New release – Magento Commerce 2.4.2
The new Magento Commerce release took place on February 9, 2021. It will provide better security, performance, and provide merchants with tool upgrades that can further support their business. Check out the highlights of the new version of Magento Commerce 2.4.2.
Globally, e-commerce revenue grew by about 30% in 2020. Vendors have learned that digitizing and their business needs to move into the online environment. According to the results of the B2B Digital Commerce 360 survey, more than 80% of B2B respondents state that they are more or less likely to buy online this year even more than in 2020.
The latest version of Magento Commerce 2.4.2 brings even greater platform reliability, increased security and new e-shop tools for users and merchants.
Let´s see an overview of the major improvements
Improved payment workflow for B2B and contactless payments
The B2B purchase approval process now supports any payment method, and the new GraphQL API adds support for headless commerce implementations.
Magento Commerce 2.4.2 now supports online B2B payments to improve purchases that previously only supported offline payments. Merchants can now flexibly set purchase rules regardless of payment method, and buyers can use the same convenient payment process for all orders.
Page Builder and Media Gallery upgrade – better performance and development environment
Madia Gallery now includes Image Optimization. It is possible to set the optimized version of the image instead of the hi-res version stored in the gallery. Thanks to the smaller image file, the e-shop does not lose performance when rendering content. Another novelty is access control in the admin panel, which defines user rights for access to the gallery and editing options. This enhancement allows graphics and digital agencies to access a Magento instance and manage it directly on the system without merchants revealing their data.
Page Builder introduces the ability to preview content for display on mobile devices and computers. The tool update reduces developers’ effort in migrating content and customizing Page Builder CSS.
Accelerate function acceptance and time-to-value
Magento Commerce 2.4.2 launches the In-Product Guidance concept. It provides administrators with help and tips in the user interface for better use of the product. As a result, they will have notifications of new features, tooltips, etc., that will engage new administrators faster and teach existing ones how to use little-used features. This will speed up time-to-value.
In-product Guidance is only available to Magento Commerce merchants running version 2.4.2.
Platform quality enhancements include scalability improvements to support catalogs up to 20x larger
Magento Commerce 2.4.2 includes several improvements to the quality and performance of the platform, for both developers and marketers.
VBE enhancements include the following:
- Braintree now offers Buy Now Pay Later features.
- Dotdigital delivers transactional SMS messages.
- Vertex supports commodity codes for transport to and from global regions.
Magento will natively handle a 20x larger out-of-the-box catalog without subsequent optimizations and customizations.
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What can we look forward to next from Magento?
For example, the new Upgrade Compatibility Tool. This will enable a transparent and reliable comparison of the current production version of Magento Commerce with the new release. It will be possible to analyze the compatibility of your own installed modules. The tool will work between any two versions of Magento Commerce 2.x.x.