Chapter 8: Magento 2 – Frequently Asked Questions

The Guide:

This Chapter:

Introduction

Migrating or considering migrating to Magento 2 can come with a variety of questions. PushON has taken the time to answer these frequently asked questions here for you. Note: Click on the icons to get extended information and the rationale behind each change or click here to show them all.

 

 

General Magento FAQs

What is Magento?

Magento is an eCommerce platform that uses open source technology to provide online merchants with a fluid shopping cart system, as well as control over the design, content and components of their online store. Magento also offers powerful marketing, SEO, and catalogue-management tools. It is written in PHP, meaning it is fully customisable to your needs. The ability for this eCommerce platform to easily scale with your business allows shops with only a few products and simple functionality to easily expand into offering tens of thousands of products with complex custom behaviour, without the need to change platforms. Magento also offers a variety of plug-ins and themes that can easily enhance a customer’s shopping experience and make a big difference to your bottom line.

How Much Does Magento 2 Cost?

The cost of Magento 2 depends on the edition and the hosting option you choose. The Magento 2 Community Edition (CE) is open-source and free of cost. The Magento 2 Commerce Edition (EE) has licenses ranging from $22,000 (~£16,843) to $125,000 (~£95,704) per year. The annual cost of the Commerce Edition license at $22,000.00 is for merchants generating less than $1 million, thereafter pricing tiers are based on revenue. Strictly speaking, the more gross revenue a merchant generates, they move up to the next revenue tier and the license cost increases. The Community Edition remains free and offers much of the same features and improvements offered by EE. The difference comes down to scalability, promotions, security, merchandising, loyalty and customer support.

Is Magento Hard to Learn?

There are plenty of resources available around learning Magento 2 from a developer perspective (see Inchoo and BSS Commerce), but what about from an admin perspective? If you’re migrating from a different platform, it’s important that you are able to navigate your way around it. Thankfully, the admin panel is easy to navigate ‒ especially compared to Magento 1 ‒ but it may still take a bit of getting used to depending on what you have used previously. The dashboard displays your last order, new orders, lifetime sales, top search keywords, bestsellers and more. Spend some time familiarising yourself with the dashboard and you’ll soon wonder why you didn’t move to Magento 2 sooner.

Is Magento 2 Mobile-Friendly?

We all know that your website needs to be mobile-friendly for the benefit of your users, but your website needs to work well on mobile to help its performance in Google. This is because Google has been using mobile-first indexing for a few years now which affects how your website is crawled and indexed. The themes that come with Magento 2 are mobile-friendly and the checkout is optimised for mobile too. If you are working with a custom developer, make sure they use responsive web design.

 

 

Magento Security, Customer and Checkout Frequently Asked Questions

magento payment gateways frequently asked questions

What Payment Gateways are Available?

Magento 2 supports the most popular payment gateways ‒ a service that processes card payments for eCommerce sites ‒ automatically, without the need for you to add additional integrations. Examples of supported gateways include PayPal, Braintree, Stripe, Square, and Authorise.net. Apple Pay and Google Pay are some of the more modern payment gateways too.

Is the Checkout Process Streamlined?

Offering a simple and streamlined checkout process is known to increase the chances of your customers completing their transaction. Compared to previous versions of Magento 2 where the checkout process involved 6 different steps, Magento 2 uses a much-improved checkout that has been slimmed down to 2 steps: Shipping and Reviewing payments. There are also accelerated checkout options that provide further options.

Is Magento 2 Secure?

We all know how important data security and confidentiality are ‒ if a customer doesn’t trust you, they are unlikely to checkout with you and provide you with their valuable data. The good news is that Magento 2 has vast capabilities for ensuring your website is secure. You can make your website as secure as you like. While the platform does come with patches and updates, you are ultimately responsible for managing the security of your own website. Bear in mind that the more changes and customisations you make to your website, the more difficult it may become to manage your security, so always bear this in mind when making modifications or adding additional features.

Can I Get Customer Support?

Ultimately, the level of support you have access to depends on which version (CE vs EE) you are using. Only the Commerce Editions provide support options. This emphasises the importance of working with a specialised Magento development agency like PushON. We are Magento Solution Partners, which ensures that we are trusted with delivering outstanding customer experiences through the eCommerce platform.

How Many Coupons Can a Customer Use?

Within Magento 2 you can configure multiple coupon codes, but a customer can only use one coupon code in their cart at once. If you would like for your customers to be able to use more than one code simultaneously, then you could need to look at considering the use of an extension from the Marketplace.

 

 

Customising your Magento 2 Store FAQs

How Can I Add a CMS block to a Magento 2 page?

The following are steps as to how you can add rich CMS blocks to your Magento 2 page.

