Magento is the leading eCommerce open-source platform that is robust and full-featured. Currently, there are over 187,500 live websites powered by Magento, including big names like Ford, Coca-Cola, Nestle, LandRover, etc.
Still, Magento has many drawbacks. Especially its default frontend – Luma. Luma theme has low performance and outdated tech stack, which could bring your business down in this era of technology as people expect a smooth and seamless customer experience.
But the key behind the success of Magento is “open-source.” It supports third-party integration, allowing you to use new edge technologies to enhance your website. And that’s why many new Magento frontend solutions have been developed in recent years.
So in this article, we will dive deep into the Magento frontend solution trends that could define Magento development in 2024.
Let’s go!
Why Choosing the right Magento 2 Frontend Solution Important?
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The eCommerce business is becoming more and more competitive. To stay ahead of the competition, you must keep up with the latest trends.
No matter how advanced your eCommerce store is, you could still be left behind by new technology. You need to keep transforming to ensure future success.
For example, in recent years, we’ve witnessed the fast growth of mobile eCommerce. In 2022, mCommerce sales are projected to exceed $430 billion, and the number will keep increasing.
Also, in 2022, statistics show that 49% of online shoppers use smartphones to compare the pricing of products or services.
Clearly, at this time, enhancing the mobile shopping experience is extremely important.
Another thing is about website loading speed. A survey by Digital.com shows that 53% of online shoppers expect eCommerce pages to load in 3 seconds or less, and 50% of visitors abandon a website that takes more than 6 seconds to load.
The patience of online users is decreasing and a website that uses old technology will not be able to satisfy their expectations.
Meanwhile, the default Magento theme (Luma theme and Luma-based theme) has so many drawbacks. It is built using outdated tech stack, which leads to low performance on both desktop and mobile devices. That’s why merchants have to find other alternative frontend solutions for their Magento stores.
And as we are about to enter 2023, there are the top 2 Magento frontend trends you must know to make maximum use of them.
Top 2 Magento 2 Frontend Solution Trends In 2024
In the upcoming year 2023, there are 3 Magento frontend solutions that are highly praised and are considered the future of the business.
In this section, we will analyze each one in detail to help you thoroughly understand them.
Headless Commerce
Headless eCommerce website is a website where the frontend and the backend application are developed separately from each other and often are based on different technologies.
For example, it could be a React-or Vue-based frontend (PWA) that connects to Magento by using GraphQL as glue.
In a traditional eCommerce model, to update new features, you need to update both the frontend and backend system, which can cause big headaches.
Headless eCommerce is a great solution for it. It gives online businesses the agility and flexibility to test and experiment, which enriches customer experience.
Trends
Headless Commerce was introduced in 2013 and quickly became the hottest Magento frontend trends.
Based on WP Engine’s research, over 50% of enterprise organizations were already using headless solutions in 2019. Less than two years later, in 2021, the number had jumped to 64%. And amongst respondents whose organizations weren’t using headless, 92% said they were planning on evaluating headless solutions within the next 12 months (by 2022).
We believe that in 2023, the number will keep rising significantly.
Pros
- Enrich customer experience: Headless commerce allows a consistent customer shopping experience across various platforms and devices. It also enables a more personalized experience for customers.
- Better Omnichannel marketing: A headless system allows sharing of content across a wide range of platforms.
- Better flexibility: With the headless solution, you can offer many frontend interface options and quickly update the frontend without disturbing the backend.
- Faster scaling: Because the frontend and backend are separate, it’s easier for website developers to make updates.
Cons
- Potential additional costs: The separation of the frontend and backend means each one needs its own hosting and maintenance, which adds additional costs to operate the website. Another cost is to train team members or hire specialists to maintain the website for upgrades, security, bugs, design templates, etc.
- Slow marketing adjustments: The marketing team needs to rely heavily on the IT team to launch and update content, which can cause delays in time-sensitive campaigns.
- No performance guarantees: The headless solution can’t guarantee a high-performing website.
Magento frontend solution for headless technology
Note that headless technology is only about the relationship between the frontend and backend of a website. Among the headless fields, PWA is the best frontend application for headless technology.
Progressive Web App (a.k.a PWA) is a web app that uses service workers, manifests, and other web-platform features in combination with progressive enhancement to give mobile users an experience on par with native apps.
