Ways Magento Can Improve M2

At this point, it’s no secret that Magento 2 has it’s fair share of issues. In fact, the bugs and issues have somewhat divided the community, with users taking to social media to disown the platform and others tweeting back in its defense. Regardless of standpoint, one thing is very apparent: Magento needs to take big steps to make a change. If the platform is to continue to lead the eCommerce pack, then it needs to maintain the same credibility it had in its earlier iterations, not lose the faith of the current user-base.

Now, we at Razoyo are not trying to take any jabs or cheap shots when it comes to M2 and the platform’s issues (the pros outweigh the cons, in our opinion). We build Magento 2 sites for our clients and utilize it daily. However, we can admit that there are issues that need to be addressed, and we have suggestions on how Magento can improve and correct these controversial issues:

Make it Easier for the Devs

I’m not going to lie to you, I don’t know much about coding (I’m the Application Specialist). However, I do see the looks of frustration and the oft-heard whispers of contempt when implementing a new extension or fixing an internal bug or trying to figure out what-the-hell went wrong with that one thing when it was working just fine a second ago. Again, I’m not a dev-guy, but I do understand stress. Let me tell you, dealing with that looks very stressful.

I’ve asked about their experience with the platform thus far, and I’ve been met with disdain. From what I’ve gathered, M2 does not play nice with others. In other words, it seems to conflict with extensions and fixing/correcting bugs takes quite some time to finish. Because Razoyo is not a group of money-hungry monsters, we cannot bill clients for time spent working through these problems. Thus, our developers spend more time than necessary fixing bugs, instead of actually working on developing the sites. This seems to be the consensus for most development agencies, so Magento, it’s about time this is addressed.

Change the New Product Import File

I don’t completely hate the new import spreadsheet. The structure is similar to the M1 sheet and it’s nice to be able to import with specific columns, a la RapidFlow. However, I do absolutely despise the way attributes are now attached to products. On paper, it makes sense and sounds simple. In practice, the attribute fields just don’t work that well.

“What do you mean? Seems a lot easier to input into the sheet.” Yeah, it’s not. In Magento 1, all attributes were broken out into individual fields, allowing the user to easily copy/paste, drag, input, etc. all necessary data. In 2, all attributes must be combined into one cell in one column. This can seriously eliminate the ease of copy/paste or drag down feature in Excel. Attributes are now entered one by one and separated by a comma, i.e. color=Blue,size=Medium. This process can take a while, and if the product requires multiple attributes, it can be easy to lose your place. I don’t get why Magento 2 has the ease of RapidFlow with the entire import process, except for the attribute field, but that should be addressed.

Get Better Support

Support has been very lackluster, to say the least. I don’t want to say Magento has been unresponsive, as that has not been the case. I will say the support has been minimal, and it could use a significant upgrade. As I write this blog, we still have open tickets, which were created months ago. No movement on any of these, and no ETA on fix/response. Time to buff up the support for M2 and start moving tickets. The longer things go untouched, to more people will move on to other platforms.

In Conclusion…

Magento 2 is, overall, a solid platform. Flawed, but solid. Magento just needs to work on improvements sooner, rather than later. Razoyo will continue to develop and craft top-tier eCommerce sites with the platform, but we can understand the frustration experienced by developers. Hopefully, Magento has plans to implement fixes and work on improving M2. Otherwise, we will begin seeing a mass exodus.