  1. Go to Content > Elements > Blocks.
  2. Click Add New Block and set the Enable Block field to ‘Yes’.
  3. Add a title for the block and a unique identifier. This identifier should only use lowercase characters with underscores.
  4. Choose the Store View you need and enter your content using the WYSIWYG editor or HTML code.
  5. Click Save and Close.
  6. You then need to create a widget that would allow us to place the block you just created onto a page. Go to Content > Elements > Widgets and then click Add Widget.
  7. From the Type dropdown menu, choose CMS Static Block, and pick the Design Theme you need. Click Continue.
  8. Then click Add Layout Update, this is where you can specify where you want this block to show. In the Display On section, set the Specified Page and then the page you need.
  9. You can then define where on this page the block should be shown using the Container field.
  10. Go to the Widget Options tab and select the block that you want to display.
  11. Save the changes.

After refreshing the Cache you should then see your block display on the page.

How Can I Add Google Tag Manager to Magento 2?

To add GTM to Magento 2.x, you just need to add the relevant code to your active theme. The code comes in two parts, script and NoScript. All you need to do is insert the GTM code snippets into the following phtml templates for the head and body:

// YourTheme/Magento_Theme/templates/html/gtm_head.phtml
<script>..</script> <!-- GTM code →
// YourTheme/Magento_Theme/templates/html/gtm_body.phtml
<noscript>..</noscript> <!-- GTM code →

To load the files correspondingly, you should use the default .xml file:

<!-- YourTheme/Magento_Theme/layout/default.xml -->
<referenceContainer name="head.additional">
<block class="Magento\Framework\View\Element\Template" name="gtm.head" before="-" 
template="Magento_Theme::html/gtm_head.phtml" />
</referenceContainer>

<referenceContainer name="after.body.start">
<block class="Magento\Framework\View\Element\Template" name="gtm.body" before="-"
template="Magento_Theme::html/gtm_body.phtml" />
</referenceContainer>

Once done, you can begin using Google Tag Manager to add tags to your website, including Google Analytics.

How To Add the Related Products Block in Magento 2?

Displaying related products on your listings is a great way to increase revenue and clicks. You can add this from within Magento’s settings:

  1. Go to Catalog > Inventory > Products.
  2. Find the product you need from the list and click Edit.
  3. Find the Related Products, Up-Sells and Cross-Sells section and open it.
  4. Click the Add Related Products button.
  5. Use filters as needed to locate the products you want to display as related products and choose them by clicking on the checkbox.
  6. When done, click the Add Selected Products button and save the product.

You would need to repeat these steps for all the products that you want to add related products for. There are also plenty of extensions on the marketplace which will help you do this too.

Can I Change How My Products are Sorted?

Sorting your products can boost sales on particular products, and there are several ways that you can do this.

Sort by Product Listing

You can sort your product listings by position, product name, or price. To change the default sorting:

  1. Go to Catalog > Categories and choose the category you need.
  2. Open the Display Setting tab.
  3. Go to the Default Product Listing Sort By field and choose the parameter you need from the dropdown menu.
  4. Save the changes.

Product Listing

There are differences in how you can sort your products depending on which version of Magento 2 you are using. There is information on this in the official documentation. Magento 2 Open Source To change the product sorting:

  1. Navigate to Catalog > Categories.
  2. Choose the Store View that you want to change.
  3. Select the category you need and open the Products in Category tab.
  4. Edit the Position column.
  5. Save the changes.

Magento 2 Commerce Edition To change the product sorting:

  1. Navigate to Catalog > Categories.
  2. Change the Store View on the top of the page, if needed.
  3. Choose the category you need and expand the Products in Category tab.
  4. Click the tiles icon to display the product tiles on a grid.
  5. You can sort the products Manually or Automatically.
    • For manual, choose this option from the Sort Order dropdown and click the Sort button to apply this. You can use a Visual merchandiser and change the position of products with the drag-and-drop tool. Update any invalid indexers if needed and save the category.
    • For automatic, choose Yes from the Match Products by Rule field and then choose the variant you need from the Automatic Sorting dropdown menu. You can add conditions to the category too. Click on the Add Condition button and choose your Attribute for the rule. Then choose one of the following options for the Operator:
      • Equal,
      • Not equal,
      • Greater than,
      • Greater than or equal to,
      • Less than,
      • Less than or equal to,
      • Contains.
    • Then fill in the Value. You can then repeat these steps for all the conditions you need.
  6. When done, save the category and clean the Cache.

There are also extensions available in the Marketplace that will provide additional sorting options should you need them.

How Can I Display My Best-Selling Products in Magento 2?

Magento automatically collects statistics about your products, orders and more, including which of your products are the best sellers. To receive this information, go to Navigate > Statistics > Refresh Statistics and select all of the reports that are displayed in the grid and choose Refresh Lifetime Statistics from the dropdown, then click Submit. Then go to the Dashboard, open the Bestsellers tab and you can view your best-selling products. For detailed information, go to Reports > Products > Bestsellers. Once you have this, you can display them on your Storefront.

