses to provide a feature-rich e-commerce experience without the steep startup costs. The package includes deployment of Magento 2, a modern design, a number of essential extensions, 24/7 support and top of the line Cloud-based hosting using Rackspace Cloud and Google Cloud data centers around the world.
About FinestShops
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We use Magento 2, X-Cart or WooCommerce e-commerce systems for new store deployments and re-platforming as well as state of the art Rackspace or Google Cloud data centers for hosting that serves 60% of Fortune 500 companies worldwide. Our account managers are knowledgeable and innovative, our support engineers and developers are outstanding, and customer satisfaction is second to none.
