Magento 1.7

Those who have been using Magento as their eCommerce platform would have been enjoying its market leading features such as,

1 ) Provides powerful solutions for each business perspective

2 ) Multilanguage support

3 ) Improved Web services

4 ) Enhanced SEO features

5 ) Completely customizable

6 ) Prompt Promotions

7 ) A Secure platform

8 ) Uncountable product options

9 ) Reporting and analyses

10) Multi-store

And there are dozens of more features that Magento offers. Let us see How Magento 1.7 can help us benefit from our business,

Magento 1.7 Benefits

1.    Automatic coupon codes generation:

Now you don’t have to purchase any third party extension just to get automatically generated coupons, Magento 1.7 automatically allows you to generate coupons with your own desired pre/postfix.

2.    HTML 5 for Mobiles:

Magento enterprise edition 1.12 and Community edition 1.7 includes HTML 5 which allows great features for mobile web themes such as,

a) Controls based on gestures

b) Scaling of images, pinch and multi-touch

c) Drag and drop product to the shopping cart

d) Audio and video capabilities according to the device

e) Enhanced zoom, product display features

3.    Spam control by Captcha

Captcha can be used on most of the forms such as forgot password form, register etc.

4.    Separate Price for different groups

There are many cases where pricing can differ between different customers. Most profound can be retailers and wholesalers. Magento 2 allows you to create different types of groups and set the price accordingly for each group such as Cost Based Magento Extension.

5.    Rest API support

Previously SOAP was used as a web service allowing different devices to utilize Magento services by using internet. Soap v2 was released which was an enhanced version of previous one. Now Magento supports REST API which uses OAuth protocol. In REST API each URL represents any resource object. These APIs use HTTP as the main language to get or post data. Similarly customers data, products, inventories etc. can be managed by using HTTP verbs such as GET, Post, Put, Delete.  The initial version of Rest API supports following functions.

6.    Enhanced Layered Navigation pricing

Price is one of the attribute by which customers can sort products within a category. Now instead of big price ranges such as 0 – 100, 100 – 400 etc, you can define custom price ranges according to your requirements such as 0 – 50, 60 – 90 etc. This makes more convenience for customers while searching products.

7.    Data Backup and Revert back

 Magento 1.7 allows you to rollback to previous system, database or media state after you have made any modifications which did not work out. Best practice is to use this features in testing environment and not in production , following backup types are provided in this version as compared to the only backup choice in previous versions,

a) System Backup

b) Database Backup

c) Media Backup

8.    Add to Cart by SKU

Now customers can add products to the cart by just entering SKUs and quantity further increasing the checkout process speed. On the frontend you can incorporate it as a widget or customers can find this option in their accounts.

9.    Multiple Wishlists

 Customers can create multiple wishlists in a way they would create different song albums according to their choice. Furthermore these lists can be publicly accessed which is just a type of social interactions. Friends and merchants can view the list and provide any feedback or get important analytics.

10.    Site Visitors’ identification

 You can identify different types of customers whether new, existing, returning, communicate to them and prepare marketing promotions accordingly.

11.    Updated Payment gateways:

 In addition to the previously integrated payment gateways, following new will be integrated to provide greater customer support and increase sales,

- Psi Gate - RBS Worldpay - Database and Media Backup - Braintree - First Data - Card Gate Plus - DIBS - eWay Direct - Ogone Directlink - Paybox - Payone - Sage Pay - CCAvenue

12.    CMS Page Hierarchy Enhancements

You can now easily add CMS pages to the navigation menus and copy CMS hierarchy trees between your stores.

13.    EU VAT Id Validation

You can now apply tax rules automatically by creating a group of users who have valid VAT ID and another one for those who does not have any. VAT Id is checked live against the official VAT information exchange system (VIES). You can have VAT id checked on account creation or with every order.

14.    EU cookie restriction:

Cookies are an important way to gather user information; previously cookies were saved on the user’s PC once they were enabled on the browser. Now based on EU Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive, users will be presented with an option to accept or decline the cookie policy message whenever they visit the site.

There are great enhancements which Magento has made and will definitely bring more easiness and robustness for both users and developers. What it lacks will be covered in Magento 2 which we are excepting in the last quarter of this year and hopefully will take this eCommerce platform to new heights.