PWA can provide features like Push Notifications, Offline Support, “Add to home screen”, etc.
As the number of mobile shoppers is increasing, online businesses always look for a way to enhance the mobile shopping experience. And Progressive Web App is the perfect solution to offer an improved user experience.
Currently, there are 4 widely-used PWA frontend solutions:
- PWA Studio
- PWA Studio Based Theme
- Vue Storefront
- ScandiPWA
For more detail, you can read below.
PWA Studio
The Magento PWA Studio is a set of developer tools and libraries that enable you to develop, implement, and maintain a PWA storefront on top of a Magento 2 backend. It is ready-to-use tools to create a build system and framework which adheres to the Magento principle of extensibility.
Even though this is a powerful tool, the downside is it requires certain coding knowledge to use.
>> CHECK NOW: The best PWA Development Service to implement PWA on Magento website!
PWA Based Theme
Based on PWA Studio, the Siminia theme for Magento 2 by SimiCart is an easy way to transform your store into a headless storefront that is fast, engaging, and mobile-friendly.
Instead of building the PWA storefront from scratch, if you use the Siminia theme, you will be provided with a free page builder tool, which allows you to choose from over 40 pre-built templates or drag and drop page elements to build your desired layout. No coding knowledge is required.
Most importantly, this theme is 100% FREE.
>> CHECK NOW: Siminia Theme for Magento 2 – the easiest way to build a PWA storefront!
Vue Storefront
Storefront is a standalone frontend solution written on top of the Vue.js framework, used to program eCommerce PWA projects. It can be used to create a PWA interface for Magento, Spotify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and many other platforms.
Vue Storefront has more features than PWA Studio and is also easier to use.
EXPLORE MORE: All about Vue Storefront – a headless frontend solution for eCommerce!
ScandiPWA
ScandiPWA is the first open-source PWA theme for Magento. It is based on React and Redux but leverages several technologies like GraphQL, Varnish, and Redis to improve website performance significantly.
ScandiPWA supports over 350 Magento features, which is about 95% of Magento features.
Moreover, ScandiPWA can enable SPA (single page application) experience on your website.
LEARN MORE: All about ScandiPWA– The best upcoming eCommerce PWA solution!
Hyva Theme
The Hyva theme is considered an alternative to headless PWAs.
The Hyva theme was created by Willem Wigman, a dutch Magento developer, with the idea of keeping everything great about Magento but eliminating elements that cause complications and inefficiencies. As a result, the Hyva theme is lightweight but, at the same time, flexible for functionalities to run.
As you know, fast load time is one of the most important standards for eCommerce stores. Fast loading speed affects your website ranking on Google significantly. That’s why the Hyva frontend is an amazing solution for building a speedy online store.
Trends
The number of websites built on Hyva is increasing fast.
Hyva was released on February 15th, 2021. In October 2022, after only 20 months, Hyva celebrated the milestones of 1000 live sites. And in December 2022, at the moment we wrote this article, about 2 months later, there are over 1,200 live sites built on Hyva (based on BuiltWith data).
We predict the Hyva team will soon achieve the 3000 live sites milestone in late 2023.
Pros
- Amazing performance: Websites built on Hyva will have speedy loading time on both desktops and mobile devices.
- Reduced complexity: The Hyva theme has many features but with less complexity.
- Reduced dependencies: Because the Hyva theme contains only two dependencies, it is more reliable than most alternative solutions.
- Less development time: Due to the simple code, it is easier for developers to work on debug issues and new features.
- Easy to use: The simplicity also reduces the slope of your learning curve of using the Hyva theme.
Cons
- Lack of 3rd-party modules: Because the Hyva theme is new and different from other Magento frontend, you must find and install Hyva compatible modules. However, many Magento extension providers are working actively to support Hyva.
- High cost of license: The license cost of Hyva is a one-time payment of €1,000, which could be quite expensive.
- Not support Adobe Commerce: Currently, Hyva theme only supports Magento 2 Open Source but not Adobe Commerce – the enterprise-level edition of Magento.
> CHECK NOW: The best Hyva Theme Development Service to implement the Hyva theme to your store!
Conclusion
In this article, we have introduced you to the top 2 Magento frontend solution trends in 2024.
We hope this blog is helpful and good luck to you!
LEARN MORE: How to choose The Most Suitable eCommerce Technology for your website!
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