Adobe Commerce Q4: updates to security, speed, SEO and more
Adobe recently announced their planned Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source Q4 updates to round off 2021 here on their blog – while we recently wrote about some of the upcoming launches on the platform, including subscriptions and payments, as well as the 2021 roadmap, they still had more exciting features to announce!
With some key updates set to affect eCommerce merchants of all sizes, we want to expand on the details they shared, and offer some of our own insight on the impact they will have during the festive season.
What Adobe Commerce updates are coming in Q4?
Security
Security should always be at the forefront of your priorities for your eCommerce site – and ahead of peak season, Adobe have released several key security updates for Q4 to ensure your site stays active and secure – available to merchants on both Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source.
Firstly, the way session IDs are handled has changed – ensuring that unauthorized users will not have access to the same actions as authorized users, giving an extra level of protection from hackers and bots. The threshold for complex GraphQL queries has also been lowered, which should help prevent dangerous DOS attacks that could shut down your website or servers.
But it’s not only external forces that pose risks to your eCommerce site, and there are updates to mitigate that, too. Admin access to media gallery folders has been restricted, which avoids accidental deletion of key .htaccess files, and there is now validation on custom variables – meaning the platform will automatically help you avoid applying dangerous HTML tags and attributes that might interfere with your code.
Product Recommendations
Adobe Product Recommendations is getting an update for Q4 too – backed by the power of Adobe Sensei’s AI – is growing: now available to merchants using Adobe Experience Manager, as well as other headless storefront options like React or Vue.js, who can now easily integrate this feature into their sites.
Want to highlight recently viewed products to your customers, or showcase those with particularly high conversion or add-to-cart rates? New recommendation units are now available to allow you to do just that, without creating manual collections of fast-selling product lines.
There’s good news for B2B brands too – this feature also now supports customer-specific catalogues and pricing, meaning you can offer a personalised and relevant experience to all your customer groups.
Live Search
We wrote a few months ago about the launch of Live Search, which brings the power of Adobe Sensei’s AI to your website search function – to connect your customers with the products they want more easily. Adobe has now dramatically reduced the catalog onboarding and reindexing times for this feature, meaning your search results will always display the latest product data, no matter how often you update your listings.
Possibly most exciting of all – later in Q4 will see the launch of Live Search reporting, making it easy for you to spot searches returning zero results, those trending upwards, and top products found via search. Ideal data to share with your marketing and product teams!
PWA Studio
Say goodbye to spinning loading wheels! With the launch of PWA Studio 12, this is replaced by a new ‘shimmer’ feature that animates the elements of your page as they load – letting your visitors know what to expect once the content is loaded. This will likely bring a dramatic improvement to the user experience on slower-loading pages – as well as looking really slick.
The previous PWA Studio release saw the completion of the Wishlist feature, giving customers the ability to do everything from add products to a wishlist from anywhere (which is now supported on product pages, category pages in-cart) to create multiple wishlists, and even rename and change the visibility of them. Now, just in time for the festive shopping season, merchants can now include an ‘Add to Cart’ button on category pages too, helping to drive conversions and let customers make their purchases faster.
That’s not all – PWA Studio 12 will also deliver improved best practice and SEO scores in a Q4 update for those who use this Adobe Commerce system – fully tested in Google Lighthouse. Great news!
Payment Services
We wrote about the upcoming native payment processing service coming to Adobe Commerce here on the JH blog previously – and it has now been confirmed that this will officially be launching in Q4. This payment solution promises to be robust, secure and easily integrated for merchants of every size – and it’s a great addition to the options already available.
Asynchronous Order Processing
Great news for merchants with larger scale needs – especially ahead of the festive rush – the new (and optional) asynchronous order processing configuration to the Adobe Commerce checkout can support those with higher traffic. Once set up, as your customer proceeds through to their purchase, instead of completing every function that needs to happen in one go, this configuration only completes the ones absolutely necessary for the order to be placed – speeding up the time it takes for the transaction to ‘complete’ for your customers. The remaining required functions are then completed post-transaction.
This feature is an excellent option for merchants with high traffic, particularly busy periods, or those releasing limited-edition or high-demand products – helping reduce the load on your servers even when lots of customers are trying to check out at the same time. Currently available in beta, look out for the official launch coming in December.
How will these Adobe Commerce Q4 updates affect you?
With the festive season fast approaching, it’s key you plan updates and configuration changes well in advance to avoid unnecessary delays or downtime. If you’re looking for an eCommerce agency to keep you up-to-date on the latest platform developments, industry trends and innovative technology, get in touch with us on thrive@wearejh.com or +44(0)115 7940060.