Magento 2 Certified Solution Specialist

Content Area Approximate Percentage of Exam

• 1. ecommerce 13%
• 2. Magento architecture 22%
• 3. Magento Admin and storefront 30%
• 4. Business and applications 13%
• 5. Catalog 22%

Topics and Objectives

1 Ecommerce

1.1 Demonstrate ability to configure SEO features in Magento amasty, mageplaza, dckap, magento

• Marketing strategies: Omnichannel, multichannel, SEO, affiliate marketing, social marketing, email marketing
• What are the principle methods of natively improving SEO in Magento 2 projects?

1.2 Demonstrate understanding of securing a Magento project

magehit, cloudways, digitaloutlook, magento, ziffity, mageplaza, neklo, magenticians, hostadvice, devdocs, magecomp, pixafy, devdocs

• What is the meaning of "PCI compliance"?
• What effects does PCI compliance have on the website?
• What is SSL, and when should it be used?
• What is a DDoS attack? What is a firewall?
• What is difference between TLS and SSL?
• What other security features exist in Magento 2?
• How can security patches be applied?

1.3 Demonstrate understanding of how to measure and analyze the user experience

magento, inchoo

• What are typical usability principles and issues?
• For instance, when a user leaves an ecommerce site without completing a purchase they began, what usability issues need to be planned for?

1.4 Demonstrate knowledge of key laws and regulations impacting ecommerce

amasty, mageplaza

• Disability compliance issues (ADA and its international equivalents)
• US and EU privacy and data protection regulations and GDPR

1.5 Demonstrate ability to use data analytics and testing

inviqa, devdocs

• Google Analytics, A/B testing, optimization and personalization

1.6 Demonstrate understanding of implementing omnichannel

magento, e-zest, devdocs, devdocs, mageplaza, firebearstudio, meetanshi, cloudways, mageplaza, magestore, mageworx, letstalkmagento, devdocs, commerceblend

• What products and tools does Magento have to handle complex inventory management?
• What B2B tools does Magento implement?
• What is MSI?
• How can MSI sourcing algorithms be used?
• Drop ship
• Buy-on-line / pickup-in-store
• Personalization

References:

• Magento Open

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2 Magento 2 Architecture

2.1 Demonstrate ability to design a Cloud solution

devdocs, sherocommerce, mconnectmedia

• What are the benefits and drawbacks of on-premise vs. Cloud?
• How do you move to Cloud?
• How does Cloud influence project development?
• What features are only available on Cloud?
• What are the differences between Starter and Pro plans?

2.2 Demonstrate understanding of key concepts of Magento architecture

devdocs, magento, devdocs

• Architecture in Magento 2 – What is it and how is it used in Magento Commerce?
• What are the benefits and costs of database sharding?
• What is the Varnish Full Page Cache and why is it better than the built in FPC?
• What are the basic responsibilities of templates and layouts in Magento 2?
• What are the basic steps for extending Magento 2 functionality with a code change or a third-party extension?
• How can the site design be configured using the options found in the Admin UI under System > Design >Configuration?

2.3 Demonstrate knowledge of how to use the Magento API for integrating with third-party systems

devdocs1, devdocs2, devdocs3, devdocs4, omsdocs1, omsdocs, mageplaza

• What types of API does Magento Commerce have?
• What are the intended use cases for the different API types?
• What are the pros and cons of each type?
• What methods of authentication do the Magento 2 APIs support?
• Demonstrate the ability to manage credentials for the Magento API

2.4 Demonstrate ability to design and administer websites, stores, store views

docs, devdocs, cloudways

• What are use cases for product attributes scopes?
• What is the effect of Website, Store, and Store View configuration scopes?
• Understand display of product catalogs in websites, stores, and store views
• Understand administration of websites, stores, and store views
• Understand localization taxes and pricing in websites, stores, and store views

2.5 Demonstrate understanding of the differences between Magento editions

serverguy, elogic, mofluid, aheadworks, magento, iwdagency, bsscommerce, iwdagency

• What are the main differences between Magento Open Source and Magento Commerce?
• What features are available only on Magento Commerce? (Commerce, Open Source, and B2B)
• Differences between Magento 2 Commerce, Magento 2 Commerce Cloud, and Magento 2 Open Source
• Advantages of Magento Commerce, Magento Commerce Cloud, Magento Open Source
• Staging and previewing
• Payment methods in Magento 2 Commerce
• Customer attributes and segments in Magento 2 Commerce
• Full page cache and indexing differences between editions
• All other differences between Magento Open Source and Magento Commerce

2.6 Demonstrate ability to identify infrastructure requirements for a Magento project

devdocs1, devdocs2, devdocs3, meetanshi

• What are the infrastructure elements of a typical Magento installation (database, search, CDN, cache, sessions, etc.)?

