The keynote started
straight after a quick hello from Jamie Huskisson, Meet Magento UK organiser,
and CEO at JH, as well as Thomas Goletz, President of Meet Magento Association.
EY TAKEAWAYS FROM MEET MAGENTO LONDON 2018
Keynote was presented
by Peter Sheldon, VP of Strategy at Magento Commerce. The subject of user
experience role in e-commerce heavily featured in Peter’s talk, which reassured
us in our approach to clients’ brands. He painted the picture of how online
experiences are reshaping the world of e-commerce, starting with Tesla as an
example of outstanding online purchase. In addition, he talked about
millennials being less and less inclined to actually buy stuff in person, and
constantly looking for an easy way out; now, they even purchase their cars
through their smartphones.
A quite familiar
purchase journey was also outlined showing various steps and considerations.
From initial product discovery, through purchase, all the way to support and
re-engagement after the initial transaction. A typical transaction now is
usually conducted on mobile, and users are expecting that to be a super-fast
and frictionless experience. As well as having certain post-purchase
expectations.
A very interesting
trend on the rise is the conversational commerce and the fact that it’s
becoming more and more real. We’ve
always seen Voice as one of the next big things. However, for the time being,
the major beneficiary being Amazon, brands need to at least have a strategy to
engage their customers on Alexa or Google Assistant. Simple experiences around
support, delivery and possibly even purchase can be created. Just having the mindset and thinking about
conversational commerce is of great benefit. Especially with a lot of retailers
struggling to keep up with Amazon, even in matching the prime delivery model.
From there, we went
straight over to the technical track which was dominated by PWA talks. Starting with Shane Osbourne’s, Lead Frontend
Developer at JH. Shane talked about how developers can transform current Magento
sites into speed demons in preparation for a full-blown TWA experience. He showed
practical approach to rendering Magento pages in a way that gains speed and
performance without necessarily implementing at full PWA setup.
Next up was the PWA
panel from leading specialists that offer platform agnostic PWA storefronts
that integrate into Magento as well as Magento’s own solution. It was interesting to see the leaders and
various approaches as well as predictions of what PWA could actually mean for
e-commerce.
Another extremely important topic was how to make PWA profitable and worth the investment in time. This was presented by Rowan Merewood, Developer Advocate at Google, who has been seen before at Google HQ in London talking about PWA.
Apparently, the key to successfully implementing PWA is finding small use cases such as using the notifications in the right way not necessarily buying a plug-in and implementing a blanket-me-too approach.
Once again, we’ve seen
lighthouse testing and learnt some valuable lessons on how to approach website
performance testing and monitoring and some easy wins around the subject.
The day finished with
a promising keynote from Brian Green, Head of EMEA Sales at Magento Commerce. He
talked about how Magento is expanding its Pan European operations as well as
the Middle East, partly driven by investment from a debate. Brian presented an
accelerated merchant grove picture on Magento commerce platform as well as the
power of innovation pointing out how open and extensible the Magento core is,
which in turn promotes innovation. And with unparalleled support of around 4000
businesses globally, this makes Magento one of the most popular e-commerce
platform on the planet .The UK Magento market and community has grown even stronger
with healthy number of Tec Partners and third in the world number of certified
professionals.
Magento roadmap looks
very promising with its superior shopping experience, its omni-channel selling
and fulfilment as well as emergent intelligence on the map. This provides a
very vibrant ecosystem on the open platform.
An interesting fact
around the pace of innovation in the open source community run by Magento was the
speed of implementation. For example,
soon after Amazon patent expiry on the one-touch ordering, Magento community submitted
and released exactly that feature on the day.
In conclusion, the year
ahead is looking very promising with Magento being the leader in B2B and B2C
e-commerce pointing forwards a shift in its position in the e-commerce platform
market. With technologies like TWA Voice,
business intelligence is ever-changing and customer experience is being
improved. In addition, with the possibility of collaboration and investment
from Adobe, we yet again see Magento as the platform for the future.
