Can you imagine visiting a non-certified therapist or coach? Likely, the answer is no. Why? Because if you’re putting your lіfe іn someone else’s hands you want someone that you know is an expert. When it comes to your eCommerce business, you should have the same view. To assess and recommend or just to tune and fix your eCommerce website, it’s best to work with a certified expert. Then you can be a hundred percent sure that the person working with you has a trained background with sufficient experience. Seeking this expert out is worthwhile. It puts your company in the best-partnered hands possible. Failure to partner with an industry professional exposes your company to lost time and money.
These are top 5 benefits for partnering with a certified developer:
- More efficient upgrades.
Following the best Magento code standards guarantees fewer errors and better compatibility during the upgrade process. - Better security.
A deeper understanding of Magento’s best practices ensures security guidance and compliance are met. - Deft architectural decisions.
Migrating, integrating, and configuring a tailored solution ensures the website architecture meets the business needs. - Swift delivery.
Knowledge of Magento components to identify possible affected functionality accelerates troubleshooting. - Fluid customization.
Advanced level knowledge of site customizations and its underlying features enhances website development and compliance all the while maintaining optimal performance.
There are a number of official Magento 2 certifications available that are significantly better than their Magento 1 predecessors.
The number and variety of certification titles may at first appear to be somewhat overwhelming. To help explain, below, I will break down and guide you through the types of Magento certifications.
In total, there are 8 certifications:
- Magento 2 Certified Associate Developer — created for beginner-level developers, who have a general knowledge of a Magento development and how to validate it.
- Magento 2 Certified Professional Developer — this exam is aimed for developers with at least 1.5 years of Magento Commerce experience. They also have a strong knowledge of Magento fundamentals and customization practices. This is solid ground to ensure that a developer will deliver quality code for your website.
- Magento 2 Certified Professional Developer Plus — this certification is for a senior Magento 2 developer and architect. This developer works on project planning together with merchants and ensures the architecture of the project not only meets the requirements but also follows the best Magento 2 practices. If the platform is correctly planned and set up, it eventually saves hundreds of hours on performance improvement and compatibility issues.
- Magento Certified Professional Cloud Developer — having a certified developer comes in handy when it comes to Magento Commerce Cloud (Magento Commerce hosted by Magento on AWS). This developer has the skills required to deploy, test, troubleshoot, and operate in the Magento Commerce Cloud environment in the most efficient way.
- Magento 2 Certified Professional Front End Developer — this certification ensures that a developer knows Magento frontend in and out. A deep understanding of theme components saves time when it comes to changes that are presented by Magento admin settings.
- Magento 2 Professional JavaScript Developer — UI modules in Magento are built with the usage of JavaScript, a certified developer knows layout configuration and customer data management.
- Magento 2 Certified Solution Specialist — this certification verifies the knowledge of all the native Magento functionality that can be used out of the box. A solution specialist also has deep eCommerce and general Magento 2 SEO understanding. This can save significant time and effort when your team understands all the functionality that Magento offers.
- Magento 2 Certified Order Management Developer — verifies the practical knowledge required to deploy using Magento Order Management (MOM). This is also useful if you’re going to implement any third-party integrations of data using the API and Magento Commerce Connector.
There is also 1 extra badge for a Full-Stack developer, for those who have taken and passed the following 3 certification exams: Magento 2 Certified Professional Developer, Magento 2 Certified Professional Front End Developer, and Magento 2 Professional JavaScript Developer.
The following check-list may help to gather a proper team for your website:
Website support:
- 1x Solution Specialist
- 1x Professional Developer
- 1x Professional Front End Developer
New website development from scratch:
- 1x Solution Specialist
- 2x Full Stack Developers: Professional Developer + Front End Developer + JavaScript Developer
High traffic website development/support:
- 1x Solution Specialist
- 1x Professional Developer
- 1x Professional Cloud Developer
Complex customizations to make your website experience unique:
- 1x Solution Specialist
- 1x Professional Developer Plus
- 1x Full Stack Developer
Website integration with MOM or another custom third-party platform:
- 1x Order Management Developer
Adobe knows how important it is to get partners in the ecosystem certified and well-trained with the latest and greatest Magento Commerce development practices including project management skills.
In recent years, Magento has grown their partner training program significantly. Being one of the first Magento partners and an Adobe partner with Magento expertise, Atwix is proudly part of this program. In addition, we also hold the greatest number of certifications among all the Professional Partners — 51.
In summary, finding a trained and experienced partner is mission-critical, as the individual contributors making up an agency partner will play an important role in shaping and defining your business’s future. Our hope in providing this background on professional certifications is to shed light on what goes into Magento training and how only the most worthy individuals get certified. Make sure to check out Magento’s Partners Directory to discover partners and please reach out to us with questions or freely share and comment below.