Updates "Magento Community Speaker Workshop"

I’m unbelievably proud of the members of our community who have started and continued, the conversation around diversity and inclusion over the recent years. It is often uncomfortable to step forward and challenge ourselves and our peers. However, as my friend’s mom always says, “If you want to change the world, change your corner of it first.” With Magento certified individuals in over 88 countries (across six continents), and events in over 35 of those countries—our corner of the world is not small.
In 2017, I delivered a talk on How to Build an Inclusive Magento Community and converted it to a blog post on 6 Ways to be Inclusive in the Magento Community. That same year, we launched a special session at Imagine on Increasing Diversity in Tech, partnered with Women Who Code, and donated the proceeds of MagentoLive India to Women Who Code Bangalore and Girls in Tech India.
Since 2017, we’ve looked for opportunities to grow diversity while adding to the community. We created a space for ongoing planning and conversation in the Magento Community Engineering Slack (look for #diversity-inclusion). Now that we’re part of Adobe, I’m really looking forward to finding ways to bring the Adobe For All mission to our industry.
Our newest initiative in this space is an upcoming Magento Community Speaker Workshop. Having more kinds of folks present from the stage benefits the community and our products. In offering an online speaker workshop, we are aiming to eliminate a barrier to public speaking by creating an opportunity for professional training.
The online training will be offered by Jill Binder, founder of DiverseIn.tech, who has done great work improving speaker diversity in the WordPress space. In 2018, the 12 events in six countries who ran Jill’s workshop started at 10% or less for speakers of underrepresented groups, and within months, most had 50% or more diverse speakers.
The workshop covers:

• Demystifying public speaking “expertise”
  
• Finding a topic
  
• Better speaker tips
  
• Writing a great pitch
  
• Creating an outline
  
• Creating great slides
  

This workshop is a great fit for you if you’ve ever felt uncomfortable about speaking at events or wanted to present but found yourself thinking:

• “What would I talk about?”
  
• “I’m not an expert in anything.”
  

When I first joined Magento as an employee, I was terrified to jump into public speaking but knew that it was inevitable with my role. A training like this would’ve calmed my nerves and better prepared me for the task ahead, so I am really looking forward to sharing this opportunity with you.
The Magento Speaker Workshop is a two-part series that will take place online on July 13 and July 20. If you’re interested in taking the workshop, please sign up by July 12. Tickets are a donation to Women Who Code and are on a sliding scale starting at $0. The suggested donation is $5 US, and if you can afford $10 US you will be supporting someone else to attend.
If you’re interested in providing a speaker package (transportation and accommodation) to new speakers once they have completed the training, please reach out at shrohde@adobe.com.
If you’re already a speaker, or are looking for speakers, please join our Magento Speaker Directory to connect with opportunities and those in search of a stage.

Source: https://magento.com/blog/magento-news/magento-community-speaker-workshop

Community Insider Program Year

Community Insider Program Year in Review

Imagine 2019 marks one year since we announced the launch of the Community Insider Program for small Magento agencies and developers. We know there are hundreds of thousands of people and companies around the world that work on Magento that aren’t yet ready to be an official Magento Partner, but are still vital to Magento and help keep our community strong. This program was created to serve this part of our diverse global ecosystem by providing access to more resources to grow their Magento business.

What It Means to Be a Magento Community Insider

Many of the benefits for the Community Insider Program are similar to those of the Partner Programs and offer a great place to start a formal relationship with Magento. Insider benefits include a badge, a company listing on the Insider Directory, access to a plethora of sales and marketing resources in the Partner Portal, Magento Commerce source code, a Cloud sandbox environment, and discounts for Magento U.
Agencies, partners and developers have seen immediate benefits from joining the Community Insider Program. Alex Schreck from Solvature, one of the original Insider companies said, “Being an Insider has helped Solvature by formalizing a relationship and partnership with Magento. Since our investment, we have gotten noticeably more attention and support from Magento themselves.”
“Since joining the program, we have gotten leads and opportunities coming in through the Magento portal,” said Schreck. “However, I wouldn't join to get leads. What I find most important is that Solvature has built connections within the ecosystem due to being a Community Insider.”
Schreck also found the partner portal and marketing hub immensely helpful. “It has jump-started us into selling and marketing and helps us learn what to say to whom. Since Solvature engages in content marketing, the backlink from the directory and the ability to submit blogs is a big plus. We are looking forward to attending the Partner Summit at Imagine for the first time this year!”

