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

 

Magento Innovations Lab

Magento Innovations Lab Round 4 Showcase

We launched the Magento Innovations Lab to spotlight the exceptional, bleeding-edge work that the Magento eCommerce Community is doing. From merchandising to customer service to payments (and more), these innovations are truly creating exceptional customer experiences for Magento merchants. Please join us in a round of applause for the newest additions to the program—the round four selections!

Advanced A/B Testing by Joe Rollinson of Best Worlds

This extension from Best Worlds leverages Magento’s multi-website architecture and advanced configuration structure to make A/B testing possible on (almost) any aspect of a Magento store.

View More: https://magento.com/blog/technical/magento-innovations-lab-round-4-showcase

 

Magento Commerce Leads

Magento Commerce Leads in Enterprise and Mid-market Editions of Paradigm B2B Combine Report

 

Whether you’re a wholesaler, industrial or commercial business, it is always challenging to evaluate software solutions that align to your unique business processes and needs. What are the most important criteria to consider? Former Forrester Analyst Andy Hoar has developed a new methodology to evaluate B2B commerce vendors. Based on a “sports combine” approach spanning 36 detailed and weighed criteria, it evaluates vendors across ten product and non-product categories tailored to the needs of enterprise and mid-market companies and awards medals based on the vendors’ composite scores.
Magento Commerce, part of Adobe Commerce Cloud, participated in both the Enterprise and Mid-market editions of the Paradigm B2B Combine and was awarded the most medals (17) across both reports. Among the strengths highlighted in the report were: an impressive partner ecosystem, rich extension marketplace, a sizeable Magento customer base you can reach out to, a “rightsized” pricing model and an easy ability to customize the solution via partners.
As you build out your criteria, consider the categories Andy reviewed in his Paradigm B2B Combine reports.
Ability to Execute – We’ve all been there… the sales pitch was great, but can the vendor really deliver? Evaluating a vendor’s ability to execute and live up to their promises is critical to ensuring that you can create a commerce experience that will differentiate your business and drive growth. You need to know if the company is laser-focused on meeting the needs of B2B companies, if the management team is seasoned and has domain expertise, and if they have adequate staffing and resourcing levels to continually advance their solution. Ask the tough questions during the sales process and check with existing customers and analysts to confirm.
Partner Ecosystem – Having a great platform isn’t enough, especially in today’s rapidly shifting business and competitive environment. You need to make sure that a platform is backed by a global ecosystem of technology developers and implementation partners who can drive platform innovation and make customizations to fit your exact needs. Breadth AND depth are critical when evaluating an ecosystem. Are there lots of solution partners and developers in your region with expertise in B2B commerce, your existing business systems, and your industry category? How many developers are certified? What add-on solutions, connectors, and extensions are available for the platform that will allow you to get to market faster?
Vision and Strategy – When choosing a vendor, you should evaluate what they offer today, but also what they can do for you in the future. You are making a multi-year commitment and need to be sure that the vendor can provide you with the features, functionality, and support needed to stay ahead of your competitors and react to changing market conditions. It is important to dig in and find out their 3-5 year vision, what new capabilities they will deliver in the next 18 months, and if they are seeing growing sales and partner momentum that will help spur additional investment and innovation. You want to make sure that you have the right team backing your business.
Promotions Management – B2B buyer expectations are sky-high. Not only do they want dead-easy online purchasing, they expect their vendors to really “know” them and create experiences that are personalized to their needs. This means having custom catalogs and prices, thoughtful product recommendations, content designed for specific buyer roles and interests, and targeted promotions. It also means adding intelligence to the process with reminders of when to reorder or offering subscription services, so buyers can essentially set it and forget it.
Transaction Management – At its core, commerce is all about transactions. So, you need to make sure that your vendor has the best solution for taking, managing, and reporting on quotes and orders. Take time to evaluate their shopping cart and checkout process. Are they pre-integrated with a range of payment and shipping options? How easy is it for buyers to submit and negotiate quotes or configure products online? Look at their order management capabilities, too. Can you manage inventory and orders across multiple channels in one place and use business intelligence to optimize how each order is fulfilled? Can you offer your customers the ability to buy-online and pick up in nearby branch locations? And finally, make sure your commerce solution has ready-to-go dashboards for critical business, product, and customer metrics. This will ensure your team can manage day-to-day business and surface critical insights, without having to rely on a data scientist.
To see the rest of the Paradigm B2B Combine criteria and how Magento and other vendors were scored, download the Enterprise and Mid-Market Paradigm B2B Combine Reports.

