Blog

Day 2

Day 2 saw many of us overwhelmed and sleepy (that networking event continued into the wee hours of the morning!). But the Magento Imagine 2017 General Session about the evolution of eCommerce got attendees motivated.

We were a little disappointed that Mark Lavelle did not make any “big” announcements, but we were quite happy to see the business case for commitment to Magento including:

• Injection of capital
• Strategic investments and acquisitions
• Launching new services – Magento’s cloud hosting for Enterprise customers, Business Insights and other services

Lavelle, although not obligated, alluded to ‘growing pains’ and ‘extraordinary efforts’ by developers to get up to speed on Magento 2. Magento corporate tried to show the community it is valued wants them to succeed.

At the conclusion of the General Session, I felt that Magento did their very best to convince the crowd that:

• We are healthy
• We are dedicated to understanding and supporting community
• We are preparing for upcoming trends

Other Takeaways from Day #2

• Emergence of mobile wallets and payment options. Make sure your payment options match your customer base
• Headless development. Great insight into Quicken using Drupal as a front end and Magento 2 EE as a back end and connecting via APIs
• User Generated Content. If you want to build community on your website, this is now a given and the technology can be easily acquired and implemented
• Reducing friction
• Customer journey vs the funnel. This is not really a new way about thinking about customers, but, it does have consequences and seems to be gaining speed
• The cloud. Everything should be in the cloud an accessible via API
• Reminders of things you should be doing already
• Test your changes before rolling them out
• All HTTPS
• Site monitoring
• Speed test and improve
• Use caching or CDN for speed
• Responsive design
• Rich snippets

Magento Security Scan

Magento is introducing a free, official security scanning service, called Magento Security Scan. The Scan is currently in beta. There will be two tiers. The lower tier does basic security checks and notifications (missing patches, etc.). The higher tier also scans your complete codebase for malicious code and other known issues. Scans can be run manually, or on a daily or weekly basis. Each run generates a report card and analysis with action items. It won’t protect your site, but it will help you to do so. I can say that this session concluded with a lot of happy individuals!

Magento Marketplace Extension Quality Program

This session was conducted by Jason Cochran, Head of Marketplace Engineering, Magento commerce and discovered the tips to clear everything about Magento extension. If you’re willing to sell your extension in Magento Marketplace, it must pass the Extension Quality Program (EQP) before you proceed further. Magento is highly committed to the Marketplace’s quality and success. 75% of submissions fail to pass the technical standards/requirements. They have a team of 6 people dedicated to manually QA-ing every submission (making sure it does what it’s supposed to), and they plan to double that in the next year. If you buy from the Marketplace, you can be confident your purchase does what it says and is compatible with the versions it claims.

 

The conclusion of Day 2 allowed all attendees to celebrate the best of the best in the Magento Community with the Imagine Excellence Awards. We saw innovators, success stories, and trailblazers take the stage and show the world why Magento is the leader of the pack. We also listened as Serena Williams, number one ranked tennis star, discussed the path to the success and the obstacles that get in your way. And just as everyone was about to bolt to the Legendary Imagine Evening Event, Jamie Clarke took the stage in a very James Bond sort of way. Decked out in a tux, he prepared the group for what he assured would be a memorable night. That it was and I will end day 2 on what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.

 

Day 3

Our final day flew by quickly but we were thrilled with the announcements that would ensure Magento would be powering the future through digital innovation with Commerce Cloud Enhancements including shipping, business intelligence, content management and social media capabilities.

Merchants will enjoy the enhanced capabilities of these innovations, especially the drag-and-drop content management features that make it easier to build rich sites, facilitate social commerce, and leverage built-in analytics to elevate the brand experience.

Jason Woosley, SVP of Product and Technology at Magento summed up eCommerce today best when he stated: “In today’s fast-paced, noisy economy, brands need to anticipate and deliver exceptional experiences ahead of consumer demand. Commerce must come to customers, whenever and wherever they want it.”

New Magento Commerce Cloud Enhancements Include:

Optimize shipping and fulfillment: Magento Shipping offers greater control and automation over the entire shipping and fulfillment process. This will greatly reduce cart abandonment and accelerate growth. Magento Shipping is powered by Temando, and will be provided as a bundled extension in Magento Commerce Cloud.

Magento Shipping also provides an API-based infrastructure that delivers speed, scalability, reliability, and connectivity to third-party shipping providers while offering out-of-the-box access to regional and international carriers. For more information, Click here.

Faster & richer experiences: The addition of advanced content management from Magento BlueFoot CMS simplifies content creation and management with powerful tools and intuitive user interfaces. For me, this means my non-technical abilities are no longer a hindrance. I can own and deploy content that will provide compelling shopping experiences driving conversion. For more information, click here.

Unified social media presence: Magento Social enables merchants to engage with audiences directly through social media channels, including Facebook and Pinterest. With social channels expected to account for upwards of 10 percent of total online sales in 2017, Magento Social enables merchants to easily integrate updates and promotions, as well as provide detailed analytics that drive improved traffic. For more information, click here:

Provide business performance visibility and insight across commerce channels: Magento provides merchants with fully customizable business intelligence tools as a part of Magento Commerce Cloud. With Magento Business Intelligence Essentials, Magento merchants can more easily and cost-effectively understand customers, products, and orders. Businesses will have the confidence to make decisions and take quick action for their marketing, merchandising, and topline business initiatives. For more information, click here.

Lots of things were learned and of course we all have some questions that may not have been answered, the biggest one being, Jamie Clarke, what happened to the beard?

 

Thank you to Magento and the Wynn for another great year. We will see you next year, April 23-25 for Imagine 2018!