What’s New In 2019

We want to continue growing the program. If you have a certified developer on staff, offer Magento website development services, and not an active Magento Partner, the Community Insider Program is a perfect first step to develop your relationship with Magento.
If you’re interested in joining, we have a special offer for those that are attending Imagine 2019:

• Apply to the Community Insider Program by close of business Wednesday, May 22, 2019, and get $500 off the program fee. Be sure to include the Imagine confirmation number and email of employee that attended Imagine in the application.
  
• If you get a current Insider to “refer a friend”, both Insider and new applicant get $500 off.
  
  • New applicants can stack promotions to total a maximum discount of $1,000.
    
  • Active Insiders can refer multiple applicants. When a new applicant is approved and pays the program fee, the current Insider will get a credit of $500 to use on their next year’s program fee or within Magento U. A maximum discount of $1,000 applies.
    

Magento Community Insider Program Meets Magento Community Engineering

While we encourage community members to give back to Magento, we also reward those that participate with our Magento Community Engineering team. The top three companies that contribute the most get additional benefits, such as complimentary Magento U courses and discounted tickets to Imagine or MagentoLive. So definitely keep up the hard work!
Thank you, again, to everyone who joined the Magento Community Insider Program in 2018. Looking forward to an amazing 2019!

Source: https://magento.com/blog/technical/community-insider-program-year-review

 

eCommerce Features

Why You Should Test Your "Tried and True" eCommerce Features

This article is part of our ongoing Mobile Optimization Initiative series designed to help Magento merchants close the mobile revenue gap.
This quarter’s results are all about testing and optimizing conventional eCommerce features—WISHLISTS, BREADCRUMBS, and CONTINUE SHOPPING BUTTONS—that merchants often implement without question.
Building on the theme of simplicity in last quarter’s results, the latest findings further substantiate that—in most cases—removing potential distractions for your buyer and optimizing some of these tried and true features could lead to increased revenue per visitor (RPV).
Let’s have a look at some of the highlights:

1. Removing the Wishlist feature is having a positive impact—especially on mobile

Wishlists can encourage an “I’ll buy it later” mentality, providing shoppers with a way to procrastinate on their purchasing decision. By removing the Add to Wishlist option, merchants can reduce unnecessary distractions on the page and make the Add to Cart button the sole focus for the buyer. Mobile eCommerce merchants should take note—the greatest impact is being seen among mobile shoppers—81.6% are showing a positive RPV lift when the Wishlist feature is removed. Wishlists take up valuable real estate on a mobile device screen, distracting the buyer from completing their transaction.
Fashion merchants should approach this experiment with caution however—the results saw mild dips in RPV from the removal of the feature on fashion websites. There are many potential reasons for this, including the fact that fashion buyers like to save items for later as they build their complete “look.” Shoppers in this vertical also frequently add items to Wishlists to watch them until they go on sale.

2. Breadcrumbs are beloved by your buyers—but there’s still room for optimization

Most merchants implement Breadcrumb trails on their websites—and for good reason. They are a much-relied-upon convention to help shoppers sort product views by category, determine which category the product is from, and find their way back if they make a wrong turn in their search.
But what works in one channel may need to be adjusted for another. The Mobile eCommerce Optimization Initiative found that suppressing the product name in the Breadcrumb trail can result in an average RPV lift of 17.21% among mobile buyers across 80% of merchants.