Source: https://magento.com/blog/magento-news/magento-commerce-leads-enterprise-and-mid-market-editions-paradigm-b2b-combine

 

Updates on Magento Commerce Leads in Enterprise and Mid-market

Magento Commerce Leads in Enterprise and Mid-market Editions of Paradigm B2B Combine Report

 

Whether you’re a wholesaler, industrial or commercial business, it is always challenging to evaluate software solutions that align to your unique business processes and needs. What are the most important criteria to consider? Former Forrester Analyst Andy Hoar has developed a new methodology to evaluate B2B commerce vendors. Based on a “sports combine” approach spanning 36 detailed and weighed criteria, it evaluates vendors across ten product and non-product categories tailored to the needs of enterprise and mid-market companies and awards medals based on the vendors’ composite scores.
Magento Commerce, part of Adobe Commerce Cloud, participated in both the Enterprise and Mid-market editions of the Paradigm B2B Combine and was awarded the most medals (17) across both reports. Among the strengths highlighted in the report were: an impressive partner ecosystem, rich extension marketplace, a sizeable Magento customer base you can reach out to, a “rightsized” pricing model and an easy ability to customize the solution via partners.
As you build out your criteria, consider the categories Andy reviewed in his Paradigm B2B Combine reports.
Ability to Execute – We’ve all been there… the sales pitch was great, but can the vendor really deliver? Evaluating a vendor’s ability to execute and live up to their promises is critical to ensuring that you can create a commerce experience that will differentiate your business and drive growth. You need to know if the company is laser-focused on meeting the needs of B2B companies, if the management team is seasoned and has domain expertise, and if they have adequate staffing and resourcing levels to continually advance their solution. Ask the tough questions during the sales process and check with existing customers and analysts to confirm.
Partner Ecosystem – Having a great platform isn’t enough, especially in today’s rapidly shifting business and competitive environment. You need to make sure that a platform is backed by a global ecosystem of technology developers and implementation partners who can drive platform innovation and make customizations to fit your exact needs. Breadth AND depth are critical when evaluating an ecosystem. Are there lots of solution partners and developers in your region with expertise in B2B commerce, your existing business systems, and your industry category? How many developers are certified? What add-on solutions, connectors, and extensions are available for the platform that will allow you to get to market faster?
Vision and Strategy – When choosing a vendor, you should evaluate what they offer today, but also what they can do for you in the future. You are making a multi-year commitment and need to be sure that the vendor can provide you with the features, functionality, and support needed to stay ahead of your competitors and react to changing market conditions. It is important to dig in and find out their 3-5 year vision, what new capabilities they will deliver in the next 18 months, and if they are seeing growing sales and partner momentum that will help spur additional investment and innovation. You want to make sure that you have the right team backing your business.
Promotions Management – B2B buyer expectations are sky-high. Not only do they want dead-easy online purchasing, they expect their vendors to really “know” them and create experiences that are personalized to their needs. This means having custom catalogs and prices, thoughtful product recommendations, content designed for specific buyer roles and interests, and targeted promotions. It also means adding intelligence to the process with reminders of when to reorder or offering subscription services, so buyers can essentially set it and forget it.
Transaction Management – At its core, commerce is all about transactions. So, you need to make sure that your vendor has the best solution for taking, managing, and reporting on quotes and orders. Take time to evaluate their shopping cart and checkout process. Are they pre-integrated with a range of payment and shipping options? How easy is it for buyers to submit and negotiate quotes or configure products online? Look at their order management capabilities, too. Can you manage inventory and orders across multiple channels in one place and use business intelligence to optimize how each order is fulfilled? Can you offer your customers the ability to buy-online and pick up in nearby branch locations? And finally, make sure your commerce solution has ready-to-go dashboards for critical business, product, and customer metrics. This will ensure your team can manage day-to-day business and surface critical insights, without having to rely on a data scientist.

Source: https://magento.com/blog/magento-news/magento-commerce-leads-enterprise-and-mid-market-editions-paradigm-b2b-combine

 

Exploring the Power of Magento

Inside Calendar.com: Exploring the Power of Magento with Founder John Rampton

 

Today’s entrepreneurs have a wealth of technology at their disposal. Technology is part of a bigger solution for helping build out small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that launch, manage, monetize, and will sustain their disruptive ideas. Sustained competitive advantage comes from empowering human ingenuity to build on and extend the base capabilities that technology offers.
Just because an entrepreneur has developed the next big thing doesn’t mean they have to reinvent the wheel. When it comes to financial, logistical, inventory, project management, and customer service experience platforms—the right tech will make all the difference. An entrepreneur has to be able to rely on trusted technology solutions partners to deliver what the business needs for those SMB building blocks.
The same business building blocks work within a platform for eCommerce. Nothing better illustrates the value Magento delivers to entrepreneurs and enterprises than talking to one of our loyal customers.
Recently, our team sat down with John Rampton, a serial entrepreneur who has successfully founded and built companies on Magento. Rampton transitioned his former company Organize.com from Yahoo Stores over to Magento to build a $100 Million company.
Rampton is currently the founder and CEO of Calendar, a time management platform.

As a serial entrepreneur what made you choose the Magento eCommerce platform?

