Magento Imagine Day 1 Keynote Recap: “Expand the Experience”
“Expand the experience.” This is what’s possible with Adobe plus Magento.
“We’re in transition right now…We pick up parts through our phases, pieces that will help us transition and get over the finish line,” says Phillip Jackson, Imagine’s Master of Ceremonies. Magento has gone through many phases in its existence. From being acquired by eBay then breaking up with eBay to its most recent acquisition by Adobe shortly followed by the exit of Magento CEO, Mark Lavelle.
Jackson reminds the audience that out of each phase, Magento emerges stronger and better than ever—providing Magento merchants, developers, and partners “an entire universe of opportunity.”
The next phase of Magento largely depends on the Magento community and what they envision. Gary Specter, VP of Commerce Sales at Magento, spotlights recent community-driven innovations in the last year: advanced A/B testing, augmented reality, visual search, and emotional robotics.
In this new era, it’s “time to look beyond isolated transactions and think about the bigger journey your customers have with your brand,” says Specter. The customer journey goes far beyond the moment the order is shipped; it’s a lifetime of engagement with a brand. The Adobe-Magento acquisition and new features such as page builder enable merchants to turn the concept of making every moment shoppable into a reality. Specter challenges the audience: “What strategic bets will you make in 2019?”
The merger of Adobe and Magento didn’t happen overnight. It was months and months of planning and meetings to determine if, culturally, this would be the right fit and what the company would look like moving forward. Gloria Chen, SVP of Corporate Strategy and Growth, remarked that Magento addressed Adobe’s need for commerce. Together, they “make every moment personable and every experience shoppable,” says Chen.
Magento Roadmap
Jason Woosley, VP of Commerce Product & Platform, Experience Business at Adobe, walks through Magento’s up and coming features that will help businesses “exceed customer and business expectations at every single turn.”
Bringing the Power of Adobe Sensei to Magento Commerce
Magento Commerce will have new personalization capabilities powered by an artificial intelligence and machine learning framework, which offers intelligent and robust recommendations based on customer behavior. Users will be able to test product recommendations to improve the experience and lift conversions.
Jennifer Small, Senior Solution Consultant at Adobe, demoed this new functionality with Zumiez. Without involving a developer, a marketer can make drag and drop edits both in a mobile app and the ecommerce site. Small showed the audience the power of experience fragments and smart layouts, which use AI to personalize the experience for each customer segment.
Adobe Sensei also powers visual search on the Zumiez site. Small used an image of a hat to search for a similar hat on Zumiez. The results showed the exact same hat, along with comparable options.
Adobe Experience Platform Extension
Magento merchants looking for a holistic view of their customers will now be able to integrate Adobe Analytics with the Adobe Experience Platform Launch extension. The new extension allows brands to seamlessly flow customer data from Adobe Analytics into the commerce platform within seconds—driving deeper insights and real-time decision making.
Amazon Sales Channel and Google Shopping Ads Channel
With Amazon Sales Channel, merchants can easily synchronize inventory and orders between the Amazon marketplace and their Magento site. Google Shopping Ads will help merchants expand their channels to reach new audiences.
Omnichannel Order Management
Shoppers today want instant fulfillment—the ability to buy something online and immediately pick it up in store. The omnichannel order management lets merchants provide their shoppers with this option, bringing together the digital and physical experiences. Additionally, the new tool comes with multi-tender payment workflows, more granular roles and permissions, and full API coverage.
Progressive Web Apps (PWA) Studio
Magento considers this new function to be the most prominent PWA tool on the market. PWA Studio allows merchants to get to market faster while lowering the total cost of ownership. The robust integration with PayPal’s Braintree makes it easier than ever for partners to get started with debit and credit transactions.
Adobe Experience Cloud By the Numbers
Magento Commerce resides under the Adobe Experience Cloud, alongside Marketing Cloud, Analytics Cloud, and Advertising Cloud. The Adobe Experience Cloud serves 15 billion web pages per day, 14 trillion segment activations per day, and 3.5 million ad opportunities per second. The ecosystem includes 51,000 solution partners and 300,000 Magento developers—Blue Acorn iCi is excited to be a part of this ecosystem as an Adobe + Magento partner.
If you’re planning a replatform to Magento Commerce or would like to improve your current customer experience, feel free to reach out to the Blue Acorn iCi team here.