View More: https://magento.com/blog/best-practices/why-you-should-test-your-tried-and-true-ecommerce-features

 

 

Commerce Advances for Small and Mid-Market Businesses

Adobe Delivers Commerce Advances for Small and Mid-Market Businesses

 

Companies across B2C and B2B need to engage their customers wherever they are, react faster to their changing needs and improve the experiences they deliver based on actionable insights. At Imagine 2019 this week, we announced an important update to Magento Commerce, the commerce solution in Adobe Experience Cloud for small and mid-market businesses.
With Amazon Sales Channels and Google Shopping ads Channels, merchants are able to target new audiences and easily reach more customers. These integrated capabilities empower small and mid-market businesses to better orchestrate the end-to-end experiences they deliver to customers across channels. With PageBuilder merchants can more quickly and easily update the content on their websites. Merchants are now able to tap the broader capabilities of Adobe Analytics, part of Adobe Analytics Cloud in Adobe Experience Cloud through the Adobe Experience Platform connector.
“We are as invested as ever in the mid-market” said Jason Woosley, Vice President Commerce Product and Platform, Adobe. “We are continuing to invest in additional resources and capabilities to drive real revenue and profit growth for our mid-market merchants across channels.”
New capabilities in Magento Commerce include:
Expand customer reach: With Amazon Sales Channel now generally available, merchants can seamlessly expand their footprint to the Amazon marketplace. Amazon Sales Channel effectively removes the barriers to entry for merchants trying to gain a foothold on Amazon by allowing them to quickly integrate their catalog, establish a bi-directional data flow and start managing listings from their Magento admin. By seamlessly integrating their Magento store with multiple Amazon accounts and regions, merchants can make their Magento Admin the central hub for all their critical Amazon marketplace activities, thereby reducing data silos, removing operational friction, and eliminating additional integration costs. The extension is available today for free download on the Magento Marketplace for Magento Commerce Pro and Magento Open Source 2.2.4 (and later) customers. More info here.
Target new audiences with a fully integrated, end-to-end Google advertising solution now generally available as a free extension in the Magento Marketplace. Google Shopping ads Channel for Magento Commerce and Magento Open source 2.2.4 and later, directly integrates with Google Merchant Center and Google Ads to streamline workflow by managing advertising campaigns and reporting across the Google network from the ease of their Magento admin. More info here.
Launch powerful behavioral analytics: Magento Commerce customers looking to gain a more complete understanding of customer behavior can now easily integrate Adobe Analytics using the Adobe Experience Platform Launch extension. This new development provides brands with the capability to quickly deploy the tag management required to enable the flow of data between Magento Commerce and Adobe Analytics, in just minutes. The extension is one of the first community-driven projects that empowers brands to unlock the potential of bringing the solutions together to drive rich customer behavior insights.
Accelerate time to market for high conversion mobile experiences: Just months after its release, Progressive Web Applications (PWA) Studio now integrates Braintree (from PayPal) and makes it easier than ever for merchants, partners and developers to get started with debit and credit transactions with a trusted gateway. The integration translates to faster time to market and lower total cost of ownership. Over 60% of solution partners are planning to develop PWA sites in 2019 and to extend the core capabilities in PWA Studio. Magento Enterprise Solution Partner Creatuity has developed an innovative, next-generation mobile experience for farm supply retailer Rural King to serve the needs of rural communities and will be showcasing these innovations at Imagine.
Expand global inventory management: We are helping merchants realize their omnichannel aspirations with Magento Order Management by bringing new capabilities like multi-tender payment workflows, exception management for payments, more granular roles and permissions, full API coverage for omnichannel capabilities, microservices architecture for improved scale and reliability, and fully dedicated staging environment.
Speed up site content updates: Marketers need to update their online site experience more frequently and more quickly than ever before. The powerful PageBuilder drag-and-drop editing tool for site content, enables merchants to create a best-in-class shopping experience 10 times faster without creative limits or the need for developer support. Now with the new BlueFoot Content Migration tool, merchants who are using BlueFoot on Magento 2.1.x or 2.2.x can quickly upgrade to Magento 2.3.1 with Page Builder 1.0.0 without losing their website content.
With Magento Commerce now powering Adobe Commerce Cloud, these advanced commerce capabilities are also natively integrated, enhanced and managed within Adobe Experience Cloud to serve the needs of global B2C and B2B companies to support multiple brands, sites and countries and to orchestrate commerce across every channel.  Offered as an Adobe Managed Service, Adobe Commerce Cloud puts agility, performance and security at the forefront to help brands improve time to market and streamline operations to exceed customer and business expectations.