Over the years of creating, launching, and growing B2B startups and I have learned a lot about what my customers expect from an online experience. Now more than ever these online experiences require personalization. This personalization is best achieved in the form of rich and relevant content—instant purchase options—and a frictionless and seamless transaction process. Customers require ease of use whether they are on their desktop, laptop, or mobile device.
Like many of you reading this post, I built my business on another platform. Organize.com had been built and coded on the old legacy code, on Yahoo Stores—for almost 10 years. This was painful. We had no integrations with our shipping partners, and we had to print off each order by hand and take it over to accounting.
Accounting would then manually enter the data into our system and also by hand in the FedEx system—to sync with Amazon. Basically, manually entering information into two different places. I met with several different platforms as well as other large eCommerce companies.
We decided the best option to automate our business was to build on a platform that allowed us to quickly iterate, grow and scale our operations with the right extensions. Automation wasn’t even possible on our original platform. We estimated automation would save us the equivalent of four full-time employees.
Magento delivered above and beyond our expectations. We were able to save a ton of money and our customers immediately got the information on their orders. We cut down on incorrect information by almost 90 percent in a matter of weeks.

How do you see B2B eCommerce expanding in the next couple of years?

B2B eCommerce will follow a similar pathway to that of consumer eCommerce. There will be personalization, on-demand options, and expanded payment methods. Already, we are employing artificial intelligence (AI). This means that augmented reality (AR) and Internet of Things (IoT) devices will become a larger part of the eCommerce environment. B2B will be able to deliver everything from products, subscription services, and professional services through an eCommerce portal.

How essential is community in driving the success of a tech company?

Community is everything when it comes to the success of a tech company—or any other company today. We have to be able to get the solutions my companies offer into the hands of a larger audience. These varied audiences are already using other types of technology—which then demands the ability to integrate with all types of tools and platforms.
Integration is the key that drives the need for collaborative relationships with other companies. Collaborative tech has to be in place so that a community of developers can work together within an open-source environment.
Beyond sharing code, this community is also a creative hub for information, ideas, and innovation. This super-tech-hub enhanced my company’s technology leading to even better platforms and tools for everyone involved.

What specific features of the Magento platform were of particular interest to you and why?

The specific features that attracted me to Magento included the ability to personalize and customize the eCommerce experience. We required the ability to tailor an experience into my product offerings while delivering to my audience’s expectations.
I love the ability to sync pricing with Amazon and export directly new purchases to my FedEx and UPS accounts. This was a nightmare entering this information manually in the past.
Additionally, the fact that the code is open source—and has APIs—means my development team could quickly integrate. Magento into the systems we already had.

What eCommerce platform did you previously use—and what were the challenges that led you to choose Magento?

I previously used Yahoo Stores platform. There were many challenges on our platform that made it difficult to scale and work with potential customers who were from all over the world. Also, there were no personalization capabilities—and the platform didn’t seem to align with the rest of the technology we used. We really wanted, and needed, to be able to integrate everything into our platform.
URL structure was set. There was no ability to export different things and it didn’t work with many platforms to optimize our Amazon Seller Central account, etc. Lots of nightmares I highlighted above.
Another big issue involved security problems and downtime due to bugs and technical problems. Our developers were under a great deal of stress and spent way too much of their time on fixes. I couldn’t have this lack of reliability impact the customer experience.

Which features of the Magento platform are helping you grow your business?

For me, the entire Magento eCommerce solution has driven our business growth. We can now deliver a seamless experience—where customers can easily select and pay for their subscription level.
The ability to quickly add content for promotions or seasonal events has provided a further boost. Having a fast and reliable option allows rapid customer base expansion. We are continuing to realize this success month over month.
Additionally, the new integration and automation with Magento stores and Amazon/eBay makes it easier than ever to list each product with up to date inventories.

Having attended Imagine, is there a common thread in terms of what brands/merchants are looking for in their eCommerce platforms?

The common thread is an incredibly personalized and frictionless eCommerce experience. Merchants have to be able to track, analyze, manage, and respond to individual customers, quickly. We have to have specific content, promotions and effortless payment and delivery options.
The more tightly a platform can integrate the entire eCommerce process into all aspects of their business—the better the business will succeed. With tight integration, the business can now excel at developing and executing on their personalization strategies.  

What is your top tip for other entrepreneurs like yourself that need a reliable, robust, and scalable eCommerce platform?

Take your time finding the right eCommerce platform partner. I rushed it the first time around with the previous provider. It wasted a lot of money and even worse, a lot of time. Don’t rush. Just don’t. Make sure the solution you find is right for your business today and as it grows
I should have spent more time researching what platforms were out there and what they offered in terms of my customers’ needs. I should have considered how much of a long-term vision the platform provider was looking at—and asked how they would continue to address those value points.
Seek an eCommerce solutions provider who wants to be your long-term partner rather than just sell you a platform. I also tend to gravitate to platforms that have been around awhile and have established a base. It’s also a lot easier to find extensions that work for every aspect of your business.
Magento has become that partner for me and they continue to provide additional features to scale up and enhance the experience we offer our B2B customers.