2.7 Demonstrate ability to configure the Magento storefront functionality

docs1, docs2, mageplaza, belvg, medium, devdocs, stackexchange

• How are cookies used in Magento?
• What must be done to configure cookies on multisite Magento implementations?
• What is static content signing?

References:

• Magento Open Source and Magento Commerce Documentation and Resources
• Magento U courses for Merchants and Marketers

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3 Magento Admin and Storefront

3.1 Demonstrate ability to use the Magento Admin

docs

• Which sections exist in the Magento Admin UI?
• What are user roles?
• How can they be configured? Can a user have multiple roles?
• Demonstrate the ability to create complex user authorization configurations
• Demonstrate the ability to use grids and forms

3.2 Demonstrate ability to use content staging and previews

docs1, docs2, quora, mag-manager, magenest, fisheye

• What are staging timelines?
• How can staging be used?
• How can staging be previewed?
• What are the limitations of staging?
• Which entities can staging be used with?
• How can staging be used with third-party extensions?

3.3 Demonstrate ability to configure the shopping cart

docs1, docs2, docs3, docs4

• Can guest customers place orders?
• How can pricing and tax display be influenced through the Magento Admin?
• How do you restrict checkout to registered customers?
• Demonstrate the ability to use the wish list?
• Demonstrate the ability to configure shopping cart rules?

3.4 Demonstrate understanding of payment methods

mageworx, docs, elogic

• Which payment methods are available natively in Magento Commerce?
• Which capture methods does Magento provide?
• What are advantages of hosted payment?
• What are the shopping cart gift options?

3.5 Demonstrate ability to configure shipping methods

mageplaza, docs, magestore, cloudways

• What shipping methods does Magento 2 provide out of the box?
• How can table rates be configured?
• How can in-store pickup be set up?

3.6 Demonstrate ability to create a checkout process

docs, appseconnect, iksula

• What can registered customers do that guest customers cannot?
• Why is the payment step last before order placement?
• What kind of customizations does Magento checkout support?
• How is price calculation in the checkout different from the catalog?

3.7 Demonstrate ability to set up order processing

docs1, docs2, magento, docs, omsdocs

• When an order is saved in the Magento database?
• what triggers a confirmation email to a customer using PayPal Express?
• Login to PayPal account?
• Clicking Checkout button & Clicking Purchase button?
• When editing a pending order, what order data can be changed?

3.8 Understand the use of extensions and customizations

amasty

• Where can a merchant find Magento extensions?
• How are extensions installed?
• How can a Magento extension be evaluated?
• What do you need to look out for when evaluating a third-party extension?
• When is a customization required?

3.9 Demonstrate ability to manage customers

docs1, docs2, docs3, docs4

• What are customer groups?
• What can customer groups be used for?
• How can customer groups be set up?
• What are customer segments?
• What can customer segments be used for?
• How can customer segments be configured?
• What are customer attributes used for?
• What kind of customer attributes can be created?
• What is the difference in customer attribute configuration between Magento Commerce and Magento Open Source?
• What are customer account features?

3.10 Demonstrate ability to use the CMS

kualo, scnsoft,

• What are CMS pages and blocks?
• How can custom variables be used?
• How can external images be embedded in CMS content?
• How can multilingual CMS content be managed?
• What are widgets?
• How are widgets used?
• Demonstrate understanding of Magento Commerce banners

3.11 Demonstrate ability to create promotions and price rules

docs1, docs2, docs3, docs4

• What is the difference between catalog price rules and shopping cart price rules?
• What are effects of many catalog price rules?
• What are effects of many shopping cart price rules?
• Demonstrate the ability to set up product relations (related products, upsells, cross-sells)
• Demonstrate an understanding of the possibilities and limitations of reward points
• What kind of coupons exist?
• How can they be configured?