Display Best-Sellers Using the Default Magento Widget

  1. Navigate to Content > Widgets > Add Widget.
  2. In the Type field, choose the Catalog Product List option.
  3. Specify your Design Theme and click Continue.
  4. Enter a Widget Title – this will be displayed in the admin panel. Then choose Store Views to assign the widget and set the Sort Order.
  5. Go to the Layout Updates section and click Add Layout Update. From there you can choose where you want to display the list of best-selling products. You may choose to do so by category, for example.
  6. Go to the Widget Options tab and enter the Title – this will be displayed on the front-end and visible to your customers.
  7. Choose if you want to use Display Page Control and set the Number of Products Displayed Per Page.
  8. Specify the Number of Products to Display and enter the Cache Lifetime, if needed.
  9. In the Conditions field, set up what products you want to be displayed in the widget.
  10. Save the changes.

There are also a number of plugins available from within the Marketplace which should help you to do this. There are also options that allow you to display Cross-sells. enable-seo-friendly-urls-magento frequently asked questions

How To Set SEO-Friendly URLs in Magento 2?

SEO-friendly URLs mean having URLs that are human-readable. You can ensure that this is the case by:

  • From the Admin Panel go to Stores > Configuration and choose the Web tab from under the General menu.
  • Expand the Search Engine Optimization drop-down menu.
  • Ensure that the Use Web Server Rewrites option is set to ‘Yes’.
    1. If not, untick the Use System Value and change the configuration. This setting will allow you to include the category path for product URLs.
    2. Save the changes and clear the cache.

You can create an SEO-friendly Category URL key for each store view. To do this:

  • Go to Products > Categories > Search Engine Optimization and expand the drop-down menu.
  • Fill in the Meta Title, Meta Keywords, and Meta Description fields for the categories you want.

If you need a greater range of configurations, go to:

  • Stores > Configuration > Catalog > Search Engine Optimization and enable/disable all of the available product URL options.
  • Here you can enable product search terms, choose product and category URL suffixes, and enable the use of category paths for product URLs and others.

How to Import your Products into Magento 2?

You can use the following configuration settings to import products into Magento 2 using a CSV file.

  1. Navigate to System > Import.
  2. Choose Products in the Entity Type drop-down menu and click Download Sample File. You will then have an example file to work with.
  3. You can remove the examples you don’t need from the CSV and add your own products.
  4. If you need to import product images you would need to add the following rows to the file, being careful not to add any that may be already present:
    • base_image,
    • base_image_label,
    • thumbnail_image;
    • thumbnail_image_label,
    • small_image,
    • small_image_label.
  5. Then upload the product images into Magento 2 into the /pub/media/import folder. All of the images that you upload should have the exact same file name as mentioned in the CSV file.
  6. When you have finished adding your data to the CSV file, upload it to System > Import > Entity Type > Products and then choose Add/Update from the Import Behaviour drop-down menu.
  7. Click the Choose File option and type /pub/media/import into the Image File Directory text field. Then choose the Check Data option.
  8. Once you have received the notification that your CSV has been validated you can click Import.
  9. When the product import is finished, go to Products > Catalog and check the products with the images are displayed on the product grid.
  10. Make the products live in your store by using the Enable Product Toggle and moving this to ‘Yes’.

If you need to manage all of the import/export activities effectively, use the Import History tab by navigating to System > Data Transfer > Import History. Here you should see a separate grid with all of the import/export activities. There are also extensions available from the Marketplace that will help you import products.

How Can I Set Up the Robots.txt in Magento 2?

The following steps will enable you to set up Submission to Robots.txt:

  1. Go to Stores > Settings > Configuration and choose XML Sitemap from the Catalog tab.
  2. Open the Search Engine Submission Settings tab
  3. Set Yes in the Enable Submission to Robots.txt drop-down.
  4. Click on the Save Config button.

How to Configure the Robots.txt

  1. Go to Content > Design > Configuration.
  2. In the opened grid, find the line Global, and click the Edit link and open the Search Engine Robots tab.
  3. Chose the Default Robots you need from the following:
    • INDEX, FOLLOW = Search engines will regularly index your pages and check the changes.
    • NOINDEX, FOLLOW = Search engine bot won’t index your website but it’ll still monitor changes.
    • INDEX, NOFOLLOW = Search bot will index your store once but never come back to track the changes.
    • NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW = This setting will hide your store from search engine bots.
  4. In the Edit Custom Instruction of Robots.txt File line, write the custom instructions you need.
  5. If you would like to use the default settings, you can click the Reset to Default button. Doing so will remove any custom instructions you have set.
  6. Save the Configuration to apply your changes.

If there are any queries you have regarding Magento or would like us to address any more Frequently Asked Questions, get in touch with PushON today. We hope you’ve enjoyed this Magento SEO guide and found it useful.