Source: https://magento.com/blog/magento-news/adobe-delivers-commerce-advances-small-and-mid-market-businesses

 

Customer Reach and Grow Revenue

Amazon Sales Channel in Magento Enables Merchants to Expand Customer Reach and Grow Revenue

 

The reason why a brand or merchant should consider having a presence on Amazon Marketplace is obvious: they can reach a much wider customer base than any other marketplace in the world. Amazon today accounts for 44 percent of U.S. online retail sales, and even if the final transaction does not take place on Amazon, 55 percent of shoppers use the site as a starting point for product discovery. It’s no surprise then that most merchants, both big and small, listing products on one of the world’s largest online retail marketplaces is a non-negotiable strategy.
However, for many small to medium-sized businesses that are challenged with achieving growth while scaling operations, becoming a viable player in the Amazon economy can feel more like a pipe dream than an achievable business strategy. Why? Because any new channel represents a host of different operational nuances and best practices. For one, you are introducing a new platform for your team to learn, manage and maintain. And if your teams are already maxed out, it may require you to hire additional staff or a system integrator to implement the channel.
The challenges don’t end there. Brands can also run into issues when trying to price their items competitively and in real-time against other Amazon sellers. And then there’s the task of intelligently managing inventory across multiple sales channels that naturally don’t sync with each other. The end result isn’t just a loss of sales, but in today’s world where customer context is everything, it could mean a very real chance that the consumer will not want to engage with your brand ever again.

Introducing Amazon Sales Channel in Magento

Amazon Sales Channel effectively removes these barriers to entry for merchants trying to gain a foothold on Amazon by allowing them to quickly integrate their catalog, establish a bi-directional data flow and start managing listings from their Magento admin. By seamlessly integrating their Magento store with multiple Amazon accounts and regions, merchants can make their Magento Admin the central hub for all their critical Amazon marketplace activities, thereby reducing data silos, removing operational friction, and eliminating additional integration costs. Amazon Sales Channel is a free downloadable extension generally available today in the Magento Marketplace for Magento Commerce and Magento Open Source 2.2.4 (and later) customers.
Key benefits include:

• Leverage Amazon’s Vast Product Data: Amazon listings are one of the largest data sets of product information. You can leverage this by syncing that Amazon information backwards into your Magento catalog. For example, if you sell a video game console but your Magento catalog listing doesn’t have the release date, Amazon Sales Channel will take that data from the Amazon page and add it to your Magento catalog.
  
• Intelligent Pricing and Pricing Rules: With Amazon Sales Channel, you can use automated pricing rules to increase your chances of making a sale. Prices can be set dynamically to adjust to the current Amazon Buy Box price or the lowest competitor pricing, without sacrificing margin. You can also easily set rules to adjust the Amazon listing price relative to your Magento catalog price. Lastly, you can support multiple currencies with the currency conversion tool.
  
• Listing Management: You can automate product listings and easily sync your catalog to the Amazon Marketplace using listing rules, all directly from the Magento admin dashboard.
  
• Inventory Management: Your inventory levels stay in constant synchronization with Amazon for an accurate accounting, even when inventory is updated directly to your database.
  
• Multiple Amazon Accounts: You can easily manage multiple Amazon brands and marketplace regions from one centralized dashboard.
  