Source: https://magento.com/blog/customer-stories/inside-calendar.com-exploring-power-magento-founder-john-rampton

 

Winning Customer Experience

Create a Winning Customer Experience with these 5 eCommerce extensions

 

 

The Magento Marketplace is the global eCommerce resource for applications and services that extend Magento solutions with powerful new features and functionality. Magento Marketplace is designed for easy discovery of relevant Magento extensions. It provides a curated user experience with offerings from top brands and new innovators. Discover new and customized functionality, in key business categories, to help your business thrive.
Here are five great eCommerce extensions to help you create a winning customer experience:
Google Shopping ads Channel by Magento
This Magento-developed extension delivers the power of Google’s advertising network in one, fully integrated end-to-end solution. Google Shopping ads Channel enables merchants to reach more shoppers looking for what they sell through AI, machine learning-driven Google Smart Shopping campaigns. The extension lets merchants connect their Magento store with Google Merchant Center and Google Ads seamlessly, and automatically syncs their product catalog and inventory.
Product Labels by Aheadworks
Product Labels for Magento 2 is an extension for delivering promotional campaigns successful with the help of labels that are configurable. The extension offers a convenient editor for creating labels with a custom design and equipped with custom messages. The On Sale extension for Magento 2 is an effective instrument for any online business as promotional campaigns are a key way to reliably boost the products.
PunchOut2Go by PunchOut2Go
The PunchOut2Go for Magento 2 eCommerce extension allows businesses to enable PunchOut catalog functionality within the Magento 2 eCommerce platforms. The extension integrates directly within a merchant's online store powered by Magento, in addition to procurement systems to harmonize data enabling all systems to communicate effectively. The extension features a seamless integration of cart data for procurement and ERP systems while maintaining a single product catalog to offer multiple buying organizations.
Clutch Loyalty & Gift by Clutch Holdings, LLC
The Clutch Loyalty & Gift extension is built for brands to implement using Magento 2. The extension provides the framework for integration of Clutch services for Stored Value and Loyalty as well as the ability to record and/or reward on standard events to track and incentivize customer behavior. The commerce extension allows brands to enroll customers in their loyalty program, collect customer preferences, record purchase data as well as non-spend data for both enrolled and non-enrolled customers.
Convey Delivery Experience Management by Convey Inc
The Convey extension enables merchants to launch delivery experience management, that provides end-to-end visibility and control over the entire online shopping experience from order to delivery. The extension feeds order information from Magento Order Management directly to Convey allowing for full in-transit visibility, delivery insights, and collaborative tools.

Source: https://magento.com/blog/marketplace/create-winning-customer-experience-these-5-ecommerce-extensions

E-Commerce Strategies And Tactics

E-Commerce Strategies And Tactics For The 2019 Holiday Season

The holiday season is the most wonderful—and the most challenging—time of the year for e-commerce sites. Amid the gift-buying frenzy, the high-traffic season sees intense competition from other merchants, increased instances of cybercrime, and overwhelmed, busy, distracted shoppers.
According to Adobe Digital Insights, consumers spent $125.9 billion online in November and December in 2018—a 15.2% increase over the 2017 holiday season. And on 26 of the 61 shopping days between November 1 and December 31, consumers spent upwards of $2 billion per day. It’s expected that the 2019 holiday season will continue this record-breaking online sales trends. Now is the time merchants should be preparing. So what can they do to capitalize on this billion-dollar opportunity?                   
E-commerce specialists offer these practical checklists, eCommerce strategies, and tips for different phases of the buyer journey.

Checklist For The Pre-Journey

Before a customer even decides to make a purchase, merchants vie for their attention across myriad channels, from social media, to search, to email. Of course, the experience must be seamless across each channel and form factor to ensure that maximum “wow” factor and better conversion rates.
As shoppers browse their mobile phones on-the-go and surf the web during their lunch breaks, merchants must ensure sites are optimized for discovery, the search experience is friction-free, and customers are engaged across channels in a personal and authentic way.
In this pre-journey race for customer attention, the key to success is personalization. Because Americans are exposed to up to 10,000 ads each day, personalization across discovery, site search, and omnichannel engagement is a must in order to cut through the noise and resonate with buyers.
Consider:
Discovery

• Gather and analyze behavioral and contextual customer data to understand customer intent.
  
• Adopt multipronged discovery strategies (e.g., continue shopping recommendations and targeted pop-up stores).
  
• Add personalized product recommendations and content to capture attention.
  

Site search

• Use business relevance to order search results.
  
• Personalize site search results to give customers a notion of discovery.
  
• Enable voice search (and new alternative) capabilities.
  

Omnichannel engagement

• Think mobile-first and always start with your data.
  
• Avoid batch-and-blast communications. Segment and personalize to stand out from the crowd.
  
• Up your email game. Set up welcome and abandon cart programs for quick wins.
  

Checklist For A Smooth Journey

When customers find their way to a merchant’s e-commerce site, customer experience takes a leading role. In fact, according to Gartner, 64% of people find the customer experience to be more important than price when it comes to making a purchasing decision.
Ensuring a secure, friction-free checkout experience is fundamental to capturing as many customers as possible during the holiday season. It’s especially important to pay attention to the mobile experience since 62% of all e-commerce visitors come from mobile—though it only accounts for 23% of dollars spent.
Finally, as a special touch for cash-strapped shoppers over the holidays, merchants should consider consumer credit options—especially when average order value is over $99—to alleviate high credit card usage at a time of year when money is tightest and card limits are maxed out.

