Adobe Commerce 2.4.4 was released at the beginning of April 2022 with new features and enhancements to improve performance and customer experiences. Adobe’s release strategy is intended to allow you to adapt to changing market trends and retain the flexibility for customization as you need it.
Here we look at some of the highlights from the latest release.
Adobe Commerce 2.4.4
The new release includes over 250 fixes and upgrades including backward-compatible updates for B2B organizations, so you can look forward to improved performance.
Future-proofing – Adobe says the new release will allow you to future-proof and accelerate your digital plans using independent modular services rather than updates to the core code.
This is intended to allow new features to be adopted more quickly and easily, reducing the need for so many major upgrades in future and helping to reduce the total cost of ownership.
Benefits will include improved handling of complex catalogs, which can now be up to 10 times larger. Faster application programming interface (API) response times will also support a five-fold increase in transaction volume per hour. The AsyncOrder feature will streamline the ordering process and multiple customers can now run processes in parallel to improve the speed of task executions.
All Adobe Commerce libraries and dependencies will now be compatible with the latest PHP release, version 8.1, which will provide significant performance improvements for administration and storefront operations. At the same time Adobe has promised that site health and stability will be improved, with a 34% lower likelihood of site outages.
Customer experience – improved self-service and purchasing assistance are designed to improve customer experiences for both business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C) organizations.
Improved artificial intelligence (AI) based product recommendations and search personalization will streamline the product discovery process to help increase conversion rates and average order values.
Headless commerce – this release increases GraphQL API support for B2B and administration features and adds new capabilities for the progressive web apps PWA Studio 12.3. Personalized content and promotions can be created for specific customer segments with support for dynamic blocks and targeting tools. There’s also improved Page Builder content optimization and support for Google’s reCAPTCHA anti-spam tool.
Analysis – on-premise users can now access the Site-Wide Analysis Tool for real-time insights and recommendations. The tool has an improved dashboard where you can access all the Adobe Commerce support tools including recommendations, managed alerts, and an extensions summary. Updates are promised that will include additional widgets for new insights.
Accessibility – administration has been updated to improve accessible naming and tagging for enhanced access to assistive technology for visually impaired users. There will also be clearer icons and buttons plus the ability to add alt text to images in Page Builder.
Security – use of email variables and access tokens used for API authentication have been disabled. Authentication has been strengthened along with additional protection against arbitrary code and resource requests. Session identification won’t be stored in the database in future and access tokens and password reset tokens will now be encrypted for storage.
Future enhancements to Adobe Commerce
Adobe has promised easier-to-implement upgrades in the future, including Live Search for B2B users to support more relevant search results with customer-specific catalogs and pricing.
We are also promised that Adobe Commerce will connect to Adobe Experience Platform to link browsing or purchase histories with Adobe Experience Cloud applications. This will help to build richer customer profiles for personalized purchasing journeys to improve sales, retention, and loyalty.
In addition, innovative new ways to extend and integrate with Adobe Commerce are planned with an API platform that will allow developers to plug in new data sources and services for Adobe Commerce. An App Builder will allow developers to build cloud-native applications that can be easily extended for Adobe Commerce APIs to create more immersive customer experiences.
The next scheduled release for Adobe Commerce 2.4.5 is due on 9 August 2022.
Work with Adobe Commerce specialists
Adobe Commerce is the ecommerce platform of choice for many organizations around the world. It offers exceptional functionality and flexibility along with security and scalability.
The Williams Commerce team is a Gold Adobe Commerce Agency Partner with EMEA Adobe Commerce Specialization. With more than a decade of experience our fully-certified team of Adobe Commerce developers know how to build the system your business deserves and how to get the best from Adobe Commerce.
From cutting edge, niche-targeting microsites to complex migration and integration projects that span the globe, we offer a 360degree service with every need catered for.
Speak with one of our experts to find out more.