• Fulfillment and Order Management: Experience the flexibility of listing your products as merchant fulfilled, Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) or a mix of fulfillment methods. Track and manage your Amazon orders directly from the order grid in the Magento admin. Rest easy knowing that order status customer communications are being handled seamlessly.
  
• B2B Pricing and Quantity Discounts: You can utilize the B2B pricing functionality to offer tiered pricing based on quantity purchased. Through this channel, you can easily sell to Amazon business customers.
  

While third-party connectors and other commerce platforms tout their ability to integrate with Amazon, none can offer the depth of bi-directional integration or breadth of functionalities and benefits that Magento does, including intelligent pricing, range of fulfillment options, automated product listing and more.
Amazon Sales Channel along with Google Shopping ads Channel (also generally available today) are two of several future Channels product releases on our roadmap to empower our merchants to successfully reach customers wherever they shop.

Source: https://magento.com/blog/magento-news/amazon-sales-channel-magento-enables-merchants-expand-customer-reach-and-grow

 

Magento Technology Partners

2019 Partner Award Winners: Magento Technology Partners

Magento Technology Partners provide best-in-breed software and services that address individual merchant business needs and help them create exceptional shopping experiences. Each year, we host the Magento Partner awards at Imagine to celebrate the Magento Technology Partners that have shown exceptional creativity, innovation, and service.

Please join us in a round of applause for the 2019 Technology Award Winners:

View More: https://magento.com/blog/events/2019-partner-award-winners-magento-technology-partners

 

 

Big & Small with Adobe + Magento

Customers Big & Small Can ‘Expand The Experience’ With Adobe + Magento

It is truly a momentous time to be in commerce, said Gary Spector, VP, Commerce Sales & Customer Success, Experience Business at Adobe, who kicked off the Monday evening keynote session at Adobe’s Imagine 2019 event in Las Vegas.
“We’re seeing changes in the way people shop and the way they interact with brands,” he told the audience of approximately 3,500 attendees. Customer expectations are rising, he said, “and the expectations are that the experience will be personal and you’ll meet people where they are and whenever they want.”
That is precisely why Adobe acquired Magento just under a year ago, Gary said, bringing Magento Commerce into the Adobe Experience Cloud suite of cloud services, alongside Adobe Analytics Cloud, Adobe Marketing Cloud and Adobe Advertising Cloud.
“We need to use insights to drive real-time relevance and personalized experiences,” Gary said. “It requires even greater openness and collaboration–to reach across functions within and beyond our organizations to create one cohesive experience for customers. It calls us to continue challenging each other, pushing each other to innovate even more, and to keep this community thriving.”
And, he said, it also requires the commerce industry to look ahead at emerging technology such as AI and VR, i.e. “skate to where the puck is going to be next.”
“In every sense, it requires us to ‘Expand the Experience,’” he said.
With that, Gary invited attendees to expand their knowledge and enhance their relationships, as well as their experience with Magento, Adobe and also with one another. Because, he boasted, the universe of creative options from a commerce perspective have exploded now that Magento is part of Adobe. And he’s right: There’s so much opportunity for Magento customers in how they collaborate as well as how they create experiences.