Source: https://magento.com/blog/best-practices/e-commerce-strategies-and-tactics-2019-holiday-season

 

Read it "MagentoLive 2019 Guide to Amsterdam"

With its rich history as an international trade hub, Amsterdam is the perfect place for our eCommerce event, MagentoLive Europe 2019, and there’s also a wealth of museums, restaurants, and nightspots to enjoy. Here are a few suggestions from our local community of partners, Magento developers, and employees.

Sights to See

Canal Cruises and Bike Tours
The easiest way to experience the real beauty of Amsterdam is by taking a canal cruise. Sit back and relax while you cruise along 100 highlights of the city. Prefer to discover the city in a more active way? Rent a bike and go on an adventure yourself.

View More: https://magento.com/blog/events/magentolive-2019-guide-amsterdam

Purchase Journey on Amazon "Rethinking Placement & Price in the Age of the Amazon Buy Box"

With over 310 million active customers worldwide[i] and 55% of shoppers starting their purchase journey on Amazon[ii], there’s no denying Amazon’s growing importance for sellers of all sizes. Yet finding success in selling to this massive customer base in a sea of 353 million product offerings,[iii] can be daunting, to say the least.

Selling to Amazon’s Customer Base

As with traditional multi-brand retail partnerships in the physical world (e.g. Target, Walmart), a seller on Amazon is selling to someone else’s customer base in exchange for reach, convenience, fulfillment and ease of purchase. Yet a common frustration with Amazon is that growing your own customer base and increasing your brand recognition is not turnkey. In fact, Amazon’s Seller Requirements stipulate that a Seller cannot directly solicit or advertise to the customers they have gained from an Amazon order. The reality is that while Amazon may be the “store” you sell through, there is still room to build brand recognition within their customer base. Customers usually understand that the brand of the product they are buying is separate from the store environment and build post-purchase recognition on new brand discoveries.

Price and Profits: How Can I Win the Amazon Buy Box?

Another common Amazon seller frustration is balancing product visibility and profitability. Visibility on an Amazon product page comes down to winning the Amazon Buy Box position. The Amazon Buy Box position accounts for over 80% of sales on Amazon[iv], so being the seller who wins this position is crucial.


View More: https://magento.com/blog/marketplace/amazon-buy-box-rethinking-price-placement

Microsoft Dynamics ERP with Magento Commerce Integration

Ready to integrate Microsoft Dynamics ERP with Magento Commerce?

 

When you’re ready to add eCommerce to your business mix—and you’re serious about growth—you need a best-in-class eCommerce platform. For many businesses, that means Magento Commerce. It offers the flexibility you need to design a truly unique shopping experience for both retail and wholesale buyers and a wide variety of built-in features, like rapid content publishing and instant purchase checkout.
However, if you’re a Microsoft Dynamics user, commerce features aren’t the only thing you’re looking for. You also need to know, “Will Magento Commerce connect with my ERP?” The short answer is yes, it will. And, if you plan thoughtfully, the process to integrate ERP software can be thoroughly painless, and not as costly or time-consuming as you think.
If you’re ready to integrate your Microsoft Dynamics ERP system with Magento Commerce—or you’re just thinking about it—this ten-step checklist is for you.

Why ERP Integration is Important

The best reasons to integrate Microsoft Dynamics with Magento Commerce will depend a lot on your specific business model and long-term goals. However, at a high level, integration gives you:

• More options for self-service customer reports. When Magento Commerce can access data stored in Microsoft Dynamics, you can give customers access to all their interactions with your brand in one place. You can also let them see credit limits, buying trends, and more.
  
• Smarter business intelligence. When Microsoft Dynamics can access online sales and customer data from Magento Commerce, you can get a more complete picture of your businesses overall performance.
  
• Process automation. Connecting Microsoft Dynamics and Magento Commerce helps you automate workflows—including fulfillment and restocking inventory—and accelerate business processes, such as new product introductions.
  
• Fewer mistakes. With ERP integration, your Magento eCommerce store will display the latest product availability and pricing information. This means customers will not order products which are actually out of stock or be charged the wrong price.
  