3.12 Demonstrate ability to import / export

docs1, docs2, docs3, docs4

• Explain how to populate a product import template with product data that needs to be managed at the store view level. For example, images and language differ across the store views. If I have 3 store views what would that look like?
• Can order data be imported without customization?
• Define the import behaviors: add/update, replace, delete?
• What is an empty attribute value constant and what is the default value?

3.13 Demonstrate understanding of reporting in Magento

docs, devdocs, docs

• What native options exist for reporting in Magento?
• What are the benefits of Magento BI?

References:

• Magento Open Source and Magento Commerce Documentation and Resources
• Magento U courses for Merchants and Marketers

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4 Business and Applications

4.1 Demonstrate ability to gather requirements

paulnrogers, kensiumsolutions

• Given a customer need, how can it be implemented in Magento?
• Given a customer design request, what would be the easiest or most efficient way to accomplish the goal?
• When should you recommend that a client modify requests to fit native functionality?

4.2 Demonstrate ability to create internationalization / multisite setups

inchoo, inviqa, bsscommerce

• When does a solution need to include multiple websites or stores?
• Multisite infrastructure
• Demonstrate understanding of Website, Stores, Store Views
• Creating localization, addressing and setting up international currencies and taxes, and multisite shipping

4.3 Demonstrate ability to create customer loyalty programs

docs, mageplaza

• Identify the actions that can acquire rewards points for customers

4.4 Demonstrate understanding of laws and regulations

mageplaza, docs, firebearstudio, magento

• Distance selling, PCI-DSS, cross-border trade, GDPR?
• Fixed Product Tax (FPT) - How can it be configured natively to meet CA tax regulation requirements such as bottle deposit tax?
• EU / AU / CA tax regulations - How can native configurations meet storefront display requirements?
• How do you configure product prices to include tax?
• how do you configure product prices excluding tax?
• how do you break out tax only in the shopping cart or order confirmation?

4.5 Demonstrate ability to apply taxes

docs, belvg, ostraining, fastcomet, magestore

• US and EU tax regulations; VAT; digital VAT; in-state and out-of-state taxes; cross-border taxes?

4.6 Demonstrate ability to set up a returns process

docs, mageplaza, twojay, amasty

• What is a return process?
• How is a return process configured?

References:

• Magento Open Source and Magento Commerce Documentation and Resources
• Magento U courses for Merchants and Marketers
• Magento U course: Requirements Discovery

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5 Catalog

5.1 Demonstrate how to use products

• Demonstrate the ability to create and use product videos. docs, magenticians, mageplaza, inchoo, shoppimon
• What determines whether a product is visible on the storefront? docs, magenticians, mageplaza, inchoo, shoppimon
• What determines whether a product can be sold on the storefront (saleable)? docs, docs

5.2 Demonstrate ability to use different product types

• What are product types in Magento Commerce? docs, mageworx

5.3 Demonstrate ability to use categories

• How can products and categories be added? docs, magenticians
• What is the visual merchandiser? docs
• How can the visual merchandiser be used? store
• Demonstrate the ability to manage categories. trellis, matridtech
• How can multiple websites with independent category trees be created? firebearstudiohttps://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.3/config-guide/multi-site/ms_over.html)

5.4 Demonstrate ability to use product attributes

• What are attribute sets? docs, mageworx
• What are the consequences of a few large attribute sets vs. many small attribute sets? magecom
• What is the effect of using many configurable attributes with a product? paulnrogers, docs, mageplaza
• What is the effect of store scope vs. global scope attributes? docs, magestore, cadence
• What are possible strategies to use fewer product attributes? magecom, amasty

5.5 Demonstrate ability to scale catalogs

• How to deal with large catalogs? magemonkeys, quora
• High SKU catalogs? amasty
• High volume sales? magestore, aionhill

5.6 Demonstrate ability to configure inventory management

• Inventory management? magenticians, boostmyshop, mageworx, docs

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References:

• theecommmanager