The future of Magento

The question attendees get to explore at this year’s Imagine, along with Adobe, is how to expand the experience for customers, together, as a community. Gary challenged attendees to think about how creating experiences will evolve.
With that, Gary introduced Gloria Chen, SVP of Strategy & Growth for Adobe, and the woman who was instrumental in bringing Magento and Adobe together. According to Chen, the reason why Adobe decided to purchase Magento is because we knew that commerce is important to our customers, large and small.
After all, she said, Magento is a leading open-source platform that spans B2C and B2B. And behind it is a large and active community of hundreds of thousands of developers contributing to new capabilities and extensions, which is helping to accelerate innovation.​ As a company, she said, Adobe’s really excited about the growing SMB and midmarket community of customers. And finally, Magento’s strong vision for experience-driven commerce was what really helped seal the deal.
“Magento has brought many strengths to the Adobe family, and we are committed to nurturing and building on these strengths.,” Gloria said. “Magento brings a culture and a mission that fit Adobe like a glove.​ At the core we are empowering people. ​Our mission is to help our customers change the world through digital experiences.”
Gloria made an interesting statement that seemed to ring true to the room full of CX professionals. She said that consumers are increasingly consuming digital content. And, she said, there’s a good chance that every one of those experiences is made by one of Adobe’s customers, using one of our tools.
“While we’re well known for our creative tools for professionals, we’re investing in tools that empower anyone to create,” Gloria said. “We’re transforming Creative Cloud into the platform that powers creativity for all. That means all of us here in this room can design like the pros!​”We’re working to make [Adobe] Document Cloud the platform for digital documents, so our customers can create, review and act on documents at work and on the go.​”
And, she said, our company is also transforming how businesses compete by giving companies of all sizes the ability to create and deliver personalized experiences for their customers wherever they are. ​And, Magento is an important part of Adobe’s ability to deliver an end-to-end experience.​
In fact, Adobe customers have asked for commerce technology for years, Gloria said. And Magento’s digital commerce, order management and predictive intelligence capabilities enable shopping experiences across a wide array of industries. ​
“I’m excited to see how a deeper integration with Adobe Experience Cloud and our Adobe Experience Platform will enable a whole new wave of experiences,” Gloria said. “…I believe we are on the verge of another exciting inflection [point] with platforms and intelligence fueling a new wave of experience-driven commerce.”  ​

What’s new with Magento + Adobe

Jason Woosley, VP, commerce product & platform, Adobe, came on stage to discuss the commerce opportunity with Adobe + Magento. Jason expects that real-time insights will enable merchants to optimize and run their entire business as a customer experience engine.
“Your marketing, merchandizing, pricing and supply chain can be optimized in real-time for outcome metrics [such as] retention, margin, engagement, and life-time-value,” he said. “This is incredibly powerful and sustainably differentiating. And it’s only possible when you unify behavioral data, derived from interactions with your content, and transactional data – the dollars and cents behind the relationship.”
This tremendously powerful combination of content, data, marketing, and now commerce, applied over the entire customer journey is what we at Adobe call, “experience-driven commerce.” And it’s something that we’re now enabling for merchants of all sizes.
At Adobe Summit in March, we announced Adobe Commerce Cloud to serve the needs of large enterprises that want to unify and manage the customer experience they deliver across all their channels, end to end. Adobe Commerce Cloud is built on Magento Commerce. It uses the strengths of the Magento platform and the fact that it is architected for rapid change and growth, with limitless flexibility to customize and scale, to support any use case, in any industry, globally and across B2C, B2B and hybrid sales models. These commerce capabilities are natively integrated, enhanced and managed within the Adobe Experience Cloud platform.
“Adobe Experience Cloud integrations support the entire customer journey delivering superior customer experiences and accelerating time to market,” Jason said. “Combining data, content, and commerce creates a powerful platform effect that optimizes experiences, drives efficiencies, and enhances business outcomes.”
Jason also announced the next generation Magento Commerce, which now uses Adobe Sensei (our AI and machine learning framework) to power recommendations. He also spoke to the availability of Google Ad Channel and Amazon Sales Channel​, which will empower merchants to target new audiences and easily reach more customers. Click here to see the full lineup of announcements made on stage.
“As we near the 1-year anniversary of the acquisition, we are well ahead of our integration goals,” Jason told the audience. “We’re driving greater value for our stakeholders, accelerating our product roadmap, leveraging Adobe’s scale to serve more customers across every industry, and advancing our mission of using technology to connect and empower more merchants than ever before.”

Source: https://magento.com/blog/events/customers-big-small-can-%E2%80%98expand-experience%E2%80%99-adobe-magento