Your pathway to ERP integration

ERP System integration can sound intimidating, especially if your team doesn’t have a lot of technology experience. But connecting Microsoft Dynamics with Magento Commerce may be easier than you think. There are more than 350 Magento solution partners to choose from as well as pre-built connector solutions.
This checklist can help you start thinking about your ERP integration strategy and get organized to take the next step:
1. Understand your business goals
Your integration should support your business goals today and in the future. You should ask yourself how connecting Microsoft Dynamics and Magento Commerce could help you achieve objectives such as omnichannel selling, adding B2B or direct-to-consumer sales, and expanding into cross-border markets.
2. Document your workflows
Once you’ve established your business goals, take a closer look at the workflows supporting them. Workflows define where data needs to go and when. For example, your checkout workflow could include confirming product availability, choosing a payment method, and fraud detection processes. Every merchant’s workflows are different—and B2B workflows can sometimes be complex.
3. Evaluate your data
Four critical data types you may want to synchronize between your Microsoft Dynamics and Magento Commerce platform are inventory, product descriptions and specs, pricing, and order tracking. For each key piece of data, you’ll need to determine where it should reside (e.g., the system of record), how frequently it should be updated, and how it will be managed and cleaned.
4. Consider your infrastructure requirements
Your infrastructure requirements will depend on whether you’ll be running Microsoft Dynamics and Magento Commerce in a cloud, on-premise, or hybrid environment. At a high level, your infrastructure should be flexible and scalable enough to support fluctuating levels of web traffic, transaction volume, and system usage.
5. Account for your online payment models.
A growing number of businesses offer subscription-based pricing and a variety of installment plans. If you use a third-party software package to manage these kinds of payments, it should be factored into your Microsoft Dynamics-Magento Commerce integration plan.
6. Identify the right stakeholders. 
It’s important to consult the teams which use your ERP system and eCommerce platforms on a regular basis before you integrate them. Finance, operations, marketing, and sales may all have insights to contribute. And don’t forget to include customers and suppliers.
7. Define your ERP System budget.
Establishing a budget for your ERP integration strategy is essential before you choose a partner. If your budget is very limited, you will have to prioritize your requirements.
8. Pick the right partner.
Unless you have a large IT department, you will want to choose an experienced integration partner. In particular, the partner should have ample experience with Microsoft Dynamics, Magento, and your particular industry. They should have at minimum ten to twenty case studies to share, not one or two, and may propose a proven, extensively tested connector which are packaged software frameworks which can dramatically accelerate your integration.
9. Assign your project team—including a contact for support.
To keep your integration project running smoothly, you will need to assign an internal team to work with your partner to refine requirements, test functionality and manage the overall project schedule. You’ll also need to assign someone—either an internal contact or your partner—to support your integration over time.
10. Define SLAs for your ERP integration.
Your ERP integration strategy should include service level agreements (SLAs) data flows. These SLAs should consider the typical latency of your Microsoft Dynamics implementation, including planned maintenance and unplanned slowdowns which may happen during major reporting cycles.

Ready to take the next step?

If you’re thinking about integrating Microsoft Dynamics with Magento, a great place to start is our best practices eBook Better Together. You can download it here. This eBook contains helpful advice from four Magento partners with extensive experience helping merchants connect Microsoft Dynamics with Magento:

Source: https://magento.com/blog/best-practices/ERP-integration-microsoft-dynamics-magento-commerce

 

Holiday Season Magento Ecommerce Store Optmization

Optimizing Your Magento Commerce Site for the 2019 Holiday Season

Just as you would prepare a traditional brick-and-mortar store for the all-important holiday sales season, preparing your eCommerce site for the crush of online visitors is also important. Read on for tips that Merchants who use Magento Commerce should consider employing to ensure a robust digital holiday season.

Preparing Your Digital Storefront

Keep Your Digital Storefront Secure
The holidays are a critical time for your business and bad actors know this. Ensure that your digital storefront has the latest security by running your site on the latest version or patch of Magento Commerce. This includes the technical stack and your extensions, such as PHP, Fastly, and ECE Tools. Find out more here on how to upgrade Magento Commerce and at our Release Information page for notes on the latest version of Magento Commerce.
Another way you can make sure you’re adopting the best-possible security posture ahead of the holidays is to utilize Magento’s Security Scan tool. And we recommend taking a moment to read our article on Security Best Practices to make sure your team is employing our full set of recommendations.
Improve Sales with Your Store Configuration
Make sure that you’re taking advantage of recommended best practices in store management. These include Advanced Pricing, Staged Content, and Price Rules. Find out more in our article on Best Practices for Store Configuration.
Don’t Let Changes Go Unnoticed
As your digital store rapidly prepares for holiday sales, your Search Engine Optimization can get left behind. Make sure your team is taking advantage of recommendations for Magento Commerce site SEO, which can be found in our article on SEO Best Practices.  For additional tips and tricks read our post on “eCommerce SEO: How to Optimize Product Pages.”
Optimize for a Fast eCommerce Site
Speed is a critical aspect of a well-run digital storefront. All those lovely images that help customers online to make a purchase decision can sometimes slow down your site. Make sure they are a net-benefit to the sales process by utilizing image resizing so that your site loads as fast as possible in our article on Resizing Product Images. You can also speed up Magento Commerce sites by up taking advantage of Full-Page Caching.
Take Advantage of Online Video
Product videos are a great addition to the sales process online. Find out how to utilize these for your Magento Commerce Site via our article on Adding Product Video.
Share the Rainbow
If your products come in a multitude of colors, customers are more likely to buy if they can imagine the product in their preferred tone or pattern. You can find helpful tips and methods for including differentiated imagery in our article on Swatches.
Keep in touch with Magento
We always recommend that you confirm your contact information listed under Account Settings within your Magento Account login is current and that you’ve shared your organization’s key technical contacts with your Magento Customer Success Manager. These steps help us to alert the right people in your organization to known security or technical issues.

Preparing Your Cloud Infrastructure

Update to the Latest ece-tools Package
Ensure that your cloud environment is updated to the latest version of ece-tools to take advantage of the enhancements delivered in our deployment tooling. Recent releases have made improvements like improving the local development experience, speeding up the deployment of static content by up to 4x, and adding self-service capabilities that enable our merchants to be more productive. See the ece-tools release notes for all of the recent improvements.
Prepare for Heavy Traffic
Heavy traffic or spikes in orders can prevent your site from smooth and responsive operation during the most critical periods. If you use Magento Commerce on our cloud infrastructure and anticipate periods of heavy traffic in the upcoming months, we’re here to help with robust support. We recommend that your team review the full set of information on how to let us know if you anticipate heavy traffic via our article on Holiday Readiness for Cloud Capacity.
Don’t Let Deployment Get You Down
It’s important that visitors can shop uninterrupted during the holiday season, but you may also need to push changes to your production environment. Did you know that it is possible to configure your project so that the customer experiences zero downtime during these deployments? One of the best ways you can practice good cloud infrastructure management is to utilize Zero Downtime Deployments. Check out the steps laid out in these articles to ensure that your customers engage with a live site, regardless of your deployment routine. (Zero Downtime Deployment for Magento Commerce 2.2.x; Zero Downtime Deployment for Magento Commerce 2.3.x)
Back Up Your eCommerce Site
Employ proper back-up management to prevent a time-consuming environment roll-back. A Snapshot allows you to back up and then restore specific environments at any time, which can be a cost and time saving back up should something go wrong. Because Magento environments deploy as read-only files, a Snapshot restoration can bring your environment back quickly. Read the following articles on how to create and, if needed, use Snapshots. (Snapshots and backup management for Magento Commerce 2.2.x; Snapshots and backup management for Magento Commerce 2.3.x)
Monitor Your Performance

As you speed up Magento Commerce, it’s always a good idea to keep an eye on performance. We recommend that Magento Commerce customers who utilize our cloud infrastructure management system take advantage of services like New Relic and Blackfire to monitor site performance.

As we approach the holiday season, planning ahead, aligning your teams, and laying the groundwork will pave the way to a successful year-end. Visit our DevDocs and our User Guides to find more information. Interested in more ideas to get the most out of the holidays? Check out our blog on strategies and tactics for the holiday season.

Optimize For Sales

While you’re at it, download the full Journey of a Gift guide for more information about how Magento and ecosystem partners Nosto, Algolia, dotdigital, CyberSource | A Visa Solution, NS8, PayPal, DHL, Zendesk, and Happy Returns can help you finetune each stage of the customer journey so you can capitalize on the holiday season.

Source: https://magento.com/blog/best-practices/optimizing-your-magento-commerce-site-2019-holiday-season

 

Magento Business Intelligence

Introducing New Capabilities to Magento Business Intelligence

Commerce is as much about science as art. Success in today’s hypercompetitive retail environment requires a data-driven approach. This means that any decision that impacts the customer experience and growth should be based on data – and not intuition or even worse, guesswork. In fact, a MicroStrategy report shows that over 50% of survey respondents said they’ve improved on efficiency and productivity, and have driven better financial performance by leveraging data analytics to inform business decisions.
In the not-so-distant past, being able to gather actionable insights from a myriad of data across various functions within a business was a privilege for large companies with an army of IT professionals or data scientists. Technology advances now enable SMBs to harness the power of business intelligence to make informed decisions that impact their customer experience and bottom line. What’s become clear is that brands that will rise to the top are those that can aggregate disparate data sources, unify them to create a single view, apply critical context and automate tasks that take up too much time.

What Is Magento Business Intelligence?

Magento Business Intelligence is a cloud-based data management and visualization platform that provides integrated, easy-to-use dashboards and reporting tools for Magento merchants to expertly harness their data. It consolidates data from their database, Magento extensions, and third-party tools to deliver the valuable insights they need to answer questions like: What is the impact of a returned order on loyalty? Which channels acquire the most valuable customers? How is my retention rate trending? And what is my cost to acquire a customer compared to their lifetime value?
Today, we’re announcing new capabilities to Magento Business Intelligence that lets Magento merchants not only visualize their data in meaningful ways but also ensure that the right insights are being shared with right team members. This is important considering that efforts to gather and analyze actionable data can become wasted dollars if the appropriate decision-makers don’t have access to them on a regular basis.
New capabilities to Magento Business Inteliinge include:

• New Data Visualization Capabilities with Dynamic Scatter and Bubble Charts: Magento Business Intelligence currently offers  ten different visualization options. With this release, we’re introducing three new visualization types including scatter plots, scatter plots with a trend line and bubble charts. Of note, with the introduction of bubble charts, merchants can now add a third and fourth dimension to their visual reports: this means in addition to the x and y values, you can also plot grouped z values, which are represented by the size and color of the bubble. For example, leveraging the third dimension will enable Magento merchants to easily interpret the coorelation between the number of customers from specific sources grouped by region, how many orders they are placing, and how much revenue they have driven.
   

Source: https://magento.com/blog/magento-news/introducing-new-capabilities-magento-business-intelligence

 

B2B Technology Updates

Magento Acquires New B2B Technology

One of the most unique and compelling aspects of the Magento Commerce platform is the vibrant ecosystem of partners and developers that extends and supports it. They are a continual engine for innovation, bringing vital new capabilities to the platform daily.
One such innovator is Accorin, a division of Riddle & Bloom and Magento Business Solution Partner and full-service agency, based in Boston. They turned their talents to developing new workflow approval process capabilities for their B2B clients, fulfilling a common requirement for B2B purchasing.
In order to accelerate its B2B roadmap, Adobe has agreed to acquire Accorin’s order approval technology. The technology will be augmented and incorporated into Magento Commerce for release in 2020. B2B sellers represent a significant and growing part of the Magento Commerce business, and Accorin’s technology will help further advance the rich set of out-of-the-box B2B capabilities available in Magento Commerce. Sellers will be able to offer the convenience of online purchasing, with the spending and policy controls expected in B2B transactions.
Accorin’s technology empowers B2B buyers to control spending and ensure corporate policies are followed for online purchasing. Companies can define flexible rules to govern when orders must be approved before being submitted to the seller. Approval requirements can be set for orders that are above a certain dollar value, quantity or contain specific products. New orders requiring approval are automatically routed to the appropriate supervisors for signoff via a seamless process. Multiple approval tiers are supported, and APIs are available to enable integration with existing business systems where approval rules are already defined.
A preview of our new order approval process capabilities will be available at MagentoLive Europe during Breakout Session VI at 11:15 – 12:00 on Wednesday, October 23. Further information about this feature and other B2B enhancements will be communicated as we get closer to the release date.
We look forward to building on the strong foundation that Accorin has laid to bring this powerful new capability to Magento Commerce customers.

Source:  https://magento.com/blog/magento-news/magento-acquires-new-b2b-technology

 

MagentoLive Europe 2019

MagentoLive Europe 2019: Adobe Announces New Commerce Capabilities for SMBs and Mid-market Merchants

Today, we’re kicking off MagentoLive Europe 2019 by unveiling new capabilities to our industry-leading commerce platform that empowers SMB and mid-market merchants to better orchestrate the shopping experience they deliver to their customers. We’re now at an inflection point where companies of all sizes are perpetually challenged by soaring customer expectations to deliver amazing brand experiences. We’re committed to bringing Adobe’s enterprise-grade commerce capabilities to our SMB and mid-market customers to help them grow their business. 
New, noteworthy enhancements to the Magento commerce platform include: 

• Amazon Sales Channel Extension for Amazon’s U.K. Marketplace: Amazon Sales Channel in Magento is now available for the Amazon U.K. Marketplace, with support for additional European territories arriving next year. The extension for Magento Commerce and Open Source removes the barriers to entry for merchants that are trying to gain a strong position with Amazon while also managing their owned channel. It allows brands to quickly and easily integrate their catalog, establish a bi-directional data flow and start managing listings from their Magento admin (see separate blog post).
  
• Early Access Program for Product Recommendations Powered by Adobe Sensei: At Imagine, we announced that our Product Recommendations feature powered by Adobe Sensei will be directly integrated into Magento Commerce. I’m thrilled to announce that the Early Access Program for this powerful feature will launch in January of next year. Magento Commerce merchants that are part of the program will be able to leverage the feature directly within the Magento admin (see separate blog post).
  
• Magento Commerce on Microsoft Azure: We’re bolstering our multi-cloud capability by making Magento Commerce available on both Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS). With both Azure and AWS offered as the underlying provider, Magento merchants will have the flexibility to pick the cloud provider of their choice to continuously deploy innovations and not worry about the day-to-day management of their infrastructure. The Early Access Program for Azure support will begin next year.
  
• Adobe Stock Integration with Magento: Our community engineering team is continuing to make great progress in integrating Adobe Stock with Magento Commerce and Open Source. The highly anticipated feature will provide a searchable interface within the Magento admin to discover, preview and embed licensed stock images within the platform. The integration will give Magento merchants with an Adobe Stock subscription quick and easy access to Adobe Stock’s more than 130 million assets, including images, templates, 3D assets, over 8 million stock videos, and over 750,000 Premium collection images. Magento’s unique open business model and community engineering program enables us to leverage our community of 350+ solution partners and over 300K developers to accelerate the delivery of our product roadmap.
  
• General Availability of Magento Commerce 2.3.3 and Magento Open Source 2.3.3: The release of Magento 2.3.3 includes substantial performance improvements, as well as security enhancements, which allow Magento customers to remain compliant with new directives and regulations. Starting with 2.3.3 we are bundling Yotpo’s leading customer ratings, reviews, and visual marketing capabilities into the Magento core as a vendor bundled extension. Now merchants can more quickly tap strategic partner technologies directly within the Magento code, without needing to download and install them from the Magento Marketplace. Google Shopping ads Channel, previously announced at Imagine and allows merchants to take advantage of Google’s ad network in one end-to-end solution, is also becoming part of the 2.3.3 core code as well.
  

 

 

Source: https://magento.com/blog/magento-news/smb-mid-market-adobe-announces-new-commerce-capabilities